The decision to contest Labour seats echoes the Liberal Democrat playbook, which is to insist that Labour’s policy – to negotiate a
Brexit deal that protects jobs, workers’ rights and the environment, and then put it back to the public – is somehow pro-Brexit or too complicated. In fact it is closest to the Greens’ policy but adds the step of renegotiating Johnson’s deal instead of pitting what he has already negotiated against remain in a referendum.
Across the country Greens like me now face the prospect of throwing our lot in with
Jo Swinson, a leader whose green credentials include voting to sell off England’s forests,
taking a donation from an energy company that owns fracking licences, and voting against slowing the rise of rail fares. The alternative is throwing our weight behind
Labour’s green new deal, which in many ways is the culmination of decades of Green party policy, and putting pressure on them to keep up their environmental commitments.
In the days before I made my decision to stand down, I thought of the lines of police I faced down with my fellow students in the wake of the Liberal Democrats’
capitulation on tuition fees in 2010. Had it been nine years? I thought about the palpable sense of desolation in Stoke-on-Trent, my student home, brought about by austerity enabled by the Lib Dems in coalition with the Tories.
facepalm
