This morning we met with a young politician of the future. Thirty years old with a history of deep community engagement, youth development and political activism.

He’s just beginning to explore the inner realm: the role of psychology and religion in determining personal and social outcomes. He’s a natural whole system thinker, maybe because his community are farmers in difficult times.

Peter (not his real name) has recently given up his job and is now moving from the countryside to London to explore the possibility of becoming an MP.

But he has been somewhat phased by the consistent advice he’s receiving from existing parliamentarians: don’t waste your talent or your time. This is not where changemakers can make their mark.

As we were chatting, the phone was buzzing with the first heady days of a snap UK election on December 12th. We read multiple calls to gather and determine an election strategy from different parts of the system – political parties, movements, civil society actors. What should we do to get the outcome we desire? It’s as if everyone – including voters, currently registering in their hundreds of thousands – is suddenly awake.

At the same time, there is an intense fragility. The idea that this is ‘the most important election of any of our life-times’ is bandied about freely – and for a variety of reasons.

For the government, the current stance is that this is the once in a generation opportunity to break free from our European shackles and become a global power on our own terms. Yet Johnson knows that 39% of the Conservative membership voted Remain. In addition, the spectre of the break-up of Britain in response to Brexit, from the Scottish or Northern Irish locations, looms large.

For the official Opposition, Labour, this election is described as the chance to finally overthrow the elites - the“tax dodgers, bad bosses, big polluters, and billionaire-owned media” who have kept the majority in austerity measures while they grow ever richer. Their messaging evokes a truly degraded society: the necessity of food banks for people in work; the loss of disability allowances for people unable to physically stand up; councils selling off their community assets to pay, not for care, but for redundancy payments to those forced out of service.

Yet even in Labour’s own traditional heartlands where many voted for Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn is polling the lowest of all the party leaders. After years of steady media bashing, the backbencher that transformed the Labour Party and robbed the Conservatives of their majority in the last election, has been successfully recast as a danger to society, too frail to serve. The spectre of failing to win this argument ‘for the many, not the few’, on the grounds of personal popularity, looms large.

But outside of the 2% discourse (the percentage of the actual electorate who are members of political parties) the stakes are often described as even higher. As many as 84% of people are now expressing deep anxiety about environmental collapse. In the past year, particularly through the impact of the IPPC report, Greta Thunberg’ School Strikes and Extinction Rebellion, people have become familiar with the idea of a ten-year window within which we can act - before the damage we have done becomes irreversible.

Within that 84% is a wide variety of responses, akin to the five stages of grief (which we wrote about here). Some are troubled but hoping to be proved wrong. Others are making small adjustments, less flying, plastic and meat in the hope that signals a larger scale change. But others still have fallen deep into grief: for them the science alone means it’s game over for the whole of the human race. If that’s too hard to even imagine, here is the text that convinced them (from Jem Bendell).

How green are your policies?

We’ve yet to see the Party manifestos; we suspect each of them has something game-changing up their sleeves. But there is little evidence, in these early pronouncements, that they’re registering the deep existential angst that the climate catastrophe is unleashing in our society. Almost all of the parties – with the exception of the Green Partying which has only one MP - have put their traditional party-political goals first, as above.

In addition, the SNP is leading with the right to hold a second referendum on independence. The Liberal Democrats is leading with the call to reverse the results of the EU referendum. The Brexit party is leading with the call for a much harder deal than Johnson’s. These are the goals which divide them from each other and, in so doing, miss a vital opportunity.

All parties claim to acknowledge the climate window – witness the Climate Emergency achieved by Greta’s visit to Parliament. However, they all seem to be blind to what it will take to get into effective action: a clear, science-led, fully committed agenda to get us to carbon neutral by 2025. We don’t have the next ten years to win the argument – that’s too late. The argument has to be won in the next six weeks so that we can get into action at the beginning of 2020 for a decade of transformative change.

For that kind of acceleration, there has be a clear majority in Parliament. That majority can only be achieved by a coalition of parties prepared to put climate first. Prepared to put their parties and the policies that create clear water between themselves and others, second.

Instead, tragically, they are all pulling away from each other with all their might.

The most obvious partnership of UK-oriented parties would be between Labour and the Lib Dem. But the visceral dislike between Jo Swinson and Jeremy Corbyn is reminiscent of the rancour between Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg. That led directly to the Cameron coalition which all but destroyed the Lib Dems. Is there something in the DNA of a centrist party that compels it to constantly reach for the limelight, rather than act as a bridge? Like a moth to a flame?

Similarly, is there something inherently dualistic about Labour’s approach? A need to win comprehensively over the ruling classes that prevents them from sharing their power with middle class politicians? Either way, they are not looking at the numbers: refusing to collaborate puts everything at risk. Including the fate of those living on the streets after decades of alienation. Everything.

How does this look to a young person, maybe voting for the first time, with their whole future threatened by a political culture that defeats even the best of politicians? Where can they put their energies for change? As one of the 84% who has been convinced that we are in a crisis, who would they be arguing for on the doorstep? Even in the past two days, there’s every evidence that the parties will be looking to prove their green credentials: but which of their promises will be deliverable, within thispolitical culture?

Out of this chaos, the basis of a new politics

Two things happened today that suggest that more can be gained from stepping outside party politics and investing energy in movements. The first was that Boris Johnson suddenly banned fracking. After years of granting licenses to oil companies to drill for shallow oil sources, completely upsetting fragile local ecologies and threatening earthquakes, permission has suddenly been withdrawn. Since the scientific evidence has been there all along, one can only assume this is an election gambit. A sign that Boris knows people are anxious.

Secondly, a cross-party Citizens Assembly on Climate Change was launched. 30,000 people across the UK have been randomly selected as a pool for selecting 110 people to design a ‘road-map’ to carbon reduction. Again, this is a sign that the government acknowledges the demand. However, this move might be even more cynical than the above as the results are set within a goal of reaching carbon neutral by 2050 – twenty-five years later than the reports recommend.

Will this broader commitment be used to keep any further protests at bay? You can hear it already: “stop complaining, we gave you your third demand. Now wait for the results of what the people say (while we quietly remove all the regulations)”.

Maybe. Yet the value of protest and its aftermath to politicians is that they reveal where the votes lie. More and consistent actions of every kind – from gluing yourself to train carriages to reducing your consumption of meat – add up to the kind of evidence politicians across the board have to pay attention to. Or they won’t get voted in.

So, while AUK is not a political party, it does have a consistent political strategy that puts the power back into the hands of the people. In this historic moment, we can all act to create the conditions for the outcomes we are seeking. Your personal decision to commit to actions that reverse climate change are being measured and noted by those in power.

Can Extinction Rebellion reveal the Truth?

In electoral terms, it means identifying the top three parties with the best and most comprehensive climate policies. Wouldn’t it be great if Extinction Rebellion could do that job for us: “telling us the Truth” on what is being offered? It would be the best way of reframing the election: it’s not Left V Right, but extractive v regenerative. Or in Boris language, Life v Death. That information could cause a race to the top on Green terms. Rather than a race to the bottom—meaning who can cut the most taxes, the most regulations, etc., to win in the growth economy that destroys our planet.

Having done the work of revealing the Truth about the green policies on offer, and agreeing which two or three parties would make the best combination, we then have to game the electoral system. Which means understanding how to make a first past the post system respond to a proportional electorate in order to create an effective working majority in Parliament – aka, tactical voting. There are many sites advising on the Brexit issue, but none so far, on a green agenda.

Failing that, you can do the homework in the area you live to know which of those parties have the best chance of winning that seat and voting for that one. If the parties themselves won’t collaborate, the voters can, amongst themselves, vote tactically to get the outcome they are hoping for. Of course, with so many people trapped in the old system, tactical voting cannot guarantee an outcome: but it’s a way through that’s worth trying.

This growing possibility for the more autonomous and strategic practice of people’s power is very different from reactionary populism. Add to that both localism and municipalism as fertile ground for developing citizens place-based, collective agency and you have the basics of a new politics.

Which brings us back to Peter, who we began with. What do you call a political actor that does not represent a political party? We hope he’ll tell us soon.

Alternative Editorial: Election Reframe