ONE of the things I like most about Caroline Lucas, the Green Party’s sole MP, is that she is nowhere near as nice as she seems. The self-imposed task of giving direction to that quarrelsome assembly of semi-autonomous self governing identity groups that is today’s Green Party would try the patience of a saint.

And, in the various manoeuvrings that have seen the party’s leadership several times reconstituted and its policies realigned, she has operated with a skill-set that makes her a First Division practitioner of the Machiavellian dark arts. All this with the added utility of a sympathetic smile and a winning manner.

It is still possible to hold on to a fair measure of respect for Britain’s Greens. They played a mostly constructive part in the anti-war movement although Lucas did later resign as vice-president of the Stop the War Coalition when she encountered an imperial war waged on a regime of which she disapproved almost as much as war itself.

Mostly, the Greens keep a rational approach to the wide range of environmental problems that need tackling in any developed industrial society and their focus on this issue accords them a legitimacy.

But Caroline Lucas’s latest and bizarre proposal raises the question of whether or not she has lost the plot and casts doubt on the common-sense of her colleagues in the party’s leadership — always assuming of course they were consulted.

She has written to 10 women politicians, from across the political spectrum, to propose a female cabinet of national unity, essentially a National Government, to facilitate a parliamentary move to block a no-deal Brexit.

No sooner had she put pen to paper than she was obliged to offer apologies for failing to include any women of colour in her putative cabinet. She quickly recognised this was a symptomatic absence of some magnitude. Presumably Emily Thornberry made the list because she is an ardent Remainer but with Diane Abbott also of that persuasion and a rich assembly of talented black women on Labour’s benches this omission immediately transformed the whole exercise into an own goal.

If national unity was indeed the goal of her bid to supplant the male ego in politics with the transformative balm of feminine intuition she might have considered including a half dozen women Brexiteers in her line-up. We would then see if their mutual empathy could resolve a Brexit crisis which has so far eluded those of us burdened with the Y chromosome.

Not that her idea of an all female cabinet rescuing our nations from a precipitate rush to leave the EU was anything more than a look-at-me publicity ploy.

Her letter is a perfect example of the slightly deranged state which an overdose of unreflexive Remainer rhetoric has sometimes driven politicians — those whose present-day priority is to subvert the referendum result — to turn reality upside down.

The central conceit which underpins much of the manoeuvring to stop Britain leaving the EU is that democracy is broken. Lucas seems unconcerned that the political establishment — into which she is now seemingly inducted — has spent three years trying to subvert Britain’s biggest ever popular vote.

Rather than the interplay of the genuine political differences which animate class struggle — and its reflection in party politics and popular debate — Caroline Lucas wants elected politicians to set aside politics in a “national interest” defined precisely by a political position which, by a substantial majority, British people have already rejected.

The self defeating default position of the most rabid Remainers is to categorise all who voted for Brexit as racist reactionaries. This is very bad politics not only because about one-third of Greens, of Lib Dems and SNP voters opted for Brexit. If Ms Lucas — or her Amazonian ensemble — want to change the minds of the voters who made up the majority in the referendum they should treat them with respect. To describe voters in terms which conflict so powerfully with the image most have of themselves, even if this self-image itself is imperfect, is not the way to advance in politics.

This, of course, is also a piece of advice a fair few Brexiteers could well take note of.

The whole Brexit debate has been a dispiriting affair, conducted mostly by a media and a legislature out of step with wide swathes of popular opinion.

Much of the polling evidence suggests that very few people have changed their mind either way.

This is as likely true of Green voters as any other cohort of the common people.

Indeed,until a few years ago the Green Party was quite trenchant in its criticism of the EU and its new policy of enthusiastic support for the EU seems to have come about without much in the way of a debate and leaves stranded many of the detailed criticisms which the Greens once made of the EU.

The Greens once proudly stated that their MEPs strive against big business interests to bring sustainability into EU economic policy. It was Caroline Lucas, as an MEP, and as a member of the No to the Euro campaign, who made the progressive, internationalist case against the euro.

The Greens said Britain should set its own levels of taxation, public spending and public borrowing in accordance with its particular needs. “The Single Currency was designed to serve big business — not the interests of the people” they asserted.

Indeed, the compendium of Green assaults on the European Union, on the EU Common Agricultural Policy, the EU’s parasitic relations with the Global South and the EU’s defence policy leaves precious little which present-day LeFt leavers could object to.

Caroline Lucas’s idea of a cabinet of women politicians is designed to appeal to a certain sentiment which works on the assumption that women politicians possess a range of more sympathetic qualities than do men.

Lucas argued that: “We need an ‘emergency cabinet’ — not to fight a Brexit war but to work for reconciliation. And I believe this should be a cabinet of women.

“Why women? Because I believe women have shown they can bring a different perspective to crises, are able to reach out to those they disagree with and co-operate to find solutions.”

And it is true that a cabinet of progressive women political leaders might work well to mark a change from the political heritage of Margaret Thatcher and, more recently, Theresa May.

The problem with Ms Lucas’s choice is that they cannot, as a whole, be presented as at all progressive.

The Lib Dems' new leader Jo Swinson is a convinced right-wing Orange Book Lib Dem with an unattractive record of support for austerity policies who has ruled out co-operation with Labour.

She is proving so unattractive to voters that the Lib Dems have dropped several points in opinion polls.

The Tory, Justine Greening, was economic secretary to the Treasury in the austerity administration. Among the others selected for fast track promotion in the interests of national unity are Heidi Allen and Anna Soubry who both joined the Change UK outfit before it fell apart in disunity.

Corbyn’s one-time rival for the leadership of Labour, Yvette Cooper, is savvy enough to know any entanglement with this daft scheme will sink her unceasing efforts to rehabilitate her standing in the eyes of Labour’s rank and file.

It is, of course, beyond imagining that the Lucas plan will take off. 

Emily Thornberry has more than enough nous to know that getting entangled in such a scheme would finish her in the eyes of Labour’s membership who, even when they disapprove of Brexit, know that a Westminster stitch-up by politicians out of step with a divided nation cannot be presented as a democratic initiative or as a unity project.

A cross-party lash-up to reverse a democratic decision cannot be presented as a national unity project to a nation whose opinions of the substantive matter have barely changed and whose exasperation with Westminster politicians is already at stratospheric levels.

On top of this even the fractious band of parliamentary conspirators presently in conclave to devise measures to thwart a no-deal Brexit are very wary of a second referendum.

This they calculate may not produce the decisive result they desire.

Hence their preference with constitutional tinkering and the construction of arcane schemes to keep decision-making confined to Westminster.

For these more experienced practitioners of the dark arts the Lucas plan is a diversion.

On top of this there is not even a whisper of support for this idea in the Labour Party even in the narrow circles of Corbyn’s unreconcilable critics.

The Greens face the same dilemma that confronts every middle-class political formation. While their centre of gravity is substantially to the left of the Lib Dems it is the social base of the Tories’ coalition partners they now covet.

Where the Greens once could supplement their serious-minded ecological activist base and voters with a harvest of left-wing votes (on occasion even mine when our local Labour candidate proved to be a completely useless right-wing zionist with no discernible connection with the labour movement) they now face a problem.

Labour’s radical renaissance has dried up that reservoir of potential votes on the left and the more opportunist and ambitious Greens now see more opportunities to the right.

This helps explain the contradiction between their residue of radical rhetoric and the present orientation of their policies.

The Greens have played an immensely positive role in placing environmental concerns at the centre of politics. The environmental crisis and climate change have strengthened their credibility and given force to their arguments.

But environmental politics has gone mainstream and millions of people now incorporate a concern about Green issues into their already existing framework of ideas and see the existing class-based parties as more credible vehicles.

But hope springs eternal and the progressive, even radical impulses which have put the Greens on the right side of many political issues still animates many of their members and the many voters who are prepared, on occasion, to lend them votes.

But for those of us intent on a government that will act in the interests of the working class a measure of caution is required. Because the Greens lack the political sheet anchor of a solid class base they can drift as easily to the right as to the left.

The German Greens have abandoned much of their early radicalism, even their anti-militarist stance. This once radical force was easily colonised by sectarian sixties student Maoists of fierce anti-communist inclination and now have drifted into coalition with the right-wing Christian Democrats.

The Irish Greens imploded after participating in a right-wing Fine Gael government. The French Greens are torn between participation in a plural left or orientation towards the MoDem centre right.

If the Greens want to graduate from being unreliable allies and uncertain friends to the working class movement they need to make up their mind which direction they want to travel in.

Nick Wright blogs at https://21centurymanifesto.wordpress.com.