Friday, January 08, 2010

Brighton Greens take different views on clean campaigning

Caroline Lucas, the Green Party PPC for Brighton Pavilion, has issued a "clean campaign pledge":

Voters are fed up with negative campaigns, which spend more time rubbishing other candidates than talking about policies.

That's why I'm urging the other parties to show respect for the people of Brighton by signing up to the pledge too.

The last prominent Green candidate to make noises like this was Rupert Read, who stood in the Norwich North by-election.

His reputation for political cleanliness suffered when he and his running mate were eager participants in an internal election that was so dirty that the party had to cancel it.

So it is amusing to find that one of Lucas's fellow Brighton Greens, local councillor Ben Duncan, wrote at the time:
Internal elections are the best dry runs we've got for the external ones and personally I think the dirtier they get - as long as no-one resorts to telling lies in their zeal to win - the better rehearsal they offer: if National Executive (GPEx) elections are uncontested, or are conducted in an artificially 'positive campaigning only' way they don't offer much practice for the real world!
Do Brighton Greens stand for clean politics? It depends who you talk to.

1 comment:

punkscience said...

That's a pretty sensible piece of commentary from Ben. Are you suggesting that if he runs a squeaky-clean campaign he will benefit? Because there's several decades of evidence racked up to show that that just isn't true. Train as you mean to fight isn't just a cliche.