Wednesday 5th June was World Environment Day. I thought I’d wait a couple of days to track the impact this has had on the major parties’ campaigns. Basically, SFA. The Climate and Nature emergency (as in runaway climate change and collapsing life-support systems) is just not on any of their electoral grids.

So, all we’ve had so far in this campaign is that fractious exchange about Net Zero in the first TV debate, with Sunak lying through his teeth about the cost of Net Zero, and Starmer talking woodenly about climate change as if it was just another issue that Labour would have to deal with.

I know I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve experienced this electoral ghosting at every single General Election since my first with the Green Party in 1974 -14 hammer blows to my political heart!

But 2024 is not 1974! We’ve had 50 years of increasingly authoritative science. And at least a decade of increasingly anguished warnings from scientists. But even now, this is just so much water off the backs of these preening Emperor ducks.

So, here’s my totally biased guidance for all true but troubled citizens of Planet Earth thinking about using their vote on July 4th. (Other much more reliable sources of information are available!)

  1. Never, ever vote Tory/Reform.
    They’re pretty much the same these days – beyond any recognisable green pale. And they are, to a candidate, unreconstructed, planet-trashing “deplorables” – to repurpose Hillary Clinton’s controversial characterisation of Trump voters back in 2016!
  2. Vote Green!
    You know you really want to! And with the Green Party standing candidates in every seat, every vote really is going to count after the Election – as in “the Green Party now has XX % of the national vote”. (For exceptions to this, see 4 and 5 below).If you’re lucky enough to live in Brighton, Bristol, Waveney Valley, or North Herefordshire (the Green Party’s four target seats), you obviously have to vote Green. Sian Berry is doing brilliantly in Caroline Lucas’s Brighton seat, Carla Denyer is doing brilliantly in Bristol Central (streaks ahead of Labour at the moment!), Adrian Ramsey is doing brilliantly in Waveney Valley (odds of victory improving all the time!), and Ellie Chowns is doing brilliantly in North Herefordshire – on track, I believe, to pull off the electoral upset of the 2024 General Election. The tactical voting site stopthetories.vote has just confirmed that Ellie is the only candidate in North Herefordshire who can beat the ghastly incumbent Tory MP.
  3. Avoid voting Labour if you possibly can.
    Starmer is a pro-growth-at-all-costs, deeply conservative, climate-blind, nuclear-obsessed control freak. If it wasn’t for the super-resilient Ed Miliband holding his party leader’s feet to the fire, there’d be nothing substantive to separate Labour-today from Boris Johnson’s position on green issues a few years ago (remember the 10 Point Plan?!). There’s not a single true green bone in Starmer’s body.
  4. Vote Labour IF:

 You’re in a genuine Tory/Labour marginal, but only IF:

  •  your Labour candidate has formally (and unequivocally) committed to support Proportional Representation at every available opportunity in a new Parliament.
  • Your Labour candidate has formally signed up to support the work of Zero Hour through its Climate and Nature Bill. More than 860 candidates have already signed up in this way, with around 140 “predicted to win” – this could be a powerful new grouping in the next Parliament.

If your Labour candidate can’t make those explicit commitments (which you will need to screw out of them), then screw them. And vote Green.

5. Vote Lib Dem IF:

See above, substituting Lib Dem candidate for Labour candidate. (It should be a rather easier process!).

6. That’s it. Simples, really. Your vote put to the best possible use, with electoral despair more or less kept at bay.

 

At least until the next General Election!