Greens to second preference Livingstone?

On Monday the London Green Party will be meeting to decide whether to recommend a second preference vote for Labour’s Mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone. Livingstone will be attending the first half of the meeting to pitch for the Party’s support, before a closed session will make a final decision.

At the 2008 election Green and Labour Parties recommended second preference votes for each other's Mayoral candidates

Green London Assembly member Darren Johnson said that “Our objective is to ensure that after the election City Hall is as Green as possible, tackling issues like fair pay, safer roads and improving air quality.

“The supplementary vote system allows voters to make a second choice for their Mayoral candidate. We are happy to work with other parties and groups wherever their policies will address the needs of ordinary Londoners.”

The Party has made an assessment of Livingstone’s platform and said that “While receiving full marks on opposing aviation expansion and housing, he received nothing on the areas of policing and crime because of his ‘simplistic focus on police number officers’ rather than ‘civil liberties or community relations’ as well as 0 on road building owing to his championing of the failed Thames Gateway Bridge scheme.

“Livingstone received half marks on pay inequality, Green jobs and local business, health, traffic reduction, walking and cycling, fares and transport investment and the environment and climate change.”

One advantage of the supplementary vote system used for London Mayor is that voters can vote for both the party they like the most as first preference and their preference between the top two candidates with their second vote, without having to vote tactically.

In 2008 Labour and the Greens decided to recommend a second preference  for each other’s candidates in the mayoral race which, at the time, was an unprecedented spirit of political cooperation in British politics. The Greens’ experience of that election may well influence whether they decide to repeat the experience in 2012.

Members will decide

One Green Party activist Elliot Folan has gone so far as to make “Jen then Ken” badges and has appealed to members to attend the meeting saying “If you’re a pro-Ken Green, try your best to make it! The more pro-Ken Greens to vote for an endorsement, the more likely it is the motion will pass. And the more likely it is, therefore, that the next Mayor of London will be Ken Livingstone and not Boris Johnson.”

Green Party Assembly candidate Natalie Bennett said that “I’m going to listen carefully to Ken Livingstone on Monday night, but I’m inclined to say we shouldn’t state a second preference. That would mean associating ourselves with the old, tired, failed politics of the Labour Party.

“I don’t feel I can show any support for a party that in government presided over a rise in national inequality, while cosying up to an supporting the interests of the banks and financial industries against those of ordinary people. I can’t back a party that still supports leaving our troops in the bloody and pointless Afghan War, and that wants to spend vast sums on nuclear weapons to replace Trident.”