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For years, some Europeans have dreamed of a giant free trade deal between the European Union and the United States. Many rounds of negotiations took place starting in 2013 to try to deliver what was dubbed the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Its proponents said such a deal would establish an economic Nato, creating an economic relationship as deep as the security partnership; some say that the failure of those negotiations in 2016 as a result of stubbornness on both sides contributed to Brexit. Various half-hearted attempts have been made since then to resume limited trade liberalisation talks.

No one at any point during those years could have imagined that when the EU-US trade deal came, it would look like the humiliating surrender agreed by Ursula von der Leyen in an awkward meeting with Donald Trump in Scotland on Sunday. The Commission president agreed to a deal under which most EU exports would be taxed at 15 percent when they entered the US, up from around 2 percent pre-Trump. This is an outcome that would have been unthinkable just three weeks ago, when Brussels thought it had a deal for a 10 percent deal, let alone three months ago, when von der Leyen was hoping to negotiate a zero-for-zero tariff deal.

Worse, the EU is being charged even for the privilege of trading with the US on these abased terms. Von der Leyen has committed that the EU will buy $750 million of US energy products over the next three years and invest $600 billion in the US economy. How this will work in practice is unclear since details are scarce and both sides have given contradictory briefings. On the face of it, the energy promise looks a particular stretch since it would require the EU to divert the bulk of its annual €375 billion energy spend to the US. Currently it buys just 17 percent of its oil, its biggest energy import, from the US. Perhaps these are just numbers plucked out of thin air to please Trump and not meant to be taken seriously.

EXCLUSIVE

Trump Made 'Mistake of Historic Proportions' on Ukraine Says His Former Ambassador

The United States' former ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, tells Alexandra Hall Hall that she couldn't "in good conscience" execute the President's plans for the country

Alexandra Hall Hall

What the EU gets out of this hopelessly one-sided arrangement is simply the chance to avoid what could have been an even worse outcome. Had no deal been reached, Trump was threatening to impose a 30 percent tariff on all EU imports from August 1. The best that can be said for this deal, from a European perspective, is that in accepting a baseline 15 percent tariff, European businesses will avoid some of the much higher tariffs that Trump has introduced for certain sectors, most notably automotive imports, although it seems not steel and aluminium. On the basis that 15 percent becomes the new baseline tariff for most countries, other than the UK which will receive a tariff of 10 percent, the EU will at least not be at a competitive disadvantage.

Meanwhile, Trump has not had it all his own way. The US president has had to abandon his demand that the EU change aspects of its regulations on sectors such as digital services, pharmaceuticals and agriculture to suit US corporate interests. The irony is that this was the one thing that US businesses wanted out of a trade deal above all else. Indeed, removing such barriers to trade was the focus of the TTIP negotiations and subsequent EU-US trade initiatives. In surrendering this core US interest and prioritising instead tariff revenues, Trump has delivered to US businesses the worst of both worlds: higher taxes and no enhanced market access.

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A charred car, struck by a Russian FPV drone, caught Ukrainian photojournalist Ivan Antypenko's eye as he drove along the Kherson-Mykolaiv highway.

"Bad news," he wrote on social media.

Reporting from the south of Ukraine since the start of the Russian full-scale invasion in 2022, Antypenko has documented dozens of drone-struck vehicles. This one was different: he knew it was a harbinger of a drone siege.

For Kherson, a city of 60,000, separated from the Russian military by less than a mile of the Dnipro River and under non-stop attacks, the highway to Mykolaiv, a major seaport, is a lifeline to Ukrainian-controlled territory. The highway is Kherson's main artery for evacuation, aid and supply. In July 2025, that lifeline is being severed - from the sky. If this strategy succeeds, Kherson risks becoming the first city besieged by drones.

The city and its main highway are already a "kill zone" - a stretch near the frontline dominated by first-person-view (FPV) drones, remotely operated aircraft used by both sides to strike military and civilian targets with speed and precision. Shutting down Kherson's main road with FPV drones would allow Russian forces to encircle the city for the second time since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022 - this time, without setting foot on the ground.

Russian drone attacks along the Kherson-Mykolaiv highway increased to one to two cars per week during July 2025, according to Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, Deputy Head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration.

"There have been at least three recent attacks in Klapaya and near the Chornobaivka checkpoint," said Tolokonnikov in an interview with Byline Times. "One of the targeted vehicles belonged to the Chief Rabbi of Kherson - he and his family were unharmed."

Antypenko and other local journalists reported that farmers in the Kherson region could not harvest crops sown last autumn or spring due to attacks by large FPV drones and artillery setting fire to fields and agricultural equipment.

It is possible that the Russian military is shifting tactics because drone defence inside Kherson has improved, according to Tolokonnikov. Parts of the city are now shielded with anti-drone nets. Ukrainian forces use electronic warfare, small arms and target Russian drone crews across the river. As Kherson becomes harder to hit directly, Russian drone pilots are targeting its outskirts and the road to Mykolaiv.

"The Russians know it's a key route, and that is precisely why they are targeting it," said Tolokonnikov.

Authorities have urged civilians to avoid the route unless absolutely necessary, and anti-drone nets are now being installed in the Chornobaivka area. Yet, once considered safe, the road is now lethal.

The strategy is clear: isolate, choke supply lines and break resistance without direct engagement. The city is being besieged - by unmanned systems alone. If this tactic succeeds, Kherson faces a humanitarian crisis.

Geography

Kherson sits on the right (western) bank of the Dnipro River. To the east lies the river, now a frontline, and the Russian-occupied left bank, from which artillery and drones strike the city daily. Around Kherson, the fields are mined and side dirt roads are destroyed - not accessible in wet weather and impassable for supply trucks. Russian forces continue remote mining. Large sections of key roads, such as the Mar'yanske-Beryslav road and the route to Snihurivka, are already compromised or under Russian drone control, according to Antypenko.

"The side roads closer to the river are under drone and artillery attack," said Oleh, a Kherson volunteer. "Security measures implemented by our authorities are not efficient enough. Remote mining is another problem."

The only open and accessible route to and from Kherson is the highway to Mykolaiv. This single a...

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American diplomat, Bridget Brink, resigned in April from her position as US Ambassador to Ukraine, after she concluded she could no longer conduct the Trump administration's policy towards that country in good conscience. Since then, she has decided to run for public office, as a Democrat Party candidate for the US House of Representatives, representing her home state of Michigan.

I've known Bridget for over 12 years, since we were both posted to the Republic of Georgia in the Caucasus in the mid-2010s. We became good friends due to our shared professional and personal interests (she is married to a Brit, I am married to an American, and we have sons of similar age.) Now we have resignations from our respective foreign services in common too - me over Boris Johnson's dishonesty about Brexit, and her over Trump's policy on Ukraine.

I recently interviewed her about what propelled her into public service, what brought her to the point of resignation, the dangers she sees to American interests at home and abroad under Trump, and what she hopes to achieve if elected to Congress.

Bridget said she grew up in a small town in Michigan, imbued with the traditional Mid-Western values of hard work, integrity, and "doing the right thing". She inherited a commitment to the public good from her mother, who was a teacher, her father, a public prosecutor, and her grandparents, who served in World War 2. In 1989, aged 19, she studied abroad for a year at the London School of Economics, just around the time the Berlin Wall came down. "I was too young to know what it all meant, but I knew it was big." Her time in London, where she later met her husband, "opened my world" and she eventually decided to join the US Foreign Service.

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Her career became anchored in Europe, with postings to the Balkans, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Slovakia and finally Ukraine ("the culmination of my experience") as well as several senior European policy assignments in Washington, serving under Democrat and Republican Presidents. "I was so proud. I loved being a diplomat in Europe. I believed in the values of our country - democracy, human rights, the rule of law, free markets - which we shared with our European partners." She felt committed to the dream of achieving a "Europe whole, free and at peace", and regarded the transatlantic relationship as the foundation of American strength, with the US and Europe as each other's most important security and economic partners, working together to tackle global issues.

Bridget believes the challenge of Russia and Putin predates the current Trump Administration. Successive administrations erred in overestimating the potential for Russia to integrate with the West, underestimating the challenges facing the Russian people after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and misjudging how much they could achieve together. Every President thought they could do better than their predecessors in establishing better relations with Russia, but "Russian goals are completely at odds with ours. Especially under the current President [Putin], their goals are to create chaos, weaken Europe's democratic institutions, divide the EU, and undermine the US."

Europe's problems with populism today stem from these historical roots. Putin was using hybrid tactics very successfully to exploit fissures in democratic societies, for example, by propelling migrants from Syria into Europe to fuel public discord.

When Trump was re-elected President, Bridget hoped she would be able to "make it work" with the new team. Immediately after the November election, ...

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The United States is in the throes of an unprecedented homelessness crisis that is about to be made drastically worse by Donald Trump's 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act' (OBBBA) signed into law earlier this month, housing campaigners have warned.

Older Americans, including those on low incomes reliant on social safety net programs, are especially vulnerable to becoming homeless once the billions of dollars of cuts laid out in the new legislation come into force.

Researchers were warning of a homelessness cliff edge for seniors even before the new legislation's cuts, attributable to factors such as the ongoing cost of living crisis hitting those on fixed incomes in retirement hard, as well as soaring rents and a dire lack of affordable or subsidised housing at a time when the population is ageing.

Recent data shows that rents in 2023 were unaffordable for 22.6 million households around the country while one study from Harvard calculated that a third of people over 65 were "cost burdened" due to high rent and utilities bills, putting them at greater risk of later-life homelessness.

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According to survey data, over the past two decades, the number of seniors spending more than half their income on housing has doubled from 5.2 million to nearly 11.7 million, putting huge pressure on household budgets.

Homelessness rates in the US hit a record level in 2024 with more than 770,000 people unhoused on a given night (up 18.1% from 2023), according to the most recent government figures.

Homelessness was once rare among older adults but people over 50 are now the fastest growing cohort among the unhoused, with many experiencing homelessness for the first time and the number expected to triple by 2030.

Against this backdrop, housing advocates contend that the passing of the OBBBA, a 900+ page mega tax and spending law that includes historically high cuts to social safety net programs essential to millions of seniors, constitutes a ticking time bomb for elder homelessness and will exacerbate destitution.

Monica Davalos, senior policy analyst at the California Budget and Policy Center, says older people already struggling to get by will find their problems compounded. "Fundamentally folks just don't have enough to meet their needs," she says of the precarity many older Americans face. The OBBBA cuts, including slashing access to government health insurance, will "create even more housing vulnerability," she concludes.

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For many older people, especially those from low-income backgrounds or with a history of poverty, cuts to federally-funded assistance programs will mean they are stretched to breaking point, not only swelling the number of older people who fall into homelessness but with the knock-on effect of overwhelming already strained housing and financial support services, Davalos adds.

People were "falling through the cracks," even before the new cuts, most of which are due to take effect after the November 2026 mid-term elections.

States, including California, which has battled with addressing an entrenched homeless problem for years and according to most recent data accounts for 24% of the nation's homeless population, will no doubt try to mitigate some of the fallout triggered by the OBBBA, Davalos says, but the "unprecedented" scale of the f...

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A new tool collating data on the funding of All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) over the last three years highlights transparency loopholes in the rules surrounding their funding.

The tool, from the consultancy Cast From Clay, alerted Byline Times to two loopholes in the transparency rules of APPG funding.

Companies such as Murdoch's News Corp and defence contractors like Lockheed Martin are able to conceal how much funding they are giving to APPGs by funding the secretariat, but not the APPG itself. Byline also found that the number of Policy Liaison Groups (PLGs) which act as APPGs without having to obey transparency rules has doubled since they were first established last year.

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APPGs, informal groups in Parliament which conduct research and make policy recommendations, have come under fire in recent years for acting as a form of lobbying integrated into the Westminster system.

APPGs are made up of MPs and peers, but can have secretariats staffed or funded by third parties meaning various special interests such as think tanks, companies, or campaign groups can gain regular access to MPs.

In 2023, new rules were introduced to improve transparency, including increasing the minimum numbers of members an APPG must have, mandatory yearly declarations of funding above £1500, and a ban on funding from foreign governments. Despite these attempts, ways remain to skirt the rules and avoid scrutiny.

Currently it is impossible to know how much a company is giving to an APPG when they are funding the secretariat, but not the APPG directly.

This means that there is no way of knowing how much money defence firms and News UK are donating to parliamentary research.

What the Tool Revealed

The APPG on Defence Technology received £61,000 from APPG Secretariat Services Ltd.

The public record states who the secretariat is funded by, but does not reveal the proportions of the funding.

Consequently, there is no way of knowing if the bulk of the funding came from the data services firm Capita, the engineering firm Ultra Electronics, the Story Homes construction company, or the arms manufacturers Leonardo and Lockheed Martin who also fund the APPG secretariat, or if all firms donated similar amounts.

Similarly News UK, which owns The Times and The Sun, funds Whitehouse Communications which acts as the secretariat for the Media APPG but it is unclear if the bulk of the £112,000 the APPG has received over the last three years comes from Murdoch, or from Bauer and the creative agencies that also fund the secretariat.

Tom Hashemi of Cast From Clay explained: "This masks who wields real influence: one company might provide £20,000 while another gives £1,000, but they appear identical on the register. The implications of this could be serious.

MPs engaging with these groups may have no idea whose interests dominate the funding, potentially championing policies that favour specific market players without realising it, or allowing wealthy interests to quietly steer the policy conversation while smaller contributors create an illusion of broad support

Tom Hashemi of Cast From Clay

Hashemi added: "The 2023 rule changes intended to make APPGs transparent. This loophole seems an oversight".

A second loophole is the rebranding of certain APPGs as Policy Liaison Groups (PLGs), a term with no official status, but which is not covered by the rules.

In 2024, Peter Geoghegan reported for The Times that three APPGs had been repackaged as PLGs by College Green Group, a political consultancy run by Thomas Borwick, formerly the chief technology officer for the Vote Lea...

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Staff working for the University and Colleges Union say it is a "toxic" workplace where junior staff are subjected to "managerial bullying and intimidation" with workplace racism as its "worst expression".

The staff, represented by Unite, are balloting for a third round of strike action over the claims.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) sanctioned UCU in 2023 for "failing to meet statutory duties to prevent stress at work" with the regulator warning of a high number of work-related stress days taken by staff.

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Since then, a UCU source says work-related stress has exploded from "around 300 days lost in 2023" - the time of that HSE sanction - to "around 800 days lost" in 2024. The UCU union has not denied the claim.

Around half of the 20 Unite committee representatives are now "on disciplinary procedures or under threat" of job losses, according to the source, who declined to be named.

UCU staff have taken six weeks of strike action over March, April and May this year - and more industrial action looms if the dispute is not resolved.

A third strike ballot went out this week, and workers are understood to be preparing for further potential industrial action in September.

As the UCU source told Byline Times: "Happy workers don't vote for strike action…happy workers then don't do it three times."

Byline Times has also seen what appear to be 'gagging clauses', used when staff leave the organisation amid disputes over alleged bullying.

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The dispute occurs during an "existential crisis" in the higher education sector amid funding cuts and reduced foreign student numbers.

There are multiple disputes taking place within trade unions, including with the National Education Union.

The UCU dispute represents a significant breakdown in industrial relations within another of the UK's major education unions, and by far the largest in higher education.

A spokesperson for the UCU said the decision by the Unite UCU branch to pursue another strike ballot is "deeply disappointing, particularly given the extensive efforts made to engage in good faith and make meaningful progress on all points of the dispute".

The spokesperson added: "The fact that the overwhelming majority of UCU staff did not support the most recent industrial action underscores just how contested and unrepresentative this course of action is.

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"We acknowledge the rise in stress-related absences and are actively working to understand and address the causes. However, continued escalation by the branch leadership does little to support staff wellbeing and serves only to deepen division."

The spokesperson said "confidentiality clauses" are "occasionally negotiated as part of a settlement agreement when staff leave UCU".

"They are never imposed and are only agreed with the full consent of the individuals involved. In the majority of cases, such agreements have been reached by members advised by Unite representatives negotiating on behalf of departing staff, and we ensure that independent legal advice at UCU's cost is provided and is taken on behalf of departing staff. These arrangements are mutually beneficial and standard practice in empl...

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The first sitting of the House of the People, a citizens' assembly initiative by the group Assemble has recommended a "People's Charter" of citizen-led policy proposals.

These include a wealth tax, strengthening anticorruption laws to prohibit lobbying, an immediate arms embargo for all countries acting in violation of international law, the "long term decommodification of housing", and the creation of a Future Generations Act to ensure that Government policy takes into account those not yet born.

The House of the People gathered over three days in London this week to deliberate, debate and generate policy ideas after discussions with experts, such as the economist Richard Murphy, the head of policy at Greenpeace, Doug Parr, and Leigh Evans, a nurse who has worked in Gaza. Around 100 people attended.

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Some 1,500 have participated in Assemble's local assemblies over the past two years. 50% of the "members" of the House of the People, which the organisers call a "parallel parliament", were drawn by sortition from those assemblies, with the remainder remaining recruited from the public.

At this week's assembly, members debated four themes - democratic renewal, unjust war and genocide, wealth inequality and climate breakdown - which were generated through local assemblies where people were asked what the problems are in their area, and what changes they want to see in the UK.

Ishana Atkinson told Byline Times the assembly had been "an incredible experience, I feel like I've learnt so much".

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She continued: "I feel like I've gone in with a bit of understanding about the main topics we've been looking at; democracy, and unjust war and genocide, the environment and climate and also wealth inequality. I knew a little bit about each thing, but I feel like I've been learning a lot and also about how to synthesise a lot of information and turn it into actionable policies that we could recommend to the Government".

Assemble intends to use the proposals generated by the sittings to provide a policy platform that campaign groups can coalesce around and to put pressure on the Government, and push for change. This will include a "rush on parliament" in the style of the Suffragettes.

Small political formations across England, such as Southport Community Independents and Majority, a party run by Jamie Driscoll, the former Mayor of the North of Tyne, are working with Assemble to run local assemblies and generate policies that they believe are more likely to resonate with the electorate, because they've come directly from them.

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The first House of the People sitting attracted a more politicised, progressive-leaning section of the citizenry, but Assemble intends to make assemblies more representative.

Yaz Ashmawi, a facilitator at the assembly told Byline Times that he hopes people with different beliefs join the assemblies, arguing that they could play a vital role in combating the far-right: "The whole ...

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In a virtual corner of Whitehall, buried within the Ministry of Defence's digital filing system, a cultural audit of the British Army sat, unread by the public.

Written in 2022, by Professor Anthony King, then Chair of War Studies at the University of Warwick, the report, 'To Fight and Win', would have stayed in the shadows, until it was brought into the light by researcher Joe Lloyd via a Freedom of Information request.

It's no surprise it took the force of the law to publish it. Its findings are damning.

The Army, the report notes - perhaps self-evidently - "is currently coded masculine." But that observation sits at the heart of the 109-page document which combines scholarly analysis with hundreds of hours of interviews across ranks and regiments to offer an unflinching portrait of Britain's military that, despite years of reform, remains "routinely and recurrently" hostile to women.

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The Army's challenge, King writes, is transforming a culture that believes itself "as necessarily masculine, best performed by men". Female soldiers, even when competent and committed, are "accidentally marginalised" at best, and victims of "purposeful" discrimination or predation at worst. Where structural barriers and behavioural norms combine to make women feel like "secondary", "weaker, worse soldiers".

The report's frankness is striking. It details "lad culture" among junior ranks where hard drinking and misogyny fuels misconduct. It describes the pernicious use of WhatsApp, often deployed by male soldiers to target or humiliate female colleagues. And it recounts how women, facing harassment or worse, see their complaints minimised, mishandled, or ignored altogether.

As the report notes: "Door-knocking typically occurs at night, often after personnel have been drinking. It is common for male soldiers to knock on a female's door soliciting her for sex." One case involved a soldier knocking for two hours on a woman's door; as the report notes, "he received no formal punishment; he was not even fined."

Male soldiers routinely sent photographs of their penises to female colleagues or stalked them on WhatsApp. One female told King: "At 17-years-old, I got dick-pics from people I didn't know." The report described how "a senior (officer) had slapped a female soldier's rear during a mess function", with no consequence to the offender.

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As the report laid out, "many females who had been subjected to predatory behaviour… or even outright sexual assault reported that the culprits had not been punished or were still in the Army."

King detailed how, following a military exercise, a "staff sergeant who had assaulted multiple young female soldiers was acquitted at court martial, though he later wrote letters to his victims admitting what he had done."

King critiqued how the Army's own values seem inconsistently applied. The report points out that the British Army enforces a rigid zero-tolerance policy on drug use, dismissing soldiers regardless of circumstances, yet often fails to apply the same standard to cases of sexual misconduct.

This disparity has led many female soldiers to believe they are treated as "second-class citizens" within the institution. As one female officer noted: "If a woman is at the back of a run, that is a problem, but a cha...

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Compare the UK Government's recent announcements on AI with the US tech industry's press releases and it can often be hard to tell the difference.

This week the Technology Secretary announced a new 'partnership' with OpenAI - a multi-billion dollar tech giant that has aligned itself closely with US President Donald Trump.

"This partnership will support the UK's goal to build sovereign AI in the UK," claims Peter Kyle's Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Sam Altman's firm. What it fails to explain is exactly how putting more key digital infrastructure in the hands of a US tech giant will help build the UK's 'sovereign' capacity.

The tech secretary's announcement is reminiscent of OpenAI's recent sales pitch: earlier this year, they announced, "OpenAI for Countries, our new global initiative to help interested governments build sovereign AI capability in coordination with the U.S. government".

But this partnership, rather than developing the 'sovereign AI' promised by OpenAI, risks further entrenching the UK's reliance on US Big Tech.

It is, in fact, the exact opposite of Kyle's rhetoric: binding our country into deals with Google and OpenAI not only opens up our data to train their tools, but will force us to be a rule taker from Silicon Valley, with little agency over our own digital future.

There is a level of credulity towards the claims of Big Tech that we have come to expect from this Government - and in particular from a Secretary of State who has been described as "the honourable member for Silicon Valley".

Ministers are facing a range of serious challenges, but they are often all too willing to see the AI products being hawked by tech giants as a near-magical solution.

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Just in the past few months, we've heard claims that AI tools will help save vast amounts of taxpayers' money and civil servants' time. Ministers have claimed that AI summaries will cut the backlog of asylum cases - while downplaying findings that they will also introduce a significant number of errors into what can be a life or death decision-making process.

Documents unearthed by Foxglove, the tech justice NGO where I work, have revealed that ministers seeking to prop up an overwhelmed justice system sought ideas from tech and security companies at a recent summit. Among the suggestions: using super-computers to predict crime and the potential of "subcutaneous tracking" for "behavioural management".

And just this week, the border security Minister said that AI tools used by online retailers to estimate age should be deployed to assess whether children seeking asylum are treated as adults.

Whatever the problem, it seems, ministers are happy to take Big Tech's most optimistic PR fluff as the solution.

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Meanwhile, the secretary of state seems to view himself primarily as a cheerleader for US tech giants with concerns being raised over just how regularly he meets with the likes of Microsoft, Amazon and Google. He even told Amazon that he would "advocate" for them with the Government's competition watchdog - at the same time that they were being investigated by them.

This is surprising, as just a brief look across the Atlantic will show just how closely these very same tech companies are working with Trump, to mutually advance a distinctly 'America First' agenda in which US dominance is secured by rolling out its AI products across t...

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Ten years ago, whilst Labour was undergoing a leadership contest following Ed Miliband's tenure, I wrote an article for the New Statesman asking what would be left for the Green Party if Jeremy Corbyn were to win party leadership. Of course, he did and looking back at my article now, it does seem rather prophetic. The Green Party struggled to advance during Corbyn's tenure - the only time in the last 20 years when the Party hasn't advanced.

Partly this was because it did not articulate a clear enough separate sense of its destiny from Corbynism.

Now, a decade on, we finally know for sure that Corbyn is creating a new party with Zarah Sultana, and we once again must ask how this is going to impact the Green Party. We must fear that the Greens will really struggle - unless they strike a deliberate pose as not just contesting the very same space.

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Neal Lawson

In the Green Party, we often tend nowadays to view ourselves as a left-wing party. A lot of this might have more to do with the established parties moving further to the right on economic policy rather than the Green Party having changed its position over time. Nevertheless, the Greens are now sometimes claimed, to be the only major Left-wing party across the UK.

The graph below is from the Political Compass's website which they produced at the last General Election (May 2024), showing where the parties of the UK fit upon spectrums of left/right and authoritarianism/liberalism. As you will quickly notice, the Green Party is the only UK-wide party that fits into the left and libertarian grid. Furthermore, all other major parties are in the same right and authoritarian grid. The political bunching of ideology between the other parties currently constitutes the major strength of the Green Party: actually offering an alternative.

There is a very obvious worry now that the Green Party will lose this edge of being the only left option on the ballot box with the inception of Corbyn's new party. Due to both being 'on the left', there are naturally a fair few items upon which the Greens align with Corbyn, such as Palestine, the Green New Deal, wealth taxes, public ownership and a rise in public service expenditure. Currently, the Green Party attracts, broadly speaking, three categories of voters; those who consider themselves green-minded primarily, those who think of themselves primarily as libertarian, and those who think of themselves through the lens of being 'Left'.

Corbyn's new party will almost definitely succeed to a considerable extent in taking one of these groups away from the Greens, since anyone looking for a Left Party will always prefer one that is Left first and foremost rather than Green first and foremost.

This is fact. It is pointlessly Canute-like to try to resist it.

Ten years ago, the Green Party's approach to Corbynism in the Labour Party was to some extent to itself veer to the left. The rationale behind this was to try and retain the left-wing-primarily voter base. However, this was a losing battle from the start. Corbyn will always be more appealing to this base. The Green Party must not waste its time on becoming "more left wing than thou" to compete and try to save their portion of this voter base, because it will not work plus it may alienate the other voter bases who want to see a Party who is committed to environmental issues above other concerns, and/or a Party that is libertarian in outlook.

In case anyone misunderstands, thinking that I am trying to reduce 'left-wing' policy in the Green Party, I am not. I am simply arguing that the Greens need to be a Green-first party. Additionally some of our future potential...