Why are we standing in Brighton?

Email received from a Green Party supporter in Brighton Pavilion

“Hello, I was wondering why your party is standing in Brighton when there is already a socalist (green) MP there, Caroline Lucas. She has campaigned for the NHS in parliament when she tried to introduce the NHS resentment bill which would would stop privatisation and campaigned for the renationalisation of the rail. Also got arrested for being in a anti fracking protest, Caroline has promised to oppose all cuts and reverse them. Please support Caroline'scampaign to return the UK's most anti austerity MP back to Westminster."

Our candidate's reply:

“Thanks for this email. I think I need to clarify a few misapprehensions.

Firstly, despite what you take to be Ms Lucas' position, the party which she represents is definitely not a socialist party. In my discussions with the local party their ideology is apparently 'sustainability', an exposition of which I have yet to see. Nowhere does any of the party literature talk of the abolition of capitalism, speaking in terms rather of the means by which they would aim to regulate the market system. We in the Socialist Party of Great Britain hold that the market system cannot be regulated or reformed in the interests of the majority of the population - it will always work in the interests of the wealthy: if regulation worked, why is it that major corporations don't pay tax but you and I have to?

Secondly, the Green Party has no monopoly of environmental concern: my major driver in politics has always been in this area (and I speak as an ex-Green Party member). I sincerely believe that the only way of controlling the degradation of our environment is to completely change our political system: it is about power and the Green Party lacks an adequate disposition towards real power. Capitalism will always act with contempt towards the environment, and big money will always find ways around regulation. Moreover the current trajectory is to make it harder to control big capital: look at GATT, WTO, TTIP, etc. and the policies of the IMF or World Bank. I'm not alone in this view: read Naomi Klein's latest work This Changes Everything. 

Don't get me wrong - I like and admire Caroline but sadly she's in the wrong party (as I have told her myself).

Howard Pilott

Socialist Party candidate 

Brighton Pavilion

We are also standing in Brighton Kemptown where our candidate is Jacqueline Shodeke