Are the Greens being led in the wrong direction?

While Labour has recently changed its leader and both the Lib Dems and the Tories continue to question whether they have the right leader, the Greens are set to vote on the issue of leadership this autumn.

Unlike the mainstream parties, the Greens are not fretting about who should lead them but whether they should have a leader at all or stick with their existing system of two principal speakers – one of each sex and currently Sian Berry and Derek Wall.

The motion being put to the party’s members in November is whether to introduce a system of leader/deputy leader or possibly co-leaders.

It is a controversial subject in a party which in the past has had an uneasy relationship with the concept of leadership – although only a member for the past few years I have admired the Greens’ approach to leadership.

In fact it was one of the many aspects of the Greens’ approach to politics that attracted me to join the party – I had never been a member of a political party before but the Greens’ unique selling point to me was that there was not a single leader.

Having spent two weeks earlier this year on a leadership course run by the Clore Leadership Programme (www.cloreleadership.org), I am convinced that the future of successful leadership does not lie in one single leader but in collective leadership.

The motion does not appear to allow me to vote for co-leaders or a leader/deputy leader model – I could be persuaded to vote for a motion for co-leaders but do not want to see the Greens follow the mainstream parties down the road of a single leader and the plight of personality politics that will inevitably plague the party in the future.

Therefore I will be voting against the motion and am supporting the Green Empowerment Campaign (www.greenempowerment.org.uk) which favours empowerment, participation, consensus building and collective leadership.