I go over some of the big pledges and promises from the Green Party's 2019 manifesto for the UK General Election.

1. Charlie 22/11/2019
The Green Party Manifesto Roundup
theweeklyrambler.com/the-green-party-manifesto-roundup/
The Green Party has released its manifesto and with the Liberal Democrats
and Labour releasing their manifestos later this week (the 20 and 21 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
2 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.
Photo by Felix Mittermeier from Pexels.
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2. 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.
Photo by Johannes Plenio from Pexels
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3. 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.
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4. photo by Pixabay.com from Pexels.
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.
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5. photo by Pixabay.com from Pexels
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.
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6. Photo by HASAN ZAHRA from Pexels
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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