LABOUR, THE GREENS AND THE MORAL OF THE RALPH NADER CANDIDACY


For anyone considering voting Green this coming May I would say consider the US Presidential elections of 2000 and the role played by the Greens presidential candidate Ralph Nader. The 2000 election was of course famously close, a few votes more here or there deciding a contest that finally ended in the debacle of the Florida on/off recount. What may have been lost on this side of the pond was the role of the Green Party’s candidate Ralph Nader. To quote The Huffington Post “Nader was indispensable to the Republican Party.” Nader cost the Democratic Party at least two states, Florida and New Hampshire, victory in these states would have won the presidency for Al Gore. Again to quote Huffington, “Nader drained at least 2 to 5 times as many voters from the Democratic candidate as he did from the Republican Bush.” In short the Green Party candidate was the spoiler who gifted the White House to George W Bush. The rest, as they say, is history.

 It is perhaps worth a moment’s pause to reflect how the first decade of the 21st Century might have turned out had it been Al Gore rather than Bush junior who occupied the White House. Ironically Gore went on to champion the cause central to the Green movement, the need to address global warming. A campaign documented in the Academy Award winning film ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’

Nader was a principled man, -although the glee he took in damaging the Democratic Party electorally also suggests an unhealthy degree of vanity and personal animus, -who certainly believed that by standing he was furthering the cause of progressive politics. His legacy however was to open the door of government to the most viciously reactionary forces in American political life.
Which brings me back to May’s general election here in the UK. As I write this the two major parties are virtually neck and neck and the election threatens to be the closest in living memory. In such a close race small parties have the capacity to play a key role by siphoning off votes from the larger parties. The Tories, it is true, have UKIP to worry about, but so too does Labour, who face an additional threat from the Greens and SNP, both parties providing no attraction to Tory voters. As the Greens experience a surge in the polls it is the Tories that are doing the most celebrating. Here are just two tweets from yesterday tweeted by Tim Montgomerie of The Times, formerly of Conservative Home:-

Tim Montgomerie @montie  Tory-induced Green surge doing what it was intended to do: Lab down to 30% as Cons move 2% ahead https://twitter.com/Sun_Politics/status/557667408639692800 … #SplitTheLeft

Tim Montgomerie @montie Greens surging in polls since Cameron insisted they take part in the debates. It's almost as if this was all part of a #SplitTheLeft plan!

Now there is a very silly line that says this all doesn't matter since Labour and the Tories are just the same. - This indeed was Nader’s line in 2000, didn't matter whether you voted Republican or Democrat. - Of course it is nonsense, Labour could afford to be a great deal more radical and is too cowed by business lobby, but it does offer a serious alternative to what will be inflicted upon us should the Tories retain power. For make no mistake the Tories are now ideologically way to the right of any other European conservative party. They want to finish the job of dismantling the welfare state and creating a society designed only to meet the demands of the comfortable, the affluent and the seriously privileged. This coming election could well prove as decisive as that of 2000 in the US, in shaping how the next ten years turn out.


So if you are considering switching from Labour to the Greens just reflect for a moment on Ralph Nader and the consequences of his success in taking votes from the Democratic Party. 

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