It is time for change, and it’s happening now. Real green shoots, new progressive ideas, are breaking through the manufactured concrete consensus that the only direction is right and then far-right.

People are resonating with that deep ache for something fundamentally different, a yearning for a world not defined by the relentless pursuit of profit or the cynical machinations of power, but by genuine human connection and collective well-being. We’ve had enough of the politics of despair, the economics of extraction. What we desperately need now is a politics of hope and an economics of care.

This isn’t just a nice idea; it’s an urgent necessity in a UK landscape dominated by a uni-party consensus that offers little more than managed decline, all while the far-right seeks to deepen the chasms between us. The ‘Friendly fascism’ and centrist authoritarianism we see here thrives on a profound lack of hope, on the exhaustion wrought by a system that consistently prioritises abstract market forces over the tangible needs of people. The hypernormalisation of austerity, the dehumanising rhetoric aimed at anyone struggling to survive, the relentless information overload – it’s all designed to drain our will to fight for something better.

So, what do we actually do? We plant the seeds of that hope, and we cultivate that care, refusing to let the cynicism of others define our future. For me, and for a growing chorus of voices, that means actively building a political movement that embodies these very principles – and that’s precisely what we’re doing with the Green Party. While others offer more of the same, praying at the altar of Neo-liberalism and allowing big money and foreign influence to dictate their every move, we are forging an alternative rooted in genuine compassion and a vision for a just future.

A politics of hope means daring to imagine a country where everyone has a safe, warm home, where our NHS is not just protected but properly funded, where our communities are vibrant and resilient, and where our planet is not sacrificed for short-term gain. It means challenging the insidious lie that there is no alternative to the current trajectory. And an economics of care means fundamentally reorienting our priorities: away from endless growth and towards meeting the needs of all, ensuring dignity for workers, protecting our precious natural resources, and fostering genuine well-being over corporate spreadsheets. It means valuing the essential work of caring for each other, for our children, for our elders, and for our environment, not just the financial transactions that boost GDP.

The culture war, stoked by the far-right and amplified by a complicit media, is a deliberate distraction from this fundamental shift. It’s designed to keep us from uniting around shared values of hope and care. We must see through it and expose it for what it is: a cynical ploy to protect the interests of the powerful by fragmenting the rest of us. When they scream about ‘woke’ ideology, we talk about universal basic income, robust public services, and truly affordable housing – the bedrock of an economics of care.

Fascists thrive on scarcity and fear. A politics of hope and an economics of care counters this directly by affirming abundance and mutual aid. We refuse to let them redefine who is ‘deserving’ of care; we insist that every life has intrinsic value. And when it comes to the Labour and Conservative uni-party, beholden as they are to big money, we expose their rhetoric for what it is: a thinly veiled defence of the status quo, offering managed decline instead of genuine transformation. Austerity instead of abundance.

My own journey has shown me that breaking through these entrenched narratives requires persistent, empathetic communication. We need to reach those who feel disillusioned, those who have been let down by decades of Neo-liberal consensus, and show them that hope isn’t naive – it’s a powerful engine for change. The Green Party’s rapid growth isn’t just about environmentalism; it’s about a fundamental commitment to a politics of hope and an economics of care, a vision that resonates deeply with people who are tired of being told there’s no alternative.

Paulo Freire’s call for critical consciousness is absolutely paramount here. We must question the very foundations of an economic system that prioritises profit over people, and a political system that claims to be democratic while being controlled by external forces. We must empower ourselves, and our communities, to imagine and build an entirely new way of organising society – one based on collaboration, compassion, and true sustainability.

Yes, the fight is monumental. The forces of cynicism and greed are deeply entrenched. But we cannot surrender. We must protect our humanity, our empathy, and our capacity for hope, because these are our most potent weapons. Join your local Green Party. Get involved. Speak truth to power. Demand a politics of hope and an economics of care, not just as abstract ideals, but as the foundational principles of a society truly fit for the 21st century. The most anti-fascist act any of us can make, in the face of managed decline and manufactured misery, is to stubbornly, defiantly, hold onto that vision and work every single day to bring it into vibrant, caring reality.