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GREEN PARTY APPOINTS NEW FIGUREHEAD |
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On Monday the Green Party will appoint a new Principal Speaker to replace Dr Mike Woodin, who died of cancer in July aged just 38.
The Principal Speaker is the party's figurehead, who performs the public and media role undertaken by the leaders of more conventional parties. There are always two, one man and one woman.
The Green Party is to appoint one of its Brighton councillors, Keith Taylor (51), to hold the post jointly with Caroline Lucas MEP. Keith Taylor (i), who was in Stroud last month for the Green Party's annual conference for councillors, achieved the Green Party's highest-ever vote in a Westminster election in 2001, with 9.2%. He spoke then saying: "I wasn't the sort of person that joins a political party, but then the Green Party isn't like the others."
Cllr. John Marjoram, who was among Gloucestershire Greens who went to the recent funeral of Mike Woodin in Oxford said: "Mike will be a hard to follow, but Keith is the man to do it. He is a personal friend and very much a down-to-earth guy who gets the Green vote up. He has been instrumental in making Brighton Greens one of the strongest Green groups in the country. In the recent Euro-elections Brighton Greens moved into second place with 20% of the city-wide vote, pushing Labour into third place. Brighton could even beat Stroud in getting the countries first Green MP."
Priorities
Asked about his political priorities, Cllr Taylor said: "We're the only party challenging the core neoliberal agenda of privatisation, globalisation, militarisation and a tokenistic approach to the ecological crisis. The big three parties, and UKIP, all share that agenda and all want to make life easier for big business to dominate.
"The Green Party says that's got to stop. We've got to shift the political agenda away from spin onto real issues. For instance, the so-called war on terror has been a lot of hype to justify an aggressive war to dominate the middle east and secure oil supplies. That's the wrong thing to do, for the wrong reasons. What's the point of fighting for oil so we can change the climate, when we know climate change will mean provoking further instability around the world as well as severe damage to the economy?
"We must get our priorities right. Climate change is the biggest threat to world stability, to the environment and to our economy. The policies for stopping climate change translate into abolishing fuel poverty, providing much better public transport, creating hundreds of thousands of sustainable jobs and protecting our economy against the regular shocks that come from occasional oil crises and from the effects of storms and flooding and the health impacts that climate change brings.
"The Green Party is the only party that sees these issues in their proper context, so we're the only party with the real joined-up thinking, the vision and the comprehensive policies for dealing with today's big issues. Increasingly Greens are getting elected and when we get elected the public see us making a difference(ii)."
Notes:
(i) Keith Taylor is seen as a down-to-earth guy who gets the Green vote
up. He was born in Southend, Essex, the son of a baker's roundsman, he
has now been appointed to the top job in a party widely perceived as
dominated by academics (there were four doctors on the party's
10-strong executive team until Oxford don Mike Woodin died). He's now
in post alongside the party's other Principal Speaker, Dr Caroline
Lucas MEP, an expert on trade and development issues.
(ii) 17% increase in English Green local councillors this year, on top
of a 30% increase last year - many of them Greens getting re-elected
with larger majorities.
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