Know Your Place
Thursday, April 27
The short answer is that I'm not terribly surprised, and neither am I as shocked or horrified as some people seem to be. Zac is a friend of mine for a start, so I'm afraid I'm not going to say anything horrible about him. This is for the simple reason that I both like and respect him. Having worked with him closely over a long period I can testify that he's principled, honest and clued-up about green issues. Some people continue to get exercised about the very large amount of money he inherited from his father, and certainly it was not - how shall we put it? - well, all obtained from ethical sources. However, since he spends much of it on the Ecologist and on funding radical eco-projects around the world, rather than on yachts and cocaine, I can't see what the complaints are about. It's not as if the green cause couldn't do with both a financial and a publicity leg-up, both of which Zac has proved excellent at providing.
I'm not surprised about the Toryism because Zac has always been a small-c conservative green. People who find this surprising or contradicatory don't know their history. Much of the early green movement, in this country and elsewhere, was a conservative one. It was framed in terms of protecting both the natural environment and the best of human tradition (small villages, slow ways of living, connection to the natural world) from the juggernaut of techno-industrialism. In later years, the green movement has shifted to the left - sometimes too far in my view - and has become associated with all the strengths and weaknesses of the 20th century left-wing agenda.
In my view, greens should be above and beyond right and left, just as environmentalism as a philosophy should be above and beyond industrialism (read this book if you want a better explanation). But either way Zac, like his uncle Teddy, who founded The Ecologist thirty years ago, has always come from that conservative green tradition. I don't always agree with him- we had some very productive rows when we worked together- but I know he believes what he says.
Which is ironically why I don't think Zac will make a very good politician; he's too honest. I also think he's naive in imagining that the neoliberal Tory party could ever be a friend of small shopkeepers, family farmers and widlife. Having said that, I also think that that green movement as a whole is naive to imagine that the Green Party or a few campaign groups are going to force society into the sort of shift that's needed. By the time the Greens manage to get themselves even one MP in Britain climate change will have melted both ice caps. I doubt very much whether David Cameron is any more than hot air - but why not push him and see. If nothing else it gets the key issues onto the front pages.
My friend Mark Lynas has been scrapping with our local Green Party about this very issue recently, and he makes some good points on his blog. I don't like the Tories any more than I like Neo Labour - but anyone who's serious about tackling the global ecological crisis before it's too late surely can't be too choosy about their allies at this point. As Billy Bragg so memorably put it: 'wearing badges is not enough in days like these.'
Posted by Paul at 11:05 AM 
9 Comments
Hmmm, none of the main political parties seem to know or have much respect for their own histories any more either, but let him tell them what to do if they'll listen to him, I don't much care. Hope he manages to embarrass them at some point.
What I really wanted to know was, is Zac as gorgeous as everyone says? Mmmmmmm....
Alice xx
Posted by: 
at 3:28 PM
As an attached heterosexual man, I couldn't possibly comment. Anyway, he's got three kids, so I think you're too late. Sorry.
Alice, there was a programme about Zac on Radio 4 the other day, sorry I can't remember when but you might find it and listen again if you have the technology. Anyway, it was pretty unenlightening, and they let that t*sser Richard North have a long say about how naive Zac is. But one amusing feature was the large number of posh ladies they interviewed all of whom stressed how gorgeous he is. So yes, he must be gorgeous, if you like that posh blonde type.
Posted by: at 9:19 PM
That small-c conservative greenery is definitely the angle I'm coming at it from too (used to be the classic liberal position to support small shopkeepers). What Zac and John Gummer come out with will decide just how cynically I view Mr Cameron.
BTW please could you tell your friend Mark Lynas to put an RSS feed onto his blog! Makes it much easier to follow...
Sam - there is an RSS feed there, it's just not an easy link to find. Will try to fix that. Anyway, it's at the top of the page http://www.marklynas.org/blog/
Posted by: at 12:09 PM
I've no problem with Cameron raising the issue up the political agenda, but if Mark thinks that the Tories are seriously going to abandon their entire neoliberal ethos to be nice to the environment, just because Cameron seems like 'a nice chap' - I fear he has another thing coming.
See the record of our very own Oxfordshire County Council for proof of how 'green' the Tories are - and thats ignoring any debate about 'left' or 'right'...on which I am firmly on the left!
I don't want to live in a world where we've sorted our our environmental crisis but still have people living on the streets, starving to death in the Third World, and superpowers bombing other countries into the Stone Age...so supporting someone *just* because they say nice things about the environment is not on, for me at least.
Posted by: 
Matt Sellwood at 12:26 PM
Hi Paul
All that you say about Zac is fine and to a point I wouldn't expect any less from you as his mate.
What Zac could or has already come to represent for many is something we are sorely missing right now. Hero's.
We are seeing brands like Green & Blacks go to the likes of Cadbury, Body Shop to Loreal, Geldof toppling under his own ego and Zac joining the Conservatives. It could only get worse if George Monbiot joined the Countryside Alliance!
We need the likes of Zac outside government like no time in our history. Articulate, human and passionate individuals with the vision to see through the corporate gloss. It's depressing to see him packaged as gorgeous Green Wash.
Ken
OK, it's unfashionable to use the terms "right" and "left" any more, but you either believe that market forces can solve all our problems or you don't.
I don't think we CAN solve the environmental crisis and still have people living on the streets, starving to death etc. All this stuff is inextricably linked and I'm therefore highly suspicious of greenies who are not also lefties.
Anyway, more to the point, what do the tory party hope to acheive by employing Zac? Surely they'll just have to keep ignoring his advice all the time - but then I suppose that's what parties usually do with consultants who don't give them the answers they wanted in the first place.
Alice xx
Posted by: at 1:58 PM
Well, of course, our Dear Leader long ago jettisoned left and right, preferring instead to opt for the Third Way. This, however, turned out to be more, er, neoliberalism. So it is always useful to keep an eye on what the language is intended to disguise.
But traditional small-c conservatism, unlike the Thatcherism which killed it off, wasnot in favour of untrammelled markets at all. If anything it's a backward-looking, protectionist ideology (if it even is an ideology); feudalistic and class-bound, certainly, but with a recognition too that there is more to life than money, and that markets shouold be kept in their place.
Curiously enough, if you put an old-fashioned socialist in a room with an old-fashioned conservative, I suspect they would have more in common with each other than with their repective successors in the Tory and Labour parties, for
both of whom an unquestioning worship of markets and material 'progress' goes unexamined.
