And the nominees are …

Nominations close today for the role of Green co-leader with a Y chromosome. Yep that’s right for some reason it is not the best person for the job, but the best person who has a Y chromosome.

Vernon Small reviews who is likely to be running. We won’t actually find out until Sunday who is standing.

The expected contenders are:

* Russel Norman
* Nandor Tanczos
* Mike Ward
* Dave Clendon
* Bert
* Jon Carapiet

I’m intrigued by the references to the paper by Nandor Tanczos on why he thinks the Greens are not a left-wing party, and proposes they integrate its principles into all its policies with the slogan “Green solutions, not old Left solutions”.

Part of this may be a sly dig at his competitor, Mr Norman, who was formerly a communist. But for what it is worth I agree that the Greens would be much stronger if they were a genuine Green party, not just a party of the hard left known as much for its hatred of the United States as for its environmentalism.

As Tanczos points out, a replacement for the Alliance will emerge one day to compete for the far left vote. I suspect the UNITE union plans to try and turn their on the ground industrial campaigns into a new far left party at some stage. When this happens, the Greens will be better off not competing for the same vote.