WITH Brexit fast approaching and the exact shape of that event still so unclear, dramatic predictions and pronouncements from politicians are now ten a penny.

But none as astonishing perhaps as the idea proposed by the Green Party’s Leader, Caroline Lucas this week- that the answer to this vexing situation is to set up a political cabinet of “national unity”– composed of women alone.

Her dream-team female cabinet also included Welsh MP Liz Saville Roberts- although it is unclear whether the representative for Meirion-Dwyfor was actually in favour of such a  move.

Not much unity behind Green leader’s idea

The idea soon floundered, not least because of the howls of protest from elements of the sisterhood that the new cabinet was only made up of white women alone.

Another complaint made by her fellow travellers was that no trans women were included in the line-up. The responses to her lack of foresight in this respect  were vitriolic on social media and displayed once more the tiring oneupmanship that seems so associated with modern identity politics.

It brought to mind the observation of former US President Barack Obama that elements of the left sometimes resemble a circular firing squad.

One wag did manage to lighten the mood somewhat by pointing out that some canny male politicians could actually gatecrash the party by self-identifying as women.

Caroline Lucas had to beat a hasty retreat and later apologised for her statement.

But the damage was done. If anything summed up the chasm that now exists between some politicians in their echo-chambers and the views of the population at large, well this was it.

Virtue, wisdom and insight the preserve of one sex only?

Despite the rowing back, Lucas’s  basic premise was that virtue, wisdom and insight are the sole preserve of those individuals who happen to be female.

Furthermore, these virtues would serve all of us much much better than the confusion and mayhem(ahem)served up here since 2016.

Whatever happened to the old idea that virtue, wisdom and insight could be exercised equally by both men and women?

As well as the understanding that vice, foolishness and lack of insight in turn are an equally distinguishing feature of both sexes?

Which in turn should alert all of us to the fact that all politicians, of whatever gender have to be watched like hawks!

Caroline Lucas obviously is unaware of the famous lines of the noted Welsh poet, R. Williams Parry

’Rwy’n wych, rwy’n wael, rwy’n gymysg oll i gyd’
(“I’m wonderful, I’m awful, i just don’t know where I am”.)

Maybe Liz Saville Roberts could lend her a copy of the poem?

A party made up of ideologues

But Caroline Lucas’s statement was also problematic on a deeper level since it showed a general tendency within the Green Party to be made up of  individuals who lean towards being ideologues.

That is, individuals who place ideology and the requirements of that ideology above common sense, and the realities of life for most ordinary people. It involves absolutist thinking, and a rigidity of mind which can be quite alarming at time.

Indeed, some commentators are suggesting that some modern Green adherents are like watermelons. That is, green on the outside and red on the inside.

Control agenda of the Green and the Red alike

That the increasing Green desire to control people’s behaviour and choices in life resemble a red ideology in the past which similarly strove to control and police individuals in the name of a greater cause.

Now it could be argued that linking the Green cause to the murderous red ideology of the past is a gross over-statement.

After all, most reasonable people would concur with the basic premise of the Green movement that we should be responsible stewards of our environment and earth.

Everybody can see the need to tackle pollution in our rivers and seas for example, and there’s a growing realisation as well that our present consumerist lifestyle can’t be sustained or justified either.

Even so, there are elements within the Green Party which are problematic. One of the most serious is this sense of Oikophobia they are seeking to instil in people. Oikophobia means ‘hate of home’ and a sense of guilt and self-reproach about that home, i.e a community or nation.

Which seems to be a means of softening people up for some draconian measures and swingeing carbon taxes as punishment for their transgressions, i.e contributing to climate change.

And the word transgressions doesn’t seem out of place considering that that the green movement seems to be some form of new “religion” for our secular age.

A new religion for a secular age

But whatever the worries are about climate change- and it seems self-evident that the climate is always changing- it doesn’t seem a psychologically sound tactic to shame people and to make them hate their own societies.

One of those who has written about this moralizing tendency and its dangers  is the French author Christopher Guillay in his new book ‘Twilight of the Elites’.

In the book, the author refers to the growing gap between the flourishing cities of France and La France Profonde    the rural periphery-which has been the driving force of the continuing Gilets Jaunes protest movement there.

Carbon tax the final straw for rural France

Guillay says that the carbon tax(to reduce Co2 levels) imposed by French President Emmanuel Macron was the final straw for the citizens of rural France fed up of seeing their communities and local services being decimated by the effects of globalisation.

He refers to what he calls the ‘Bobos’ : the well-off people in what he calls the citadels of modern France who are no longer content just to be richer than their rural counterparts-but who now see themselves to be morally superior to them as well.

With this sense of superiority marked out by by their enthusiasm for identity politics, globalisation, and the need for carbon taxes to ‘save’ the climate.  Guillay states this to be a form of severe “social control” over all those unfortunate enough to live outside the citadels of modern France, reinforced by the media and other vested interests.

Caroline Lucas would perhaps do well to top up her holiday reading list with this particular book.

And any other political parties seeking to cosy up to the Green Party would perhaps like to think again about the wisdom of such a scenario in the wake of this week’s fiasco.

 

GWLAD comments: We are very happy to reaffirm that we are not a party of ideologues, be that of the left variety or the right variety. Be that led by men or women!

Rather, we seek practical and pragmatic solutions to Wales’s problems based solely  on the realities of life here in Wales today.

Not what pleases influential players within the Westminster bubble or whatever happens to be fashionable amongst the metropolitan chattering classes who hold such sway over people’s opinions nowadays.