Reasons to be Bold

Our society needs to go on a journey. The destination: uncharted territory. Achieving different outcomes will require bold interventions, and a willingness to be strategic, opportunist and build a mandate for what is difficult to conceive let alone communicate. Are greens ready to be transformative?

Peter Sims

11 May 2026

To be bold. Not merely claim to be bold, or only to frame actions as bold to massage the egos of those that might implement them. But to intervene in the structure and incentives in our economy in a way that reshapes public perception of the very limits of the possible. It’s not about taking an extreme position on every issue, but acting in a coherent way that sets the political frame for decades (as the governments of 1945 and 1979 did). Forcing political adversaries to return to the drawing board with their own proposals. After all, bold is a relative term, just as the ‘radical’ in 1887 ‘True Radical Programme’ was.

So, why must Greens avoid being trapped by the confines of the current political and media chess board? Why must we Greens have a vision and strategy that moves goal posts, changes the game and refines the purpose of government?

Because the outcomes that Greens call for cannot be delivered by minor tweaks to our unhealthy economy.
Because every crisis creates an opportunity and if Greens let these pass us by, we can be sure that our adversaries will harness the mandate they present for their own aims.
Because bold interventions are the only possible route to a process of transformation that our society has any control over. And transformation is the only conceivable route out of our predicament.

There is one other big reason to push for bold interventions. If Greens don’t, then they leave the door open for populist authoritarians like Reform UK. They may have no intention of delivering half of what they talk about, but they offer bold leadership and a story of significant reform. People get it. They know our economy is faltering, our society is unhealthy and the vast wealth that our economy does still produce is being syphoned off while their lives get harder. Sticking plasters and incremental reforms won’t wash. If citizens lend their trust to Green Parties to sort this mess out, and Greens gain some power but fail to grasp the nettle and demand if not enact transformative changes, then people will take that trust elsewhere very quickly. No second chances. You only have to look at Greens elsewhere in Europe who have ended up in coalitions to see examples of this. If it looks like Greens are in power (even in coalition), and it still feels to most people like business as usual with some tweaks, rather than undoing decades of rising inequality and falling opportunity. It will be too late.

Moving the Deckchairs Won’t Fix a Sinking Ship

The first reason to be bold is that you don’t get something different by doing more of the same. Our economy has outputs and outcomes, some intended, some not, both arising from political choices about how our economy is run and structured. Outputs include food, goods, services, housing, entertainment, as well as lethal weapons, and‘waste’. Outcomes include life expectancy, education, avoidable ill health, pollution, inequality, depletion of resources, impacts on biodiversity and the imposition of stress and hardship on members of our communities. The green movement argue that our economy should serve the needs of our society. Clearly, in major ways, it simply does not do so today. This is the source of a lot of anger and frustration across our society.

The outputs and outcomes of our economy are primarily determined by its structure. And that, in a market economy like the UK currently has, is mostly determined by prices. If growing biofuels is more profitable than growing food, farms change what they grow. If UK apples are more expensive than imported apples, our economy imports apples (and our orchards are abandoned or grubbed up). Yes, there are levers used by government, like regulation, taxation and public investment. However often a major effect of such policy levers is to change prices. Yes, there is constantly evolving technology, but that also affects prices. If it’s cheaper to get robots to milk cows, than humans, then our economy will use more energy and materials (for the robots) and less people.

As greens, we are clear that the outputs and outcomes of our economy need to change. Continue inequality, poverty and avoidable ill health are unjustifiable, and must be reduced. Chasing endless economic growth on a finite planet is futile and will not make us happier. Pollution produced by our economy, and its dependence on finite resources (e.g. fossil fuels) must be scaled back rapidly. Resilience must be increased so that our economy, and our basic needs are not dependent upon uncertain global markets or the whims of foreign leaders.

The changes in outcomes that greens demand are not minor. The public are fed up with being promised a better deal and then being fobbed off with token gestures. Inequality has been rising for decades whilst services are hollowed out. People rightly expect noticeable and sustained change. Successive governments have ignored our looming existential predicament: climate breakdown, ecosystem collapse, and the overshoot of safe planetary boundaries. There is a pressing need for rapid change on all fronts.

Major changes in outcomes require large changes in prices and the structure of our economy. Big changes require being disruptive. The status quo of rising inequality must be disrupted. Yes, there are small changes here and there that are worth doing. But these need to go hand in hand with structural reform and significant pricing changes (including wages) if our economy is to start operating differently.

Crisis and Opportunity

A second reason to be bold is to never waste a crisis. This argument is not new, and greens’ political adversaries have utilised it in recent decades to push through austerity, NHS privatisation, uncompetitive (if not corrupt) public sector contracts and licencing new oil fields. This is well charted in Naomi Klein’s book ‘The Shock Doctrine’. Crises create public mandates for action – people always want something to be done. This opportunity extends into the aftermath of crises too. In 1945 World War Two might have been over in Europe, but a general election gave Clement Attlee’s new government a mandate for bold new post-war trajectory. Similar opportunities existed post 2008 and post pandemic of 2020-23, but in both cases the Government ended up largely re-enforcing the pre-existing status quo.

Grasping such opportunities is not easy, and often not the way of working that greens feel most comfortable with. However true it maybe, Green Parties leading with ‘if 20 years ago our government had invested more in renewables and sustainable farming to reduce reliance on artificial fertiliser, then…’ just sounds like ‘I told you so’ (and doesn’t land well). Greens must be organised. Must have enough collective clarity to exploit crises and leverage the disruption they threatens to justify bold interventions that are required to combat rising inequality and ecological breakdown. In times of stability, it is hard to generate the mandate for big disruptive interventions. However, when there is already disruption, or looming disruption, and there is already broad consensus that the existing system is not fit for purpose, the debate becomes over what bold change to make, rather than whether to shake things up at all.

Choosing Transformation

The third reason to be bold is already fundamental to many greens. Bold action is the only route to sufficient transformation. It is often hard to imagine how our society could possibly reconfigure itself to navigate the myriad challenges that our predicament presents.

If we take just one dimension, say climate, the task of rapid decarbonisation alone, on a time frame that is anything like equitable (critical for diplomatic efforts to get all countries on board), can seem almost implausible. Combine that with addressing the debilitating levels of inequality in our society, the mental health crisis, the rise of non-communicable diseases, biodiversity loss, ageing population, and so on. The mass of issues can seem overwhelming! But a systemic, joined up approach is critical; as focusing on one bit at a time risks moving the problem around, and the situation deteriorating overall.

Building a mandate for the scale of systemic change and the interventions needed to tackle all aspects at once may seem rather daunting. This is where the concept of transformation or metamorphosis becomes critical. It is impossible to accurately sketch out a path from our current economy to a sufficient economy (i.e. one that addresses all the challenges of our predicament). The limits of human imagination are part of this. However more significantly it is because our economy is a dynamic system, which is interrelated with lots of other dynamic systems: other economies round the world, communities, and earth systems like ocean currents and weather systems. It is possible to make fairly reliable estimates of what the impact of a set of changes to our economy in the short term will be. However, when you start to layer lots of sets of changes over a longer period with all possible changes that other actors and systems may introduce, the complexity increases exponentially and the certainty of predictions collapses.

The human instinct is often to go slow, be incremental, water down bold changes. However, this traps our society on a very limited range of trajectories. Increasingly this means our society is left behind and unprepared in a rapidly changing world, constantly buffeted by crisis after crisis that it is not equipped to manage. This is the low political risk approach in the short term but leads to ever increasing suffering with little to be proud of. In terms of allowing our society to flourish long term, it is a very risky bet indeed.

The alternative, however scary it may sound, is transformation. Being willing to innovate, not (or not just) technologically, but structurally (including democratic innovation). Accepting there is no certainty. No certainty that the transformation will pan out quite how we imagine it might. No certainty that everything we might hope for will be possible. No certainty that all the dynamics set in motion will remain under the government’s ability to control them. Transformation offers no guarantee all harms can be avoided — it may already not be possible to avert catastrophic impacts from climate change — but it is the best strategy out there for minimising harm (even given it’s risks). If our government makes bold interventions, pushes the envelope of what there is a public mandate for and creates structural changes in our economy, then we open up the path to metamorphosis.

This could be enacted by a government with Greens at the helm or one under pressure from movement of greens in and outside parliament. Either way, this means both Greens and the government shifting from a rigid planned approach, to a strategic one. Government needs to pull some levers hard to set big changes in motion and then be ready to adjust and guide the trajectory of societal transformation. This approach is not without risk, but the potential reward is far greater than tweaking around the edges of a broken system. By being bold, we can unlock ways of configuring our economy that we currently struggle to conceive.

In a largely market economy like ours, this means big changes in prices. It is wrong to assume that every person and company always makes 100% rational economic choices. However, there is some truth in it, particularly in the commercial and industrial sectors. If companies are faced with a very different landscape in terms of the relative cost of different goods, services and ways of operating, they will reconfigure themselves and make different operating choices. This will lead to different outcomes (which is what greens are aiming for). This is not to say that all change is good change, and that there will not be winners and losers. Some companies will be wound up; others will thrive. However, change can create opportunities, whether for new enterprises or shifting business models. A farm going bust makes resources (e.g. land) available, and this creates an opportunity in our economy. However, the more fundamental point is that without change, you can’t have good change.

Deliberate systemic transformation is the best strategy out there for minimising harm from our worsening predicament (even given the it’s risks that come with upheaval). The status quo plus incremental change traps our society on a dead-end trajectory of ever increasing frailty and vulnerability. Ultimately, some might argue that transformation of one form or another is inevitable. The question is just whether our government initiates it, and steers it, or whether we let global dynamics and earth systems force it upon us.

In politics, there is always a choice.

Should Greens spend their limited time and power pushing for the no brainer interventions that incrementalists have been advocating for decades? Or do they go further? Should they temper the policy proposes they know are needed to be sufficiently transformative because they are politically difficult? Should Greens downplay their own policies when defending them is complicated and takes politics into the difficult trade-offs inherent in our predicament? To be bold is to expand the limits of the politically possible, to push for that for which the argument needs making. Often that which politics must be forced to confront.

The UK governments of recent decades have been feeble, beset with infighting, or primarily motivated by a combination of the corrupt interests of big party donors and ideological dogma. Vast tracts of previously lively political space has been largely abandoned. People feel ignored and disillusioned.

But leadership requires ambition going beyond undoing the worst decisions of current and previous governments. Greens must build a mandate for societal metamorphosis and face up to the difficult realities that many in politics prefer to obscure.

Greens must be bold. They must articulate a bold vision, and have a bold plan. They must create political mandates for that which our predicament demands, not feel corner by issues at front of public’s concerns. Inequality is structural, and different outcomes require different inputs. Our adversaries never waste a crisis. Transformation requires taking risks – It is hard to create something new by playing it safe.