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Caroline Lucas

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2024-03-11
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2024-03-11
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  1. “Thank you for that way of putting it. Thank you. I mean, I suppose I get round it or I respond to it by absolutely saying that we need to go on building the Green Party and the Green Movement and getting more Greens elected in Parliament. And in a sense, there was nothing particularly special about me. I happened to be in the right place at the right time in Brighton to win that seat. But I think what we need is that green voice. And I am totally committed to getting Shamberry elected in my place in Brighton Pavilion, just as I am with our other target candidates. And I think that will be transformative. I think three or four Green MPs will be a lot more than just three or four times one if you see what I mean. And I think the way in which we could then work in Parliament and be a real presence will be massively more significant. So I'm really excited about that. And whatever help I can give, I certainly will. But I feel excited about a younger.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I know. No, I do. I genuinely don't know yet. I want to take some time to think about it. I want to work out how I can spend more time working on the nature issue and on the climate issue that really gets me up in the morning right now. I have to be the front bench spokesperson on everything. And that is deeply exhausting as well as not all that satisfying. So I really want to find a way that I can focus on nature and climate on a personal level. I've become very interested in end-of-life work. I'm doing a course actually with a wonderful organization called Living Well, Dying Well in Lewis, and they train people to be what they call end-of-life doolers. And so I'm halfway through that course and I find that incredibly nourishing. So I want to go on doing that as well.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Kind of extractive economy that we have are the richest, not the ones who actually need the resource. So I think it's slightly more complicated than you say, but certainly I would be among those who would say that infinite growth on a planet of finite resources is not possible. And if you needed just any more kind of ways of looking at that, we need to decarbonize by 2050 at the absolute latest. By 2050, the global economy is due to be about three times the size that it is now. It is going to be hard enough to decarbonize an economy the size of the current global economy by 2050. The idea we're going to be able to do it with one three times the size, however your heroic assumptions are about how much you can decouple energy use from output, it's not going to happen. It can't happen. So let's start preparing for it now and have a transition that is fair, that has workers at its heart, that makes sure that the price for that transition is not paid by the poorest people, but rather by those who can afford it.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Yeah, the reason I'm sort of pushing back a bit on this idea of stopping growth is that it means it sounds as if everything just gets pickled in aspic tomorrow. Whereas Kate would say, as I would say, that some things need to grow. We need some massive growth in renewable energies, let's say. And if you're going to do that, then absolutely you need to stop growing in other places. So I would say no more new roads. And while we're at it, let's not have any new airports. Thank you very much. But I think the framing of it all in terms of whether or not its GDP growth doesn't really resonate with ordinary people and doesn't really tell us very much about whether or not the economy is allowing people to have meaningful, thriving lives on a planet that is not being destroyed. And the concern I have right now is, and the one that she has, is of course that our economic model right now is trashing the planet and isn't even in the process doing very much for the poorest people either because the people who are reaping the benefits of the”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I don't think she quite. I was re listening to her the other day, the great interview that she did with you. And I agree with her. But I don't think, I remember you had this debate about whether she's agnostic about growth or whether she's anti-growth. I think what she's saying is don't make growth the be-all and end-all of your economic policy. Make well-being it.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Just reflect for a second on what an extraordinary objective that is for Keir Starmer to have set himself. How does that resonate with most people that we are the fastest growing country or whatever? I mean, you know, if he'd said your kids can get a decent education and we're going to transform housing so that everyone's got a roof over their heads, or if he'd talked about some of the fruits of economic prosperity, then perhaps people could get behind him. But the idea that GDP growth is by and of itself the objective. That is what I find so problematic because just knowing that you've got the fastest GDP doesn't tell you who's benefiting from it. It doesn't tell you who's getting it. It doesn't tell you how it's being caused. We know that a big pile-up on the M5 is fantastic for GDP growth because everyone has to go out and spend money repairing their cars or buying new ones. So GDP growth as a main indicator of anything very much, I think, is”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “And be more radical because A, he needs to be not even radical, actually. Let's just be a little bit more social democratic about it. We need to enthuse people. We need to give people hope. Otherwise, they're not going to vote at all. And I don't see much hope coming from labour right now. And also he needs a mandate once he gets in there. And if he hasn't made that much clearer during the election campaign, then he's not going to have the mandate to do the change that needs to happen.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “To other candidates, we were really pushing in North Herefordshire and Suffolk. If we have a handful of Greens, even just a handful, then I think there's a real role they can play in pushing here on things like the 28 billion of investment. The country is crying out for investment. Why is Keir Starmer adopting the framing of the Conservative Party about investment being somehow splashing money up the wall? It is not. It's what the country's crying out for and business is crying out for come to that, or whether it's on a wealth tax. Why can we not have a conversation about that? Why is Brexit such a, you know, a word that cannot speak its name? The two-child benefit cap. Why isn't he not moving on things like that? So I think it is vital to have Greens there to be pushing labour, to be that bolder, better and braver party that it could be. Because without that, I really worry. And I worry as well, actually, it's not good enough simply to say that once he gets in there, he'll change.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I don't think I was ever seriously tempted to join the Liberal Party, although there has been many a time when I've thought how nice it would be to have some more honourable friends, and it has been extremely lonely to be the sole MP for the Green Party. So, yeah, in some ways, I would love to have been part of that bigger party. I think there is an importance on having people on the outside pushing Labour to be braver and bolder and better. Partly that's what I see the role of the Greens as being in the very likelihood of labour forming the next government. I don't think it's 100% sure, but it's a good 95%, I would think. And so if Labour does become the next government, I just hope that Kir will be bolder than he has been to date. And if we've got some Greens there, so hopefully Shan in Brighton and Carla Denya standing in Bristol, where she's got a really good chance of winning there, Adrian Ramsey and Ellie Chan.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “And if I haven't done that, that's my failing not because I don't think it's important. I do think it's important to be trying to make those connections. And I do think many on the conservative side love our country. And they literally, I mean, they love the grass that grows and the trees that grow. They love that country in a very visceral way, which I think some of us on the left could learn from. So I'm not trying to be as binary about it as perhaps you've read and perhaps it comes across as.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I mean, I really agree with you that it's not narrowly black and white, and lots of things can be true at the same time. And I had thought really, particularly in that last chapter when I tried to pull together what some of the themes are really when you're looking through the book and when you're looking at what can unite us. It's absolutely about standing up for some of those things that I should have thought that many on the right would want to stand up for too, you know, whether that is the independence of the judiciary, which is now under attack or whether it is exactly the independence of the BBC.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “The rollback of the right to protest, the rollback of some of the laws around the electoral commission, the new rules that make it harder for people to vote. I think something really dangerous is happening in our country right now. And because we're so used to the myth, if you like, the story that in England we have a great government and the mother of parliaments, you know, things like that wouldn't happen here. They bloody well would, and they are.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “I mean, that's a really good point, and I think in my next version of this book, I shall add in some pages about ownership of the media, because that is massive, isn't it, the fact that so few people have so much control over so much of our media and that they have a particular view that they then peddle in that way. And so I would like to see a new Labour government properly regulating the media and looking at some of those media monopolies and breaking those up. And in the meantime, yes, for sure, let's make sure we've got some more media outlets where different views can be held. And this is also just about, like, for example, just now we've got Ofcom, haven't we? Looking at GB News and that particular interview that Rishi Sunak did, this kind of falsification, if you like, of media in this country is deeply worrying. And it goes alongside the...”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “And there has been a rise in loyalty to the monarchy. But I would be surprised if that gets maintained. And I'm not sure that people really necessarily want the monarchy to have as much money and as much land that it does. I don't know that they really want to know that the monarch can be intervening in some of the decisions around tax to try to make sure that they don't have to pay so much tax. I think when some of this stuff comes to light, then that isn't necessarily a binding narrative that holds the country together. And just while I still have the floor, just to make it clear, and I apologize if I was misleading earlier, I'm not talking about a single myth that's going to somehow replace a right-wing myth. I'm talking about a multitude of stories, but stories that are more resonant, perhaps, than the exceptionalist, imperialist kind of narrative that we're hearing from the populist right.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “more left wing. Well, I'm certainly sure that I'm further to the left than you, Rory. I wasn't suggesting that's not the case. And I stand by the article at the time it was written. And, you know, of course, Jeremy Corbyn basically cut and pasted huge swathes of the Green Party manifesto. So of course I'm going to be excited by that because suddenly seeing some of our policies being adopted was very exciting. But it's interesting what you say about patriotism and I think this comes into the debates about metropolitanism as well, isn't it? And some of the debates about to what extent did people in rural areas feel a kind of an affinity with a Labour Party that felt like it wasn't speaking to them and wasn't talking their language? And I'm not sure how much of that, to be honest, is to do with the monarchy. And I think I would, of course, you know, in recent years when we've had the Queen and then the death of the Queen and people understandably have felt incredibly sorry and sad.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Such a shame because I thought we had so much. You know, I was reading your book and thinking we had so much in common in terms of decentralization and smartness.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Person who owns huge swathes of Dartmoor deciding overnight that he no longer wants people to come and wild camp on Dartmoor, even though they've been doing it for generations. So I think that issue about access to nature is massively important. I think the issue of the way in which landowners stop people having access is deeply problematic. I think with access comes responsibilities and certainly those of us who are part of the right to roam campaign would very much be saying that we recognize that you wouldn't be walking through fields of crops or animals and responsibility has to go alongside it as well. But it does feel to me, and I'd be interested, whether maybe Rory thinks it differently in Scotland, but it does feel like it's worked pretty well in Scotland. And I don't see why it can't hear.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Yes, and one that is made even more visible through the issue around ownership of land. And I think it's been very topical just recently, hasn't it, with the issue of wild camping on Dartmoor, where you've had...”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Guess I would just say that I think the relationship between Texas and Washington is not the same as it is between the four nations that make up the United Kingdom, that Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland have greater rights and greater self-determination than a state within the United States.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Work that out within Scotland. Don't come running to a government in Westminster to say whether or not you can do that. If there isn't a support for that within Scotland, then I'm sure that the party who is proposing that won't do so well and won't have the right and the power to introduce it. But what I'm objecting to is one component part of the United Kingdom having a veto on whether another component part has the right to have a referendum on whether or not to leave.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “I don't think that's true, although you rightly take me up on that verb, which I shall consider. But what I do think is that it should be up to Scotland. I think Scotland should decide whether or not it wants to remain part of the UK.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Need to start thinking about what we're left with, and one of the things I was struck in Rora's book, Rury, when you talk about how in the different departments, David Cameron had given you a rule that you cannot, you're not allowed to prepare for what the impact would be if we lost the E referendum. Nobody is thinking, as far as I'm aware, of what might happen in England if Scotland achieves its independence, if Ireland goes its own way, and therefore we ought to start having a conversation, I think, about what is our view of this union of nations and how do we make it work as well as we can for all of its component parts.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Think it's the most problematic part of the UK in the sense that, I mean, you know, the UK is meant to be a union of consent, isn't it? And yet the government in Westminster is now actively preventing one of its component nations from having a vote on whether or not it wants to remain part of this body. And that seems to me quite an extraordinary thing. England is a problem because England is imposing its, or at least one element of England, the right-wing part of England is imposing its ideas of how things should be done on Scotland and on Wales and Northern Ireland. I think I focus on England because I think we could have an independent Scotland in 20 years. I think with Ireland, the island of Ireland, I mean, you had just a few weeks ago, didn't you? The fact that they're talking there now about there being a referendum on reuniting Ireland. If that happens, and if Scotland goes its own way, then I think...”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Don't know about that. I mean, I'd be interested to know exactly what you mean by that in terms of what it could be structurally, because it feels to me much more that we haven't even tried. I mean, that's the point that I make in the book, that we're so scared about talking about England as if as soon as you do that, then suddenly you're some kind of racist that we've just seeded the ground. We've not tried. We've not really told other stories about some, and that's what's the joys of the literature in a sense, because it allows you to have something that is colourful and joyful and something that people can engage with rather than your policy papers from Sweden.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Basically, mean telling different kinds of stories about England. It was really interesting to give a concrete example. Boris Johnson during the COVID debate, one of Labour MPs, I think it was Ben Bradshaw, had asked him about why test and trace was such a disaster because they hadn't put enough resources into it. Boris Johnson gives this extraordinary reply, basically saying that it's entirely unenglish to be worrying about wearing face masks or it's unenglish to be thinking that we have to follow the rules. People in England don't follow the rules. And then he goes off in this whole spiel about how basically he's not literally talking about how we won the war, but that is the subject. And so that attitude and that sense of that story of England being exceptionalist, being better than the others, having won the wars and Dunkirk and all of the kind of stereotypes of right-wing England enable that kind of politics and that kind of response. And so I think it's just really dangerous if we don't have...”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Who they are. I think it's so interesting that in England we muddle up England and Britain daily, hourly. One is meant to stand in for the other. We don't really make the distinction and we don't really celebrate what is good about England. We just kind of squeamishly think, let's not talk about it.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Is it the case, as I believe it is, that the left in general has just ceded this ground? We've become so squeamish about talking about England. And therefore, the only people who do talk about England are the exceptionalists, those who are peddling imperial nostalgia and Brexit. And unless we on the progressive side, as I like to say, wake up to that and start telling a different story about England, then I do worry that with the rise of the populist right and so on, then the future of this country could be very grim. And the reason that I focus on England, just to be clear, is that we have no institutions, no political institutions where English identity and English decision-making can be pursued. In Scotland, you've got the Scottish Parliament, and I would argue Scotland as a result has a stronger sense of its own identity. In Wales, they've got the Assembly, they don't have as many powers as they would like, but nonetheless they have that sense of”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “So I went out to some of those places and took it upon myself to spend a lot of time with communities seeking to genuinely understand why they had voted to leave and what their aspirations were for their own communities. And what I found was, first of all, huge pride and sense of place and love of place, places like Dudley, for example. I spent a lot of time in Dudley talking to people. And they're really proud of its industrial heritage and so forth. But at the same time, they feel as if London could be a million miles away, it could be on another planet, they don't feel as if they have any say in the decisions that get made that affect them. They don't feel they've got any agency. And so then I was just trying to unpack a little bit about what is it about what's happened to England and the massive centralization that we have within England and the way in which so many communities feel as if they don't have a stake in it. And what are the stories about England?”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Sort of unpicking out of it. Yeah. So the book really the starting point for the book was that moment of understanding the results of the EU referendum, the Brexit referendum, and hearing people saying Remainers in England saying, I don't recognise my country anymore. That made me really angry. I thought frankly, bloody hell, you should know your country. And if you haven't bothered, if we haven't bothered to understand the levels of anger and frustration in some parts of this country, then that's on us and we should have done. So I was struck by that and I was struck by the fact that the country they were talking about by and large was England, not the UK. And of course, if you look at the results of the referendum, then every region outside of London within England did vote to leave.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “To amend the defence budget so we could talk about trident nuclear weapons because it felt quite a big oversight not to be talking about them when we were talking about defence. And so I had an amendment down on the order paper so that we would discuss that. And the speaker just kind of bounced over my amendment and went to another one to put to the vote and I was busy kind of trying to get his attention to say why isn't my amendment going to the vote? And I hadn't understood that the speaker gets to select a very small number of amendments out of a huge number that are put. And one of the reasons that we can't go through all of those amendments, as they do, let's say, in the European Parliament, is because we'd be there till Christmas if we did. If you're taking 20 minutes on a vote, then you can't do very many votes.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Pointless, they were so weak. We couldn't stop him lying. In a sense, I think what we've seen more recently is the fact that when the kind of old boys school of how you do stuff is thrown out the window, when people just take advantage day after day, as Boris Johnson did, more than anything in actually proroguing parliament when he decided it was getting in the way of what he wanted to do, then I think we've seen those weaknesses in a much more highlighted way because they have been taken advantage of so much. But I think they were certainly there before that, as Rory said. And I think the whipping system needs to be looked at again. I think that even things like the voting, the voting takes so long because you have to go through the i lobby or the no lobby. And on the one hand, you can say, well, that doesn't really matter very much. But actually it does because it limits the number of amendments that can be put to a vote. I remember when I first put my amendment down, it was on a debate on defence, the defence budget, and I wanted...”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “I do sadly think there's some truth in that. And I think it is structural. And I think what we've seen in the last five or ten years is that the norms that more or less stopped people from taking advantage, real advantage of the structural weaknesses have gone. And so suddenly you did have a prime minister who would lie regularly at the dispatch box. And the tools that we had to try to hold him to account were utterly, utterly.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “What they're voting on. It is extraordinary. And yet, Rory, you will know that when the bell goes revote and we're running to get to the chamber, what you hear people saying all the time is what we're voting on. Anyone know what it is? No one knows what it is. They're just doing what their phone has told them to do. From my office, I don't know what to do unless some poor person has sat there going through it all because I don't have a whip telling me what to do. So I'm often the only person who actually knows what we're bloody voting on. It's just a shambles.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Absolutely right. And I think one of the ways in which that came home to me was when I tried to make one very minor change really, which was that when people put amendments to legislation, at the moment, if they put an amendment down, it says in paragraphs 3, little A change two to two and a half or something. Unless you've read lots of the background documents and spent some time looking at all of that, you have no idea what it means. And so in the European Parliament, when you put down an amendment, you have to put also an explanatory statement, no more than 50 words, explaining what the purpose of that amendment is. And I thought, what a good idea it would be if we were to have explanatory statements alongside our amendments in Westminster. And the backlash was just extraordinary. The whips suddenly realizing how much power that could take away from them if, God forbid, MPs actually knew what they were voting for. I mean, this was, there was a debate. It's in hand side. You can read it. There's a debate with all of these people arguing against being given the information.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Anything about that, they said, marvelous. All we want you to do is just to stick your hand up when we tell you. So this idea that scrutiny isn't wanted. No one expects a piece of legislation to be better when it comes out of the process than when it went in, the way in which we treat one another, just tuning into PMQs, the kind of... It is incredibly depressing, I think, frankly, to see that being the way in which our country is governed”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Well, just to say, I think you do a really good job of setting that out in your own book, which I very much enjoyed. But I think that sense of total dysfunctionality is something that so many of us, I think particularly maybe in that 2010 intake, because I think so many of us were coming from other walks of life and were just genuinely shocked at the way in which it works or frankly doesn't work, the way in which having an expertise in something is seen to be a positive disadvantage. I mean, I remember the story of Sarah Wollaston, who was one of your colleagues, Rory, the Tory MP, who was elected really because people loved the fact that she was a doctor and she wanted to change health policy. And she wanted to be on the select committee, or rather the Bill Committee, that was going to look at some new health policy that the government was introducing. And she was told by the Tory Whips that she couldn't do that. They wanted her to go and sit on the committee for double taxation in the Cayman Islands or something. And when she said, but I don't.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Might have had a parliament, but I think what would have happened is the more you would have actually looked at their policies rather than his kind of martyred self-image on the outside of parliament, you might just find that actually some of his popularity went down.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Electoral reform, which makes it even more frustrating, frankly, that he's not doing that. And one of the things I trace in the book, in fact, is, you know, how different would the world be if we'd had proportional representation, or even, yeah, and if you'd added up those votes from Labour and the Lib Dems in 2010, if you could have imagined that coalition rather than the Tory Lib Dem coalition, if you then trace what could have happened, then we wouldn't have had Brexit. We wouldn't have had Liz Truss. We wouldn't have this waste of space of a government right now, things would be very different.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “No, it isn't. No, it isn't. That is a very personal decision. And it's absolutely not about saying that we don't need Greens now more than ever in corridors of power, if you like. We do need Greens in corridors of power more than ever. And I'm spending all of my time just now trying to make sure we get more Greens elected, including Shambarian in Brighton, who's been selected as the replacement for myself. So it is a personal decision. And, you know, maybe we are getting a bit closer to PR. I mean, it was interesting that the Labour Party conference, they did vote. The members voted, including the unions, for electoral reform. Sadly, Kir Starmer ignored them. And I think that was wrong on lots of levels. But I think if he's serious about the kind of transformative change that we need, he's going to need more than one term. So even if he thinks that in this election, he doesn't need PR because he's 20 points ahead on a good day. I'm pretty sure after a term in government he's not going to be 20 points ahead. And therefore, if he wants to have more than one term in office, it would be in his own interest to be adopted.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “If you added state funding for political parties, yes, I do, because obviously countries like Germany have that as well. I don't think there's anything particularly in the water in Germany or in Sweden or even in France, in places where we've had Greens and government that mean that it's more likely to happen in other countries than it is here. I think it is down to the fact that we have a totally unjust and unrepresentative electoral system, which means that so many people feel disenfranchised for so much of the time. I think it plays in to all kinds of trends in this country around contempt for politicians, total disenchantment with the whole political system. It's part of a much bigger problem that I think we have here. But certainly I think it's been absolutely the cause of the fact that we haven't yet had more Greens in Parliament.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “In transformative in terms of the visibility of the Green Party, in terms of sending the message that we were serious, that we were people that you could trust, that people could put their faith in the Greens on a national level. And of course, we haven't had PR at a national level that's not happened. But locally, the last local elections were our best local election results ever. We now have 750 councillors. I think we are in some kind of coalition on around 36 local authorities.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “In 1999, the UK had been forced to contest the European elections under a form of PR because basically the European institutions said if you're going to take part in these elections, you have to have a fair electoral system. So when we had that fairer system, then it meant that Jean Lambert in London and myself in the southeast were able to be elected as members of the European Parliament. So the Green Party, I think, has become much more professional. I think it's important now that we have leaders or co-leaders because for a very long time we had a totally baffling number of spokespeople and frankly it was quite difficult even as the press officer to keep up with who the spokespeople were at any given time. So I'm pleased that there is that level of professionalization. I think if you look at some of the results that we've had, I mean continuing the theme of fair of votes for a moment. I mean in 2015 the election after the one I was elected in over a million people voted green in 2015. If that had been under a system of PR we could have had I don't know 20 MPs, 25 MPs. I mean that would have been”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “Explain a lot, but anyhow, I got the job. And the reason for telling that story is that we started off, I think, in 1987 with about 1.3% in the general election of 87. And of course, for those of you with long memories in 1989, we had 15% of the result in the European elections. I like to tell that story not really because I think that was down to me, but it was a fascinating time to be in green politics and seeing what was happening because, you know, suddenly you had people, even like Mrs. Thatcher, making incredibly important speeches about the seriousness of the climate crisis back in 1988-89. So the history of the Green Party, I suppose, has been, again, one of steps forward and steps backwards, because right back then it felt like we were on the cusp of something incredibly exciting. But that 15% of the result that we got in 1989 delivered absolutely no seats because we weren't contesting the election under a system of proportional representation. And that's why in a sense there was such a sense of justice being done when years later.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “Well, the one thing I think you might have left out was being the party's press officer between 1987 and 1989. I remember the job being advertised. It was tough, and I have absolutely no qualifications to be a Green Party press officer beyond a PhD in Elizabethan literature, which.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “Have a duty to maximize the economic recovery of petroleum from the North Sea. That's an extraordinary thing. We've got a Prime Minister who's rolling back. So many of our environmental commitments and who is weaponizing climate as part of a new culture war. So I feel deeply, deeply disappointed about that, I think is massively dangerous. I think it's reckless. I feel angry. So it's to try and answer your question I suppose the answer is it's not as simple as it's not simple, yeah.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “I think the issue has changed in the sense that I think there's so much greater understanding in the wider public about the climate emergency. And I think there is a huge appetite for the policies that would help us transition away from a dependence on fossil fuels. I think in terms of governments, it's been much less easy trajectory to see whether or not there's been progress. Because on the one hand, you could say, wow, we've now had the British Parliament declare a climate emergency. That's extraordinary. That would have felt extraordinary to me even in 2010 before it happened, you know, some years later. So on the one hand, yes, there are these moments where you can say a climate emergency or you can say Paris 1.5 degrees as the threshold, and that's progress. But then you look at what our current government is doing in terms of their obscene handing out of licenses for more and more oil and gas in the North Sea. The fact that on our own statute book we still have...”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “A culture and a way of looking at that issue that perhaps indeed made a difference. And when it comes to the Iraq war, which is usually the example that people give, you know, when millions were on the streets of many cities around the country to protest against the Iraq war. And no, we didn't stop the Iraq war, but we did make it a lot more difficult for future international escapades of that kind. I mean, we can discuss whether we think that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I think it's certainly changed very much, that sense of the UK having a right to bomb poorer countries when it suits them.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “I mean, certainly one can feel massively frustrated and exhausted by being on the side of change and change not happening. But I guess I would also say that sometimes we don't know what the impacts of our actions are. And I don't think even the most ardent protester necessarily thinks that protest A leads to change B in a certain time frame. It's about changing the conversation. It's about changing people's expectations. It's about demonstrating a level of support or concern about a particular issue. And therefore, I think I measure things maybe in a slightly longer time frame. So when it comes to nuclear weapons, the point of Greenham was very much about getting the US weapons off UK soil, which did finally happen. And what role did the Greenham protests make in that? I would be hard-pressed to say there was any direct causality, but it was about...”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “I think if there was more leadership, frankly, right now, then the people are there. I mean, certainly on the issue of the EU, I think people still feel massively strongly about the fact that leaving the EU was a disaster and that if there was some kind of leadership around what could be the steps towards getting into a closer relationship again with Europe, if that was being articulated, frankly, more clearly than it is today, I think you could get that.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “Don't know that I agree with that analysis in a sense. I mean, I think extinction rebellion brought millions of people onto the streets and from all age groups and all backgrounds and people who had never been on a street before, as well as young people and so on. So I think the climate crisis has the potential to reignite that kind of solidarity and that kind of peaceful protest. What I do really worry about is the way in which the government is clamping down on that. And if anything, perhaps that demonstrates that they are worried that some of this stuff could actually get more powerful and could be successful.”

    2024-03-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source