Green Party: What leadership model?

It's been a few years now since the Green Party made its decision to adopt a leadership model. At the time it was a hotly contested issue and, in a high turnout, the referendum resulted in more than 70% voting to reform the old system.

However, since then there has been little discussion of how to implement the new system, I believe in order to help heal some of the wounds and concentrate on politics, funnily enough. That's all very sensible but the fact is with poorly contested elections the party has essentially allowed inertia decide for it what we want from our leader.

I'll get out of the way right now that Caroline Lucas is a superb politician and that I've taken a decision not to publicly back either deputy candidate (Adrian or Derek) and I shall be voting after the conference hustings in order to mull my decision over in the most fulsome manner possible, although I'm happy to hear your opinions on the election. So this post is not about them but about the roles they seek to fill.

What this post *is* about is whether our reluctance to talk about what we want from our leadership team has left us in a situation where we use the posts simply to raise the profile of our two candidates best placed to win a Parliamentary seat. I'm not sure that's what they should be for.

Two years ago we elected Caroline and Adrian not just on the basis of their excellent personal qualities but also on the basis that we wanted them to become MPs and the added national media profile of these positions undoubtedly helped. We were right at the time, I think, but this shouldn't be the ongoing model which would end up prioritising two Parliamentary seats above the rest of our work.

Now Caroline is elected, for example, there is a good case that she definitely should not be the leader so that we do not become a one person party. Caroline's role as MP gives her the highest profile in the Greens regardless of internal position and if Adrian had run for leader with a new running mate, for example, we'd have upped his media profile and given the job to someone with time to do it. Heresy you say!

I'm not just saying this because our one woman/one man rule means that the only way any woman in the entire party could become part of the leadership team is to beat Caroline - although I do think we need to change the rule to 'at least one woman' so that half the party that is currently denied a realistic shot at a leadership role can be admitted to the club.

The facts are that Caroline is a very busy person. She’s being excellent in her constituency, in the House, in the press, radio and on TV. As someone who provides inspiration to party members she is absolutely second to none. However, in terms of day to day party leadership we’re far less well served. Politically, organisationally and in simple terms of having time to just listen to party members across the country she just does not have the time.

I probably don't need to point out that this is not a criticism of Caroline but a statement of what it means to have our one MP attempt to take on the job of party leader too. Inevitably it means we don't think our leader needs to devote any time to the role, but if it's important then they clearly do.

We need to seriously address what the consequences are of having a leader who has no time to listen to the party she leads or devote serious time to members. We need to flesh out the responsibilities of leader and deputy so our structures are more meaningful than simply ways of getting press attention while the party drifts politically.

The thing is if we were consciously saying that the leader faces outward, providing a shining light to the public, while the deputy takes an organisational role, providing more internal leadership this would be fine. We need someone who provides traction between the disparate and decentralised local parties and the party centre - but we don't say this.

The deputy role is used as a lesser version of leader. That's fine for Norwich South but not so great for the national party who are essentially left to their own devices. I think we can do better than that and right now a lot of people in the party feel that they, their local party and even their region doesn't matter to the party.

I have to say that I think it's strange that we took such a radical shift in our structures and then devoted no time afterwards to making sure they actually worked for the party in practice. Perhaps the bigwigs have discussed it, but not with us if they have. I think we need to start exploring some of these questions, although I certainly don't claim to have all the answers.

Do we have a leadership model where local parties and activists think they are taken seriously? Has the role of leader and deputy changed in wake of the election? How do we support Caroline in her phenomenally difficult task? And of course how can she ensure that what she's doing is what the party wants of her?