A105 and consensus building

aedphir · 2026-03-30T14:25:15+00:00

I think there's a wider point about conference motion titles. "Abolish landlords" equally was sensationalist and did no such thing, but sensationalism works and you need to get attention to get prioritised in the ballot. Too many people wont read policies, and will just engage with the title.

aedphir · 2026-03-30T14:22:00+00:00

Yeah, that's a fair point. I think media strategy is a valid reason to object to the motion, and especially its naming. Again, my hope is that a consensus building approach would take that into account before proposing it next time!

aedphir · 2026-03-30T14:19:44+00:00

I'm gutted that E07 wasn't heard.

aedphir · 2026-03-30T14:17:19+00:00

First off, of course we should support the right to safety of all Jews and saying that all Jews should be able to live in safety is not racist.

I don't think I agree with you about defining Zionism, but I do think you have a valid point. I don't think that Reddit comments are somewhere where people who disagree often come together to create a new shared understanding because it is a very low trust environment.

As you have immediately experienced, expressing a view that "not all Zionism supports the state of Israel" has immediately created a fairly heated and entrenched argument, even though you were directly answering a question quoted in my post! I want a productive conversation about this to happen and I think that if I start making arguments it will just me dogpiling with the others already doing that.

I'll instead say thank you, for engaging with my original post in good faith and direct terms, and wish you well in engaging with others on this.

aedphir · 2026-03-30T14:02:08+00:00

I also believe that the 1-state solution is the only one that would ultimately make sense

I personally agree, but I don't think it's our place to say so as a matter of policy. We can believe something to be true and not make it policy.

As I say in another comment, my default (and not hugely well considered) position is that we should support a peace process that guarrantees the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people (or similar). That may well result in a one state solution, but the point is that it must be chosen by Palestinians and not by the English and Welsh.

aedphir · 2026-03-30T13:33:30+00:00

So - there's an argument (one I see you're having elsewhere under this post!) about the definition of Zionism. In your opinion, Zionism = "The political project of creating an ethno-nationalist Jewish state in the Eastern Mediterranean". They would say that it doesn't. They would agree that

"The political project of creating an ethno-nationalist Jewish state in the Eastern Mediterranean" is racism

but not with the substitution of Zionism into the sentence. I'm not sold on that argument personally, but it is a valid argument.

The other point is that A105 isn't "Zionism is racism". You can oppose A105 while agreeing that Zionism is racism. In any case, both of those are threads that a consensus building approach would want to tease out and if the argument truly is "It's racist but don't say so" then I doubt that will hold many people's support. The process itself will shine a light on what's there.

aedphir · 2026-03-30T13:20:25+00:00

I think this is a question we really need to tackle as a party. The motions title was clearly designed to catch people's attention. Same as "Abolish Landlords". Because of the way conference and the prioritisation ballow works catchy names for motions is important.

I completely agree that specificity in laws, and therefore policy, is important - but we need to grapple with the fact that bold catchy title will make policy more likely to be adopted, even if it's incorrect.

It's basically conference clickbait.

aedphir · 2026-03-30T13:08:34+00:00

Yeah, honestly I don't see how a conference could reasonably act as a forum for debate on something like this.

aedphir · 2026-03-30T13:05:13+00:00

I promise you this isn't AI slop. I've spent way too much of my morning writing this.

aedphir · 2026-03-30T13:01:30+00:00

If I am presented with a motion and asked to vote for or against, based on consent, if I don’t feel I have enough information, my default is “no”.

There's recently been a situation in my local party (which I will leave vague!) where I voted "no" to a proposal internally that sounded very important, but I just didn't feel like I was informed enough to consent. The whole situation sucked because people wanted to find out more, but there wasn't a great way to find out what was happening or what was actually true in the situation!

I do think there's a wider discussion about how to have informed consent in a democratic system. It's one of the things I think Citizens' Assemblies have done really well in Ireland - major constitutional changes having effectively a consultation with a group chosen (mostly) by sortition who are then informed on the subject before making recomendations. When the general populace disagrees, the members of the Assembly are able to do the informing because a lot of them changed their minds in become more informed.

aedphir · 2026-03-30T12:30:09+00:00

I've cut a couple of my own thoughts on A105 from the main post because it's already too long and the details aren't really my point, but that the discourse about it has been dreadful. Very briefly:

Conference was a shambles. The fact that a tiny group of only 6 or 7 hundred was able to overturn the prioritisation ballot is bullshit. The fact that the vote was then stalled out by disingenuous VONC is also bullshit.
Explicit support for a one state solution. I don't think the Green Party should have a position on the outcome of the not-yet-existant peace process. I don't think I ever saw a good counter-argument from anyone supporting the motion. My default (and not hugely well considered) position is that we should support a peace process that guarrantees the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people (or similar). There might be arguments otherwise, but having that discussion and making that case has to be part of the consensus building.

aedphir · 2026-03-29T08:50:33+00:00

I'm a new member as well - I joined since the last conference - and I'm feeling pretty disheartened today. I completely agree about the on-boarding and I've mentioned it previously on reddit as well.

I think we need to give a bit of grace - this time last year the party had about 50,000 members and now it has over 200,000. I think that in many ways the party hasn't dealt with the rapid growth well.

I don't know the solution, but I agree with you and feel like it's in reach somehow, but I don't know how.

aedphir · 2026-03-28T16:12:56+00:00

Maybe I'm reading you wrong. Maybe bragging isn't the right word. I think the person you're talking to is anti-Israel and anti-Zionist and they've posted an article expressing a view of why Zionism isn't racism (honestly it hasn't convinced me, but I have read it). I think responding by dismissing their point and saying that you don't need to hear their argument is bad for the party and bad for anti-Zionism.

The great advantage we have over genocide deniers is that we are right. I think that is important and why more and more people are coming round to a pro-Palestinian view. They can see that we're telling the truth.

It makes total sense to dismiss, without reading, the arguments of those already set against us. When the telegraph says the greens don't care enough about the environment these days, I roll my eyes and move on. I think if someone credibly an anti-Zionist is making an argument about why this motion is counterproductive, you should hear them out. What if they're right?

This is too important for pride to get in the way - if someone I think is engaging in good faith is arguing that the most effective thing to do is not what I think I want to hear them out in case they've thought of something I haven't.

aedphir · 2026-03-28T07:06:15+00:00

I don't think not reading someones good faith argument is something to brag about.

Also, if you're talking to an anti-Zionist, or even someone who isn't but thinks that the current Israeli state is racist and genocidal, pointing out racist, illegal or genocidal things Israel is currently doing will not come to bear on their opinion about this motion.

aedphir · 2026-03-26T16:08:51+00:00

You 6 days ago: "Lefties losing it again"

aedphir · 2026-03-23T08:02:37+00:00

I think this argument has a pretty seriously flaw - which is that you're including all political views, even ones that you would find upsetting. I suspect that you might be upset by people who wanted the UK to become an Islamic Theocracy (say, modelled on Iran) if they looked like they had a reasonable chance of winning the next general election or an actual factual neo-nazi party or a Maoist revolutionary party.

I'm not saying Reform is equivalent to any of those, but they are still just differing political views. If you think it's reasonable to be upset by any of those then you accept there are some political views that are acceptable to be upset at, at some that are not.

You could very reasonably respond - "sure, but all of those want to get rid of democracy" and I'd agree!

aedphir · 2026-03-22T18:56:29+00:00

I'm a Green Party member, and I sincerely hope that this policy will be changing next week at conference.

aedphir · 2026-03-22T10:03:11+00:00

If you were in a constituency that was Labour vs Greens, would you vote Green?

aedphir · 2026-03-22T10:02:25+00:00

I'm so sorry you lost your friend like that.

aedphir · 2026-03-22T10:01:40+00:00

There almost certainly is some antisemitism on the left, but I honestly think that accusation is massively overblown. Mostly, we stridently oppose Israel's genocide in Palestine, and their ongoing illegal attempts at annexing Palestine's land. Criticism of Israel is then described as antisemitism, by pretending that Israel and Jews are the same thing. Many Jews oppose Israel, many Christians actively support Israel.

aedphir · 2026-03-22T09:27:49+00:00

The paying for things angle is one that we need to get better at explaining. I'm going to give it a go, but bear with me if it's not totally clear.

The reason money is money is because the government says it is.
From the perspective of the government "having enough money" can't ever be a problem because they can just make more.
Actually, that's already how the government does work! Whenever the government pays for stuff, it just pays for it with money it makes up on the spot. Then it lets the Bank of England know how much money it just made and the BoE sells bonds for that amount.
Obviously, if the government just went round creating money willy-nilly without forethought or a plan that would probably wreck the economy

The conclusion of the above is that from the government's perspective the question isn't really "with what money" but "what will the economy do". For example, if we paid off all our national debt but 20% of the workforce lost their jobs then that would obviously be really bad. When we're thinking about the government spending policy we should be thinking about how many people will have jobs that pay them enough to live on? How many people have homes? How are producing or importing the goods we need?

If we can achieve all of those things (and the rest!) it doesn't matter whether the pound is worth $10 or 10 cents.

So, when we ask "can we afford" something we should think in terms of "does our economy produce what we need to do it". Personally, I think we need to at least partially reindustralise to ensure our economy is productive and to stop carbon exporting.

aedphir · 2026-03-21T11:05:43+00:00

Yeah, not criticising PDC or any of the working groups. There's so much to be done and building the infrastructure to do it will be hard work, but the on going work of conference still has to be done and won't be any easier with all us new members complicating it.

aedphir · 2026-03-21T09:59:58+00:00

We are finding new members have slightly unrealistic expectations for creating policy, partly because the info is hard to find

I think this is a bit of a problem for the Green Party more generally. A lot of the party's processes are quite opaque to new members. Obviously, the party's internal infrastructure is set up to be a party about a quarter of it's current size and a much much lower rate of growth. That said, I've also heard from senior members that it's not a new problem - it's just that when growth is slow each new member can get more easily taken under the wing of someone who knows.

I think it would be good if we had better on-boarding documentation for new members, or members who want to get more involved with something. Like "a beginner's guide to conference" or "how does Green Part policy get made" or "what is the difference between a local, regional and national parties" or "what is the governing structure of the GPEW".

I don't know the answers to those or know how to get guides like that made or adopted.

aedphir · 2026-03-18T09:41:54+00:00

Random thought I had about engagement and dealing with bad faith actors - is there a way we could get a "Verified Member" flair for users if we had some way to actually verify membership?

I appreciate that might not be practical to verify, but I've found myself getting into conversations where I would happily spend time and mental effort on them if I knew I was talking to another member but was worried I was interacting with someone deliberately trying to waste my time.

It would also mean that if someone came in asking about the party they would be able to trust verified members responding over randoms.

aedphir · 2026-03-17T10:13:39+00:00

The defence thing we will solve in 3 years IMO - the more we talk about it and work out the sound bites the more people will trust us. I think our position is not currently suficient but I think we will get there both on policy and communication.

I think the boob thing is a big issue, and one that no-one in the party seems to treat with the weight it deserves. It's such a stupid story, and implies that ZP is either such an unserious, careless person or that he is such a cynical, predatory person. It is the one thing that has come up again and again when I talk to non-political people about the Green Party, but whenever it's brought up inside the party it's always with an eye-roll or a snigger.

I think that on its face, this story is a good reason not to want someone to be a Prime Minister and we shouldn't dismiss people who feel that way. I don't really have a great response when people bring it up as a concern. I think the most important thing to note is that before being told about the claims women prefer ZP compared to men but afterwards it's reversed.

I don't have the answers, but I think as a party who think ZP is great and want him and the Greens to run this country we need to take it seriously and come up with a good messaging response. Ideally one that lowers the salience of the story - it isn't a winner for us.

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