[Norfolkadam]

This isn't a referendum on whether you agree/disagree with the Green Party. It's about whether one should exist in the TSR MHoC.

Obviously the majority of people will disagree with a great deal of my draft manifesto and once we're up and running I look forward to debating it but in order to stay on topic we need to concentrate on whether or not the party should exist.

Aims of this thread:
1. To outline a manifesto and broad policy direction for the TSR Green Party
2. To muster support and build a party base allowing us to become an official TSR party.
3. To get feedback from people regarding the party idea and platform.

Party Formation Procedure from the MHoC Guidance Document:
1) If wanting to form a party, someone should put a thread in the main House of Commons forum spelling out their main principles.
2) Interested people should PM the Speaker and proposer.
3) In deciding whether to allow a party to form, the Speaker should be primarily mindful of the support for the party. Precedent sets the hurdle as 10 eligible voters showing support, though the Speaker may want to consider other factors, such as whether those voters are active House of Commons members.

Draft Manifesto:

Spoiler:

Show

Economy
- Introducing National Living Wage set at a proportion of the average wage.
- Increasing the amount people can earn before they have to come off benefits to allow a better transition between welfare and work.
- Implementing the Robin Hood Tax and working multilaterally with other nations to ensure global support.
- Introduce a tax system that redistributes wealth, rewards social responsibility and punishes those who damage our society and environment.
- Implementing the IRL Green Party’s tax plan as follows:-
i. Introduce a 50% tax rate for incomes over £100,000
ii. Abolish the upper limit for NI contributions.
iii. Lower the NI limit to the personal allowance rate.
iv. Reintroduce the 10% tax band and the 22p basic rate.
v. Increase the main rate of Corporation Tax from 28% back to 30% and reduce the small firms rate back to 20%
vi. Raise Capital Gains Tax from 18% to the recipient’s highest income tax rate.
vii. Reform inheritance tax, so that the level of taxation depends on the wealth of the recipient rather than the wealth of the deceased.
viii. Crack down on tax havens and other methods of tax evasion.
ix. Reform council tax by making more people in expensive houses pay more and those in smaller ones less, adding an additional band at the top for the biggest houses.
x. Introduce and reform a raft of environmental taxes and incentives.
- This tax plan is fully costed in the RL Green Party’s manifesto.

Spending
- Ending a great deal of the ‘contracting out’ of our public sector such as the Private Finance Initiatives and cutting large corporations like Serco and Capita out of government spending.
- Rolling back cuts to schools, libraries, hospitals, the arts, social services and many other public-sector areas funded by the tax reforms above.

Housing and Communities
- Resuming a programme of directly-funded council housing and social housing including a scheme to re-inhabit empty homes.
- Supporting thriving local communities with planning policies ensuring shopping areas are maintained within walking distance of all urban areas and restricting the power of supermarkets.
- Ensuring that new housing proposals are based on independent housing needs surveys where commercial house builders would have no influence.
- Ending the right-to-buy scheme and reinstating a mix of social levels in council housing.
- Ending the provisions of the Vagrancy Act, making sure that life isn't harder than it has to be for homeless people.

Education
- Concentrate on more small schools rather than forcing children to commute long distances to attend alienating academies.
- Maintaining a higher education system that is free at the point of use to everyone and that provides a rigorous and varied education.

Gay Rights
- Ensuring absolute legal and social equality for homosexual couples, including legalised gay marriage and an equal tax code.

Media
- Ensuring the BBC is well-funded and remains independent.
- Tightening rules on cross-media ownership.

Government and Constitution
- Bringing more transparency to party donations and lobbying groups, including the registration of lobbyists and a rigorous register of political donations, looking at moving toward a state-funded system for parties in the future.
- Looking at introducing written constitution and a Bill of Rights.
- (I stole this line straight from the RL Green Party manifesto because I like it and I can’t paraphrase it well) We would spearhead a revival in public spaces – libraries, parks, playgrounds. Fairness and sustainability require a public effort. Millions of unco-ordinated actions aimed at maximising individuals’ private interest will not bring about the society we want and deserve. Only citizens, aided by a Green Government, can do that.

Transport
- Returning the railways to public ownership ensuring their protection and improvement for generations to come.
- Introducing lower speed limits in residential areas and creating shared spaces and ‘community streets’ where more space is given over to pedestrians and drivers are forced to pay more attention.
- Regulating and improving bus and tram services with a national roll-out of Passenger Transport Executives to all urban areas.

Environment
- Introducing a wide range of measures to ensure that the environment is protected and enhanced. The areas covered would include energy policy, transport, biodiversity, agriculture and job creation.

Foreign Policy
- Reducing defense expenditure by removing our military presence in Afghanistan and reviewing our expensive weapons systems.
- Ending the replacement of Trident and reinvesting the money into public services.

Party Ideas
When formed I plan to hold a 'party conference' around two weeks before a general election in which the party members vote on four policy ideas on which we'll pledge to introduce legislation during that term and then we'll take a yes or no vote on our party manifesto before it is submitted.

As leader I'll encourage people to submit sensible, well-formed bills and get involved in the debate around them. I'll try to stay out of the drama and furore that usually surrounds a lot of what's done in the MHoC.

How to Support Us:
We need to get as many people as we can to send a private message to the Speaker and myself outlining their interest. We need a minimum of 10 members who've been on the forum for a while to get established.

To send the message click here.

Copy and paste 'Norfolkadam; paddy__power' into the recipients box and you can either write your own message or I've written this brief statement you can copy and paste.

Spoiler:

Show

Mr. Speaker,

I am sending this message to show my support for the formation of a TSR Green Party.

Yours,

Plans for the Upcoming Election:
I plan on standing as an independent candidate in the upcoming election, I'll be affiliated with The TSR Green Party but it's unlikely we'll be up and running before the date that we need to submit a manifesto by.

Finally
I'd like to hear anyone's thoughts on the proposal. I'm particularly interested in hearing from people with views similar to the party, I know that those on the right will obviously dislike the idea but even if you disagree with us you'd have to agree that more plurality is a good thing and there's no, good, reason why a Green Party couldn't thrive in TSR politics.

Support Expressed by:
Norfolkadam
DayneD89
davidmarsh01
Addzter
Thunder and Jazz
internetguru
Tophat
benpearson1

[internetguru]

Disagree with this Green Party because I didn't write the manifesto this time. If you have my policies from my manifesto then I support it.

[toronto353]

(Original post by Norfolkadam)
QFA

Shouldn't members post here to show that they are active here in addition to PM'ing you?

[Norfolkadam]

(Original post by toronto353)
Shouldn't members post here to show that they are active here in addition to PM'ing you?

How do you mean? If they PM myself and the speaker then we'll be able to see all their details. Presumably they'd post here too to show they were interested?

[toronto353]

(Original post by Norfolkadam)
How do you mean? If they PM myself and the speaker then we'll be able to see all their details. Presumably they'd post here too to show they were interested?

Yep that's what I mean - that they should post here too. Good luck by the way.

[thunder_chunky]

If your intention was to get this up and running in time for the election you left it a little late. Good luck though!

[JPKC]

(Original post by Norfolkadam)
QFA

If you want to form a party then good luck, but I urge you not to stand in the general election as an independent candidate. Indies can receive any percentage of the vote, but they can only win a single seat, so by standing you'd be taking seats away from left-of-centre parties without getting any more than one yourself. I'm sure you could become an MP in the next parliament by reaching an arrangement with a party that shares your ideas, without you having to 'join' a party - it'd give you a seat without damaging the left's proportion of seats overall.

[internetguru]

(Original post by JPKC)
If you want to form a party then good luck, but I urge you not to stand in the general election as an independent candidate. Indies can receive any percentage of the vote, but they can only win a single seat, so by standing you'd be taking seats away from left-of-centre parties without getting any more than one yourself. I'm sure you could become an MP in the next parliament by reaching an arrangement with a party that shares your ideas, without you having to 'join' a party - it'd give you a seat without damaging the left's proportion of seats overall.

You ran as an independent in the last election.

[ukip72]

Are Greens not comfortable in Labour or the Socialists?

[JPKC]

(Original post by internetguru)
You ran as an independent in the last election.

And I was wrong to do that.

[DayneD89]

I've already pledged my support to Norfolkadam so I'll do so publicly here as well. Between us I feel we have enough HoC experience to show that this party could work, assuming we gain a 8 more supporters for the party.

The TSR green party has been disbanded for too long. I however won't be standing as a green independent as that risks splitting the green vote and may result in no green candidate being elected. Assuming Norfolkadam gains a seat, and I think he has a good chance of doing so, this party could be formed with a seat already, giving us some influence in the coming parliament.

[Mechie]

I'll become a dual member of the Greens and Labour, if the Labour leader agrees.

[Norfolkadam]

(Original post by internetguru)
How does this differ from the Socialist Party?

I think it's probably best to answer this here so I've taken the list of Socialist achievments and added what we'd do differently. We're more tolerant of religion, we're not an anti-capitalist party but we would seek a moderated form of capitalism working for the benefit of society. We would, of course, agree with a lot of Socialist, Lib Dem and Labour policies but that's no reason there can't be a Liberal left-wing party with strong environmentalist and social-capitalist roots.

• Campaigned for the disestablishment of the Church of England - We would campaign against this, the Church of England is an integral part of our religious plurality and offers a more liberal view of Christianity than whatever may take its place.
• Campaigned for a fairer system of Corporation Tax - We would support the levvying of taxes to punish coroporations that are socially and economically irresponsible and reward those who benefit society.
• Campaigned for the formation of the British Republic - We have no formal position on this, I, personally am not a monarchist or a republican so we wouldn't put this on our main platform.
• Campaigned for the right to be treated as Human Beings irrespective of sexuality - We do support full, legal equality for LGBT people.
• Campaigned for recognition of the horrors of the Holocaust - This goes without saying.
• Campaigned for greater cooperation within Europe - We are pragmatic on the issue of Europe, we would not campaign for any more loss of soverignty or any sizeable withdrawal from the EU but we would seek to distance ourselves from the EU debt crisis and promote more trading with other geopolitical areas.
• Campaigned for a cleaner environment - Again, clearly something we agree with.
• Campaigned for less pre-charge detention - We would also campaign for greatly increase civil liberties through a number of measures.
• Campaigned for the protection of vulnerable young people - We would obviously want to protect vulnerable young people.
• Campaigned for the secularisation of schools - We would not campaign for the absolute secularisation of schools but we would seek to see a more fact-based education in religious schools.
• Campaigned against private healthcare - We would support the NHS absolutely but we wouldn't campaign specifically against private healthcare.
• Campaigned for free school meals - We would support a move toward free school meals but this would probably not be a priority.

[Norfolkadam]

(Original post by DayneD89)
I've already pledged my support to Norfolkadam so I'll do so publicly here as well. Between us I feel we have enough HoC experience to show that this party could work, assuming we gain a 8 more supporters for the party.

The TSR green party has been disbanded for too long. I however won't be standing as a green independent as that risks splitting the green vote and may result in no green candidate being elected. Assuming Norfolkadam gains a seat, and I think he has a good chance of doing so, this party could be formed with a seat already, giving us some influence in the coming parliament.

(Original post by davidmarsh01)
I'll become a dual member of the Greens and Labour, if the Labour leader agrees.

Thanks folks! Much appreciated. Could you message Paddy and let him know of your support and CC me in.

[toronto353]

(Original post by davidmarsh01)
I'll become a dual member of the Greens and Labour, if the Labour leader agrees.

So you're the third member then.

(Original post by Norfolkadam)
Thanks folks! Much appreciated. Could you message Paddy and let him know of your support and CC me in.

Perhaps post a list of members in OP?

[Norfolkadam]

(Original post by toronto353)
Perhaps post a list of members in OP?

Well because people would be dual members and that relies on party leaders agreeing I'd rather not. I appreciate if people support the motion even if they don't plan on becoming members.

[DayneD89]

(Original post by Norfolkadam)
Thanks folks! Much appreciated. Could you message Paddy and let him know of your support and CC me in.

I've already sent a message to the speaker. I didn't CC you in as you already know of my support.

[MacDaddi]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOO not again!

[toronto353]

(Original post by Norfolkadam)
Well because people would be dual members and that relies on party leaders agreeing I'd rather not. I appreciate if people support the motion even if they don't plan on becoming members.

They'd have to get their leader's permission before joining surely though so it's worth posting as it also allows us all to keep track as well. David's desire to join is fine for example because he is leader so the current list could surely be posted?

[Norfolkadam]

(Original post by DayneD89)
I've already sent a message to the speaker. I didn't CC you in as you already know of my support.

Okey doke, thanks for doing that.

(Original post by meenu89)
Anything to split the left wing vote even more is fine with me.

In a proportional system with coalition government it really doesn't matter. The left's vote can be split between 10 parties it would just mean a more colourful coalition, not a loss of power.