by Edward Milford
10. September 2009 03:51
The strange ritual that is the ‘party conference season’ in the UK has kicked off, not that you would know it from much of the coverage in the UK press; they mainly cover the three, near identical grey parties in British politics. However, the Green Party held their annual conference in Hove (actually, it is close to Brighton on the South coast) at the weekend. It did get some coverage on the BBC, and in some newspapers such as The Guardian.
Earthscan had a stall there, selling books to the delegates. It is a useful chance to meet more of the ‘interested general readers’ than we have at many of the more specialist events we go to. Of particular interest this year was our relatively new book Green Economics by Molly Scott Cato who is also the Green Party’s economics spokesperson. Other popular books by Green Party members include Capitalism as if the World Matters by Jonathan Porritt, and How to Live a Low Carbon Life by Chris Goodall.
Despite the UK’s bizarre system of flexible terms to Parliament, we know that there has to be a general election before the next party conference in a year’s time. With the archaic first past the post (or ‘disproportional representation’ system as it should better be known) it is very difficult for a smaller party to win a seat at Westminster.
However, after a lot of work in certain target areas, the Greens are quite hopeful of winning their first Parliamentary seats whenever the election finally does arise. In particular, they are well placed in Brighton, Norwich and Lewisham; in each case if the voting patterns at local and European level are replicated in a general election vote they should win the seats. That is, unfortunately, a rather big ‘if’.
