I also posted a message on the members’ website a while ago asking for opinions on the referendum and all the responses were very supportive of the Scottish Green Party’s position.

Whereas in fact, there are a few political parties in Scotland who back independence, including the Greens. I don’t know if it’s the SNP hogging all the attention themselves or the London media/ parties trying to portray it and an SNP only issue.

What is the Englandandwales Green Party position on the issue?

“we are looking into this. Directgov has some Welsh language #govuk”

A thought provoking post. We should certainly be having this debate in the run up to the 2012 GPEx elections, with the senior posts up for two year terms.

My view is that we must be targeting effectively and should have a strategy that promotes growth and electoral success. So I’ll put a few counterpoints.

Before winning Brighton Pavilion, we established electoral credibility there. We had 13 councillors, a Green Euro MP representing the region as candidate and a 22% vote in the previous election. With all three we were able to make a credible case for people to vote for Caroline Lucas. Take away one of these three things and it is likely we would not have succeeded.

In Norwich South we have a big group of councillors, Adrian Ramsay who is a locally high profile candidate (+ Deputy Leader for us nationally) and we got 15% of the vote last time. That is our second best seat. I believe we can win in at the next General Election, but it will be very, very difficult. Winning a Euro seat in the Eastern Region in 2014 will be a huge boost to that campaign.

There are other potential target seats, but at present Cambridge, Lewisham Deptford and other places lack 2 out of the 3 criteria I think we need to succeed at a General Election. Short of a paradigm shift in politics before 2015, targeting more than 2 General Election seats (and by that I mean putting a large amount of national money in) would not be the most effective use of our limited resources. I would support a strategy that provided seed funding to 10 or more seats to enable those seats to become genuine target seats at the election after next.

While we might have a significant gap to bridge to establish a Parliamentary group at Westminster, we are much closer to making a significant advance at the Euro Elections in 2014. In the North West we were just 0.3% away from winning a seat in 2009 (less than 5,000 votes). From memory, in the South West the gap was 0.7%, in Eastern 1% and in Yorkshire & Humberside 1.3%. Even in absolute terms, we are much closer to winning seats at the Euro Election in 2014 than additional MPs in 2015.

The positive thing about this is that isn’t an either / or situation. Winning a Euro seat in Eastern will help us get closer to winning in Norwich South. Winning Euro seats in the other regions will help us build the party outside of London and South East, to become a much more credibly national party, winning more councillors and bringing more General Election seats within reach.

Where I think we have a decision to make is in terms of ambition. In the North West, we received just £3000 of national support in the period 2004 – 2009. With additional finance, we would almost certainly have beaten the BNP last time.

At the moment we are making the argument that we need to borrow to invest to create jobs and secure a sustainable future. That same argument applies about our electoral prospects. We need to be prepared to borrow a significant sum to fight the two forthcoming national elections, knowing that we have limited time for action on Climate issues. I think that is the biggest choice facing us in the next two years.

It’s even sadder that local authorites in Wales have little or no Welsh on their websites, like Merthyr Tudful, Monmouthshire and Newport

When the Scottish Greens got 7 MSPs elected they set out within their manifesto a series of ‘green’ and ‘red’ lines. The green lines were policies or positions that they were willing to compromise on for the sake of influence within coalition or confidence and supply. Red lines were things that MSPs could not compromise on such as student fees and climate change legislation. the Scottish Green Party in fact probably has some very useful experience as a real Parliamentary party that we could learn from for the future.

If we had a clear set of expectations on Councillors not only could we reduce scenarios where ours have voted opposite ways in different areas we could also better contribute to a positioning strategy – namely who are we trying to target and how? We need to be bold on this and focus fully on left-leaning former and disillusioned Labour and Lib Dem people.

From a purely political point of view what can each party gain from it? As others have alluded to the Welsh Greens can currently offer very little. 5.6% in the EU elections? Assuming that transferred to Plaid-Green they would be ~10,000 under a 2nd MEP. I imagine Plaid believe they can win two MEPs alone.

To me the Greens are too far off of a seat to be able to negotiate much from Plaid or in fact offer them much at all.

More up-to-date, i. e. since 1999 (!), Plaid Cymru (and its sister parties) and the Greens in the European parliament have been members of the same official group with an agreed political programme. It’s called “The Greens / European Free Alliance” and is the 4th largest. Even more pertinent, the First Vice President of the Green/EFA Group is Plaid Cymru MEP, Jill Evans, who also happens to be the President of Plaid Cymru. She is also on record as one of the greenest members of parliament. What a shame, to say the least, that the “Wales Green Party” appears to have no knowledge of this important and successful linkage. Why ever not?

In the UK parliament, Caroline Lucas received 100% support from the Plaid Cymru MPs and still works closely with them.

Prior to the last EP elections, Plaid Cymru approached the “Welsh Greens” asking to discuss the possibility of a joint list – with no commitment – but the Greens rejected it, despite Caroline Lucas & Jean Lambert’s support.

The bottom line is that the Welsh Region of the Green Party of England & Wales (its legal status) is historically the problem. The fact that it is resolutely a regional and regionalist ‘party’ – “England & Wales” in the 21st Century for goodness sake – does not help. The Scottish Greens support independence and have greater political credibility for it.