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Hello and welcome to the TCC Weekly – the Friday bulletin for people who know their Turnspit Dog from their Hamster Wheel.
With local elections held yesterday and only a quarter of the results being declared, we focus on the potential results in Mid Suffolk, where the Greens and the Tories are vying for power. While we know that the Greens campaign like the Yellows, we examine the Mid Suffolk contest in a bit more detail to see how they are becoming more successful at encroaching Blue territory and the dilemmas this may cause for the green movement.
And of course, there’s Charlie’s Attic, the TCC wind turbine of sociological hot air. This week we feature ways of embracing or escaping the coronation.
Is Green the new Blue?
What is the future of the green movement? Those browsing the local election results as they continue to trickle in this morning could do worse than look out for the final numbers from Mid Suffolk. This small District Council has traditionally been Tory but, as a recent BBC article outlined, it will likely see the Green party, make major advances this time round – perhaps winning overall control. As the piece points out, one issue benefitting the Greens is large-scale housing development, with residents concerned that the rural environment could be damaged.
This is not the only traditionally blue area where the Greens have been making gradual headway of late. And their success has often been based on these types of opposition to new housing and infrastructure.
The reasons for this shift in emphasis are partly electoral. The collapse of the Lib Dems after 2015 allowed the Greens to take on a new role, picking up the votes of those disgruntled with the two main parties. The rise of Corbynism crowded them out on the cosmopolitan left. And the embrace of Net Zero, as an aspiration for mainstream parties everywhere, compelled them to refine their role further, in a political marketplace where everyone is ‘going green’.
But Green Party advances in Mid Suffolk also expose contradictions within environmentalism. Put crudely, is the role of their movement to conserve the environment we have, or to embrace and shape technological change, in a low carbon direction? This 2021 blog by James O’Malley takes aim at the former approach, using the Greens’ opposition to HS2 as a case study.
Ultimately, if yesterday’s elections see the Greens make the advances they hope for in Mid Suffolk it will represent a remarkable development for their party. But it’s worth noting that the Greens are still looking to sustain a presence in younger, urban areas like Sheffield (where they’re the junior party in a minority administration). How they choose to square this circle could tell us something larger, about whether the green movement ultimately sees its role as to innovate or preserve.
And finally this week, Charlie’s Attic, the golden treasure at the end of your greeny blue rainbow.
Discover why we have quarter-pounders rather than one-third pounders.
