The Great Green Clusterfuck (Patreon)

I've been waiting a while to write this. I wanted to get a sense of where it all landed. But it's been a schmozzle.

Ahead of the Green Party AGM there were murmurings that people were going to roll James Shaw as co-leader. But those murmurings happen every year. So nobody paid them much mind. Turns out they should have.

Salient had the scoop. Some of the Green Left and Young Greens had coordinated to get enough people in positions of power to be able to launch a coup.

In short, and this has been well traversed, there are 150 voting delegates. They are supposed to represent the branches they come from. Sometimes they don't though. 

Every year at the Green Party AGM the co-leaders are re-voted on. Because the Green Party decision making is done by consensus, it means that 75% of the voters have to agree if you can't convince 100%.

This means that it just takes a quarter of votes for something to not pass. And that's what happened.

When I worked at the Greens I took part in a lot of caucus meetings and I was always both was baffled, and admired this rule. It could be a handbrake, but it also meant that broadly everyone would leave a vote feeling the same amount of dissatisfaction.

When Julie-Anne Genter squared off against Marama Davidson, the Green Left ran a phenomenally well coordinated campaign to get Marama elected. They stacked branch meetings to get higher numbers for Marama, and if the majority of a branch voted for JAG then someone would convince the branch delegates to split the vote since true consensus hadn't been reached. Or if Marama won, they would get the delegates to give all branch votes to Marama.

This time they turned their attention to James. They've spent the last few years getting themselves into key delegate roles, and good on them. That's how this works.

So then when the vote happened, and there were only 107 delegates present to vote, getting to 25% was suddenly a lot easier.

In the immediate aftermath, I'm told that James had to do some serious thinking about whether he wanted to re-contest. In the end he decided he needed to because he had unfinished business as co-leader. 

In terms of MPs who could seriously threaten him, it seemed that Chlöe was the major, but when she ruled herself out this meant it was unlikely any other MP would. This after a fairly fractious MPs call on the Sunday evening.

So now we're in a situation that's potentially worse for James, where he's likely to face nobody. Which means that it will only take 25% to put us back to square one and re-open the nominations. I hope that James spends the next few weeks reaching out to those who are disaffected within the party to talk with them, to present his vision and how he wants to achieve it, and that they give constructive feedback. 

The Greens are heading into an election in potentially the strongest shape they've ever been. If Labour is to form a Government then they will definitely need the Greens, meaning that there is the chance for real concessions. Faster, more aggressive action on climate change, implementation of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group's changes, drug reform, all of these things are suddenly on the table. James or Marama could end up Deputy PM. The Greens have never been in a formal coalition before, and this is their chance.

So on the one hand I can see why the Green Left and Young Greens did what they did. I don't agree with James' politics on the whole. But also I think he's the best chance for the Greens to play a major role in the next Government and make major reform.

The other thing that I know was terrifying Labour was that if anyone except James got in, then Labour could lose votes from its right. Soft Labour voters might be terrified of a more activisty coalition partner so go back to National. Numbers of Labour folk reached out to me asking what the fuck was going down and wanted me to assure them everything would be alright. Obviously I'm not really involved with the Greens so couldn't do that. But it was interesting to hear the stress.

One final note: Green members this century have usually voted for the right wing option when a co-leader vote is held.

When Rod Donald passed away, Nándor Tánczos stood against Russel Norman and Russel won. Then when Jeanette Fitzsimons stood down, it was Metiria vs Sue Bradford - don't forget that Meyt had been a corporate lawyer at Simpson Grierson! And then there was James vs Kevin Hague. Every time there, the party went right. This streak was broken with Marama and JAG, showing the rise of the Green Left.

All this is to say that James needs to better engage with the Green Left, and recognise that it's not just his way. That he is the co-leader of a party with a lot of differing views, and it's his job to lead them all. Not just the ones who agree with him.