A Progressive Alliance should not include Labour?

As a Plaid supporter I nevertheless am attracted to the Green Party pf England ans Wales and am tempted at times to vote for them when I become annoyed with Plaid over some policies. Nuclear Power being probably the foremost.

I would prefer that there was a separate Welsh Green Party as there is in Scotland but it is a Progressive Party and I was disappointed to see them not making gains in England.

So I was disappointed with a number of articles on Left Foot Forward which seem to suggest Green supporters should turn to Labour.

The first by Mike Shaughnessy is a Green writer and blogs at London Green Left. has him writing 

Since the Green Party’s vote halved last month, debate has been growing as to what the party should do next.Now that talk has turned to potentially affiliating to the Labour Party.The main group for left-wing Greens has been seen a lot of talk from people suggesting the party formerly unites with Labour.The first time we heard this idea was when Jon Lansman, Labour member and one of the founders of Momentum, suggested it last year.The model that is being talked about is that of the Co-operative Party, which goes back to the roots of the movement in Rochdale, Lancashire, where the first Co-op was formed in 1844, and they became a political party in 1917. As their website says:“Since 1927, the Party has had an electoral agreement with Labour Party. This enables us to stand joint candidates in elections, recognising our shared values and maximising our impact.’ The Co-operative Party now has 38 MPs and many elected regional and local representatives.”The Co-operative Party has many co-operative retail businesses as members and promotes this form of economic ownership, within the Labour Party and outside. Co-operative Party branches affiliate to their local Constituency Labour Party (CLP).This enables them to send delegates to Labour meetings and provides a process for selecting joint Labour & Co-operative Party candidates at elections.

The question is can we really look at the Co-operative as a Political Patty in its own right,

To me it is little more that a Cash Cow and could Green supporters see see their agenda pushed forward within a Labour Government. After all 90 year of affiliation do seem to have seen much of a move to wards seeing any real move to creating a Co-operative future.

The second article by Rupert Read apparently a Green Party member asks
if the idea of a progressive alliance is dead and whether the Greens need a new strategy?

I want here to emphasise two reasons why the ‘progressive alliance’ concept is now useless and indeed dangerous for Greens:
1. Ever since the progressive alliance rhetoric became mainstream, Greens’ adherence to this political position essentially gives people a signal to vote Labour, not Green.The Green Party, of course, has many ‘leftwing’ policies, and rightly so. For example, we have the strongest policies of any Party in this country on redistribution of wealth. However, for the Greens other political spectra are far more important than the vague, outdated, still-unfortunately-hegemonic Left vs Right spectrum.
If we accept an equation of Green with leftism, then we are sidelining the absolute centrality of ecology, and accepting the debate on Labour’s terms, on ‘Corbynite’ terms. This is catastrophic for the party. It’s what happened at the general election, across virtually the whole country. Voters felt that Greens were giving them permission to vote Labour in droves.
Greens must make clear to people that we are not mainly a ‘Left’ party: we are the one and only post-growth, pro-ecology, anti-nuke, pro-democracy (starting with proportional representation) party…
2. The idea of a ‘progressive alliance’ is dead in the water. Given our party’s results, we have no possibility of being a major player in any such alliance.After the election, the Greens now have no constituency second places. None (in any seat where the major parties stand). That means that a progressive alliance cannot work electorally, for us. If we were to go in for it again, we would be simply engaging in a complete act of destructive self-sacrifice.
For we would then be allowing a situation in which there would be calls for us to stand aside everywhere (save for Brighton Pavillion, which now looks safe next time, even without a progressive alliance, and even given boundary changes). That’s not an electoral strategy.
We need instead to find a way forward that works for the Green Party, and thus that serves the interests and beliefs of our voters, as well as of those (future people, non-human animals) who are depending upon us to succeed.
For the Green Party, it is time to put aside the notion that Labour has any interest in transcending tribalism, or in real democracy. It is back to the hard slog of trying to get elected, by ourselves. The only way we ever actually succeeded, in the first place…

Both article suppose that the Labour Party under Corbyn  will be Progressive  whilst  the evidence is that it will be more left wing nut remain centrist  in terns of where the power lies and will be pushing for a Hard Brexit  along with the Tories.


Do we really want to return to a Two Party system of a Punch and Judy show as they hammer hell out of each other in the House of Commons whilst chaining nothing outside.


I have huge doubts that Corbyn can reform the Party into a Progressive one and those joining to do so will be swamped  both Left and Right   who will oppose electoral reform, further devolution and any Green Policies.

No it is in fact outside the Labour Party that a Progressive Alliance lies with Plaio, SNP Greens and others possibly even the Lib Dems pushing for a change in how the UK is governed beyond  the confines of a Two Party Punch and Judy Show in Westminster,