[Tubby Isaacs]

Clifton already has a Green MP, I notice. One of my Mum’s neighbours in North Herefordshire is an enthusiastic Green voter for the environment, as she told me. I’m not sure Corbynite socialism was the main attraction, though I may be wrong. My guess is that some of these people are Lib Dems. The Lib Dems got 2.6% in the election.

[kreuzberger]

Zack Polanski has made quite the start as leader.

His communication style is being proven to be warm, open, and almost effortless. Granted, he is not bearing the weight of government on his shoulders as he eases from smile to smile and from hope to hope.

It's all a bit Cleggy (2010) but far too early for cartwheeling. Steady as she goes, through the local elections which are on the nearer horizon.

[Youngian]

Hopefully Zack can shave the Reform vote as he's 'authentic' and 'says it like it is.'

[Tubby Isaacs]

Unfortunately, Greens don't really say it like it is on what should be their pet subject. Renewable energy is a necessity for obvious reasons, and a good policy for energy independence. What it isn't, as yet, is cheap, when you add in back up and costs of transporting it from windy places where nobody lives. Ed Miliband does this stuff too, and John Swinney plays cleverly on it, but there's a danger that Farage looks more like the straight talker at the next election. He'll ask Zack where these cheap energy prices are. Zack's answer that we should nationalize Octopus Energy may not cut it.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I'd nationalize Octopus just to shut their CEO up, with his one-sided proselytizing for regional pricing. And I'm a satisfied Octopus customer.

[Youngian]

I don’t Greg Octopus's focus on zonal pricing, either. What's stopping a heavy electricity user moving next to a wind farm in West Scotland, having a feed that by-passes the grid and negotiate a private pricing deal?
And Octopus already has a Ryanair type pricing system, on a good breezy day the leccy is free.

[Tubby Isaacs]

One of the other problems as I understand it is that currently green investment is funded by bill payers across the UK. Much harder for Scotland to fund it itself, which is why the SNP didn't back regional pricing properly, instead doing vaguer stuff about how much renewable energy Scotland has.

Greg Jackson's got a job on the advisory council for industrial strategy and the board of the Cabinet Office, which sounds like a reasonable level.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Zack's getting a bit of stick for this. It sounds very plausible if your knowledge is basically "Rise of Hitler" and "The dockers marched for Enoch". Poland was booming when it chucked in its lot with Law and Justice. Le Pen (pere) built his political base in the South with fairly well off farmers and Algeria vets. Are Liverpool and Birmingham, more racist than Epping Forest? They're certainly poorer. Nor is it necessarily the poorest who are the most racist in areas with lots of racists.

"If you don't have scarcity in your life why would you hate another person? That noise you hear is sociologists packing up. "Zack's put us all out of a job", they say. "Though one last question- what about the super rich you've just said are whipping the hatred up?"

[RedSparrows]

It's utterly tragic that for most on the left the analysis begins and ends at 'the rich do it, the poor follow it'.

I'm not exactly free of this myself, and it's rooted in a lot of sensible analysis - them Marx and Engels were onto something, certainly - but it becomes so fucking easy and so fucking thin.

[Tubby Isaacs]

He's not very bright, but very confident. I thought he'd be a major threat to Labour, but I'm not so sure now. It's "shoot from the hip straight talker" stuff, and that's much harder to pull off when you haven't got the media on your side.