Are Labour beginning to fret about the Greens?

I don't follow vast numbers of Twitter feeds, predominantly because it gets harder for me to pick up the important bits as the volume of posts gets bigger. I do, however, follow two of my local Labour PPCs, Jane Basham in South Suffolk, and Deborah Sacks in South Norfolk. Deborah is an old university colleague from my days at UEA, and another North London emigre in rural East Anglia.

Jane, on the other hand, I first encountered when she ran as the Labour candidate for Suffolk's Police and Crime Commissioner. She very nearly won, something of a miracle given just how conservative the county is. Since then, her Twitter feed has become a distillation of what grassroots Labour activists are thinking, and very entertaining it is too.

In the past week, I've noticed that there are an increasing number of anti-Green posts, mostly retweets from others, but nonetheless, attacks all the same. The record of the minority Green administration in Brighton (if they're a minority, how have they remained in control?), the impracticality of their policies, the risk that a Green vote will let the Tories back in, all are fair game all of a sudden.

And I am reminded that Labour really don't like competition for what they see as the progressive vote that should be theirs, even if, in recent years, they have given people little reason to have faith. Civil libertarians have been let down by authoritarians such as David Blunkett and Jack Straw, and had, until the Coalition, found a home in the Liberal Democrats. Now, anti-austerity supporters are discovering that Labour have no intention of undoing the 'evil' cuts carried out by the Coalition, and so whilst Labour are probably hanging onto the former Liberal Democrat voters they won in 2010 and 2011, they are now losing some of those who thought that they were an anti-austerity party.

For the Greens, life is easy. They can wave the anti-austerity banner, knowing that it will gain them votes and supporters, in the certain knowledge that they won't actually have to take responsibility at any stage. In fairness, some of their activists genuinely believe that austerity is unnecessary, and that taxing the rich until they squeal is viable in a global economy where capital is highly mobile, but they aren't going to form a government.

And given the diet of statements from Labour politicians saying, "this cut is unacceptable and unfair, and we wouldn't do it", an expectation has been created that Labour will somehow preserve services without raising taxes very much and reducing the deficit at the same time. Anyone who believes that is pretty naive, and the Greens now offer an alternative for such people who increasingly believe that Labour can't.

So, prepare for more red on green attacks if Green polling numbers remain significant, as Labour realise that, without a positive agenda of their own, even the so-called "35% strategy" is vulnerable. Their only consolation is that the Conservatives appear to want to revert to picking on the 'enemy inside', thus driving moderates away.

It's going to be a grim four months...