Green Party launches European election campaign

Green Party’s leader Natalie Bennett has called on voters to consider politics for “the common good” and criticised the UKIP’s lack of policies, calling it “the party of fear”.

Speaking at the launch of the party’s campaign for May’s elections, Bennett said, “We need a society that works for the common good, not just the good of the few, which it does at the moment.

“We need real change in our society. It’s working for the 1%, not the 99% of us. We need decent benefits, we need to make the minimum wage a living wage, and we need to insure that privatisation doesn’t keep costing us an absolute fortune.”

The party, whose flagship policy includes a sustainable economy, clean energy policies and income tax on wealthy earners, opposes shale gas development and would like to see an increase of benefits and a more sober banking sector.

“What we need is for multinational companies, rich individuals, to be paying their taxes, which they’re simply not doing at the moment”, she said.

According to a YouGov poll, the Greens have recently overtaken the Lib-Dems in the North. Bennett also criticised the UK Independent Party (UKIP), saying that its immigration policies would only worsen the fleeing of talents from British universities.

“As far as I can work out, Nigel Farage has entirely written it off so that UKIP has no policies at all. It seems to stand for getting out of the EU and stopping immigration and other than that he seems to have said, right, we have no policies”, she said.

The Green Party is looking at increasing its number of MEPs to six on next elections, which will take place on May 22.

Photo: Edinburgh Greens via flickr

Further reading:

WWF questions what European election will mean for environment

Sustainability could hold the key to 2015 general election results

Poll: three-quarters of voters want more environmental policies

Green Party tries to win votes ahead of leaders’ debates

Vote Green (where they can win) if you care about the future