Advice on Greens for Labor from Labour

The Australian Labor Party has struggled in recent federal and state elections to work out how it should treat the threat of Greens candidates snatching their votes in previously safe inner city seats. A vote for a Green risks giving the Liberals extra seats has become a familiar Labor cry without there being much evidence to support such a claim with the electoral system’s preferential voting. An end result of such misguided thinking is for Labor to play preference games in voting for upper houses where a seeming desire to punish Greens for their inner city naughtiness has led to some real opponents of a conservative bent being elected.
This phenomenon of a traditional left of centre party having trouble dealing with another leftist party is not uniquely Australian. European socialists have been dealing with it for 20 years with an acceptance of coalition governments making it relatively peaceful. Not so in Britain where the Australian born leader of the Green Party of England and Wales is being cast in the villain’s role by British Labour as that country’s election approaches.
From The Observer this morning:
Labour is trying to scare leftish voters away from the Greens with the thought that they will go to bed with Natalie Bennett and wake up to find David Cameron back in Number 10. One Labour MP who has tried this on the doorstep reports: “It doesn’t work. Your 18-year-old who is going to vote Green doesn’t give a toss about that. They want to make a statement by voting Green.” A statement about the world, about Westminster, about themselves.
The comment of that anonymous Labour MP pretty much sums up what I believe to be the situation in Australia. Rather than trying to beat the Greens the task should be finding more ways to join with them in presenting a united left of centre coalition to combat our governing right of centre one. Surely preferential voting makes that possible.

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