If you have a Green voter in your life, I want you to do something for me: I want you to give them a big hug.
See, Green voters aren’t doing well. I realise that this could sound like a classic case of “concern trolling” — or just a mean strawman — but I have the stats to prove it. According to research from More in Common, the Greens poll well among people with lower life satisfaction.
So do Reform. It makes sense that people who are less satisfied with life will vote for more radical parties. But the situation gets worse for Green voters. Reform voters can at least be enthusiastic. According to research elsewhere from More In Common, Reform voters are the likeliest to be looking forward to summer activities like holidays, sports, barbecues and drinking in pub gardens. Among Green voters, though, there is only significant enthusiasm for Pride Month and cold water swimming. Yes, you read that right — cold water swimming. Only 10 per cent of Green voters can summon up any enthusiasm for a pint at the pub — even as a means of getting warm and relaxing after freezing their nipples off in the English Channel.
Now, I’m not as hostile to green issues as the average Critic writer. I’m a vegetarian, I believe in conservationism and I even see the power of the inhumanist environmentalism of Robinson Jeffers or Paul Kingsnorth. (I think it’s a futile dream but it is compelling.)
You can understand why a Green voter would be depressed about the world given the bleak predictions for the future of the climate. You can also understand why they might not be excited about the thought of jetting off the summer. But the sheer miserabilism reflected in the More in Common data — with only 8 per cent of Green voters looking forward to a holiday in the UK and only 8 per cent looking forward to a summer barbecue (we can buy vegetarian burgers, lads!) — raises questions about their political viability.
It also reflects the politics of the Green Party — a political agenda based on profound negativism. Whenever I see a Green politician, they seem to be trying to ban something. It seems to come as naturally to them as drinking wine comes to the French. And Green politicians always seem to oppose institutional or infrastructural development. As James McSweeney wrote in his 2023 farewell to Caroline Lucas:
Want houses, kids? Tough cookies, empty fields need protecting. Think high-speed rail sounds cool? Wrong– the trees in its way are cooler! Convinced nuclear energy provides the only reliable source of carbon neutral power? Lights off for you, buddy – nuclear is what they make weapons with. Excited by genetically engineered rice which promises to save millions of children from dying with vitamin A deficiency? Sounds unnatural to me…
God knows we on the right can be oppositional in our politics. Often, it’s a fine thing to be. But you can’t just reflexively oppose ideas for change. The Greens opposed the construction of nuclear power stations in 2009 because they would take too long to build, for example, and oppose the construction of nuclear power stations in 2025 — when stations which could have been approved in 2009 would have been making a difference for years — because they take too long to build.
Perhaps this research about Green voters and their bleak prospects for their summers is symptomatic of a broader self-imposed joylessness — a deep suspicion of social activity, which might have self-indulgent and wasteful implications for them, that ends up manifesting itself on a larger scale in a broad political opposition to building anything and reforming anything.
There is nothing inherently profligate about having fun and being productive
Hey, I’m not saying I have no sympathy. I can be a bleak and anxious person as well. But it is societally crippling as well as politically unattractive. Britons need good times — and they need cheap energy.
There is nothing inherently profligate about having fun and being productive. Grab yourself a beer, Green voter. Let’s grill some vegetarian sausages. Let’s talk about building a big beautiful reservoir.
