Nothing endures but personal qualities

In May I set out five qualities I was looking for in the next leader of the Green Party. Having read their statements and listened at a hustings, I’ve now decided how I’m going to vote. In ‘Song of Broad Axe’, Walt Whitman writes that cities, factories, steamships and constitutions don’t endure, except through the qualities of those that build them, and that those qualities can endure even if they aren’t expressed in the most grand or outwardly successful form. “The great city”, he wrote “is that which has the greatest man or woman; If it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world.” It’s probably unkind to describe my own party as a few ragged huts when compared to the cities of the two big parties. But I do think we are sustained and our influence endures thanks in part to the strong…