The Green Party has released its manifesto and with the Liberal Democrats and Labour releasing their manifestos later this week (the 20th and 21st of November respectively), I have decided to do blogposts on some of the biggest pledges and promises from the parties, I will be doing this only for the prominent national parties though, for the Green Party, Liberal Democrats, Labour and the Conservatives. Although I admit I was originally not going to include the Green Party, but with the prominence of climate change and also the rise of the Extinction Rebellion group, I thought there is no time more deserving for the Greens to get a manifesto roundup. On the point of the BREXIT Party I may or may not do a roundup on them, as it is quite clear what their focus is and it isn’t known if they will release a full manifesto or not.
Currently as of typing this, the Greens have anywhere from less than 1-7% support in the polls with the average being around about 3%. Obviously the biggest thing the party stands for is protecting the environment and fighting climate change, as all Green Parties aim to do, but the Greens in the UK have also pledged to the remain side, promising a 2nd referendum on EU membership, as they believe the best way of fighting climate change is staying in the EU. They have also made a Remain Electoral Pact with the Liberal Democrats in England and Wales and Plaid Cymru in Wales, stepping aside in a number of seats to help Remain supporting parties win them, while also getting a better run in some of its own target seats.
The Green Party will be getting a run at 10 target seats where the Lib Dems have stepped aside in, 9 of which are in England, the other one is in Wales where Plaid Cymru also stepped aside… they are…
- Brighton Pavilion
- Isle of Wight
- Bristol West
- Bury St. Edmonds
- Stroud
- Dulwich and West Norwood
- Forest of Dean
- Cannock Chase
- Exeter
- Vale of Glamorgan
The Green Party has stepped aside in 40 seats for the Liberal Democrats in England and another 3 seats for the Lib Dems in Wales, and a further 7 seats for Plaid Cymru in Wales and finally another 3 seats to help independent remain-supporting candidates in England, 53 seats in total.
The Green Party’s manifesto largely focuses on what is known as a Green New Deal, a term that was first popularized in the US over growing environmental and climate change concerns and is in its essence, a major piece of legislation or groupings of legislation, setting out to tackle climate change and save the environment in a major fashion, although no major Green New Deal has yet been agreed upon, it continues to evolve into new forms, agreements, legislation and ideas within the US political system and is often brought up and resurfaced. The Green Parties manifesto, is largely, a Green New Deal.
The Green Parties Green New Deal focuses on revolutionizing 5 main sectors over a 10-year period which include the move towards the widespread installment of renewable energy, major housing upgrades to make homes and neighborhoods more climate friendly which would also reduce energy bills, as well as a pledge to build 100,000 council houses per year, the move towards installing more climate friendly transport systems, including for trains, buses, introduction of more cyclepaths and walkways to promote cleaner, safer and cheaper transport, a focus on helping small business in industry to decarbonize and to also train people with new skills for millions of new green jobs and the promotion and introduction of sustainable, clean and healthy food and farming systems as well as the planting of hundreds of millions of trees in the UK. As well as all of that, the Green Party also has a major focus on introducing Universal Basic Income, money that is paid to every UK citizen from the state, whether they work or not, tackling poverty and giving financial security.
Pensioners, disabled people, families with children will see additional payments from the UBI scheme and people on Housing benefit will maintain that benefit alongside UBI payments, Carer’s would also still get Carer’s allowance alongside UBI. The Green Party has said that UBI will replace a number of other benefits, including Universal Credit. UBI will be largely funded by the Greens proposed Carbon Tax. Greens would also work on improving worker’s rights and fair pay, including closing the gender paygap.
The Greens also want to create a new government department for implementation of the Green New Deal led by a Carbon Chancellor based at 11 Downing Street who would set the country’s carbon budget.
Both Public and Private-sector investment will be used to help fund the Green New Deal, as well as creating a new public banking infrastructure that will lend at low and affordable interest rates. The Green Party says that private investors will need to take note of other stakeholders such as the ecosystem. The Greens would also introduce a Carbon Tax to both imports and domestic extraction of fossil fuels, based on output and the tax would be raised progressively over the decade to make fossil fuel financially unviable.
In its changes to Transport in its Green New Deal, the Green Party has also said it has a goal of eventually taking all rail services into public ownership.
The Green Party says its main above focuses will help reaching a goal of net zero carbon emissions by the year 2030, seen by many as an ambitious target, the pledges and promises will be funded by £100bn per year. As previously said the Green Party would also want another EU referendum, where they pledge to campaign for Remaining in the EU, as it can help lead the fight against climate change, as well as improving the lives of workers, those on low income and for refugees.
The Green Party has plans to try and reform the EU if they are able to remain within it, including allowing EU parliamentary members to initiate Europe-wide legislation, allowing groups of EU citizens to propose reforms to EU treaties, increasing transparency of the EU’s institutions such as live streaming events and publishing of documents, and holding these institutions to account with independent bodies, pressing for green environmental legislation and reform across the EU, including introducing an EU-wide carbon tariff on countries not reducing their carbon footprint. And the Green Party wants to promote and extend cross-border cooperation on things such as renewable energy and environmental insights sharing, crackdown on tax avoidance, social rights and citizen protections, tackling migration and promotion of peace, security and human rights.
The Green Party also have other major changes they want to implement, including to the tax system and government spending, reforming the tax system to have the wealthy pay more and ending what the party calls “wasteful” government spending on vanity projects to save money. The Green Party also want to end austerity and put more funding into public services.
The Green Party also says it will tackle discrimination and will put an end to the war on drugs, including expunging small-time drug dealers and safely introducing usage of certain drugs into society, specifically for health problems. The Green Party also want to reform the electoral system, allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to vote and stand as candidates in Local and General Elections as well as other votes such as referendums and also a pledge to reforming the voting system by ending first-past-the-post and implementing a system of proportional representation in parliamentary and local elections and reform on local elections such as electing half of councils every 2-years. The Green Party has also mentioned devolving powers to local councils enabling them to better deal with the climate emergency and also allowing local areas to reap benefits more easily.
The Green Party also want to reform the House of Lords by making it electable by the people, half of the upper house would be elected every 5-years, with members elected for a maximum of 10-years. The Green Party would also back citizen assemblies to create a written peoples-constitution and Bill of Rights and ensure proposals from these assemblies come before parliament. Green Party is also in favour of holding a referendum on having a Cornish Assembly, similar to what Wales, Scotland and N. Ireland have. They also plan to scrap the Home Office and replace it with the Ministry for Sanctuary to treat migrant and refugee matters more fairly and also a Ministry of the Interior for domestic security but with a stronger focus on human rights while doing its job. Also aim to scrap the Ministry of Defence and replace it with the Ministry for Security and Peace, with peace being a main foreign policy role and defence being focused more on the modern era, including defending environments around the world from climate chaos and dealing with the aftermath of climate-related disasters.
They would also end all subsidies and support of the UK Arms industry’s exporting of weapons and systems that fuel conflicts, violence and suffering.
The Greens have pledged to increased spending on the NHS as well as hiring of staff and reducing privatization that endangers it. And on education the Greens want to make the system fairer for students of all differences and also make higher education more affordable and including a Nature GCSE and environmental and climate lessons in the school curriculum and the promotion of sports and outdoor activities for health and nature and also wants to scrap Ofsted and replace it with a local collaborative system. The Greens would charge full VAT on private school fees and also review them, making sure they pay tax in full and work to become more accessible.
Pledges and promises from the Green Parties manifesto will be paid for with tax reform/changes, savings revenue and public borrowing.
There are many more pledges and plans within the Green Parties manifesto, but these of what I have highlighted here are the most important and largest of their pledges and promises.
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