The Keane Green

A friend passed me a copy of the latest Liberal Democrat news. Here’s an interesting excerpt from the letters page:

The Green Vote
The Norwich North by-election result shows how much damage the Greens are doing. Had the Green vote combined with ours, Labour would have come third. Then we could have squeezed them next time.

We have to attack the Green vote. We suggest:

1. We should publicly challenge the Green Party publicly to state which of our policies they see as unenvironmental and identify and environmental policies that they think we do not cover. I predict they will be unable substantialy to criticise.
2. Then we should point out the results of the challenge in all our literature, adding that all our policies are checked for their environmental effect.
3. We should also point out the illogicity of their position on the EU. They are anti-EU; yet in environmental matters above all, supra-national action is what counts. It’s no good all of us in the UK living “the good life” if the rest of the world carries on with “business as usual”. We have a far better chance of influencing the rest of the world through Europe than we do in isolation.
4. So to vote Green is counter productive. By splitting the environmental vote you guarantee that the tired old main parties continue to get away with lip service to the environment. Labour will always put the short-term interests of the workers first and the Tories will always put the short term interests to business first, as they always have.

-Name and details removed-

So, ignoring first of all the compliment paid by the fact that a Lib Dem is terrified of us, and their equally hilarious view that their party doesn’t lie with the “tired old parties”, let’s look at a few issues here.

First of all, they’re assuming we’re a single issue party about the environment, when we have policy on all issues and generally along left and centrist lines; exactly where the Lib Dems often to pretend to lie to hide their Tory-lite leaninings.

Second, they’re incorrect in our direct opposition to the EU – we need more accountability and transparency through reform in Brussels and doing away with the amount of legislation currently pushed through by unelected bodies – something only a party as truly undemocratic as the Libs could support.

Third, they state their own policies are eco-friendly. This is at best dubious; for instance, they supported the building of the second Forth bridge back when they were in coalition at Holyrood. They also assume that the environmentalist vote lies with them, while stating we’re a singularly environmentalist party – how does this work out?

If they really cared about the environment, they’d be campaigning and working with their environmentalist allies, rather than looking to abuse the environmental issue for their own personal benefit.