GREEN PARTY MANIFESTO:THE GREEN Party has released its Westminster manifesto with a an appeal for "new politics" and a Green New Deal on the economy.
The party is fielding three candidates. Adam McGibbon is contesting South Belfast and Cadogan Enright is standing in South Down. But perhaps the party’s best opportunity lies in North Down, where 2009 Euro election candidate Steven Agnew is running against sitting MP Lady (Sylvia) Hermon.
The party already has its sole Assembly member in this constituency, Brian Wilson.
Outlining his party’s platform, Mr Wilson said its proposals on the Green New Deal would create 33,000 jobs for construction workers and allied trades through public investment in green technologies.
Mr Enright said: “We can create thousands of jobs across Northern Ireland by greening the economy, by creating a strong renewable energy sector, implementing a national insulation plan and cutting the cost of energy.”
Mr Wilson also said his party’s candidates, if elected, would clean up local politics. He cited last year’s expenses scandals and ongoing controversies arising out of relationships between politicians and property developers.
“Green politics is clean politics,” he said. He added that those who abused the expenses system “cannot be trusted to reform it”.
The Greens also say that first-time voters and those supportive of the Belfast Agreement should back their party as the longer-established parties in Northern Ireland were linked to conflict politics.
Adam McGibbon, the candidate in South Belfast, said: “I’m really hoping that young people will make their voices heard in this election. A vote for the Green Party is no longer a protest vote, it is a progress vote.”
He said it was the only party standing in this election which was not “an offshoot of an older party” and was the only one capable of bringing about what he called “post-conflict politics”.
On political corruption, the party said the standing of other politicians was at an all-time low, but it insisted there remained a high level of confidence in the political institutions established under the Belfast Agreement.
Mr Agnew, perhaps the party’s best-known face, asked those turned off by politics after the expenses scandal to vote Green.
“The Green Party does not accept political donations, we are the only political party to hold this position and I think that after the expenses scandal, people want to see a clean break between developers’ cheques and their elected representatives.”
Mr Wilson told the manifesto launch that the opportunity existed for the party to make significant advances. He linked his party’s progress to advances made by other Green parties in Britain, the Republic and across Europe, while Mr McGibbon said he was confident the next House of Commons would have Green MPs in it.
Among the main points of the manifesto are:
A Green New Deal which could create 33,000 jobs through employment of new technologies; Clean politics which would demand full transparency;
A ban on all corporate and commercial donations to parties and a shift to public funding;
Abolition of student loans and tuition fees and the reintroduction of student grants;
Reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and renegotiation of the Commons Fisheries Policy;
A non-nuclear EU energy policy to replace the “pro-nuclear focus” of the Euratom Treaty.