Opinion: Green Party will try to end farming as we know it
© Adobe Stock The exercise may not have had quite the effect my junior school teacher intended – on me at least.
A general election was in the offing and she decided a class election would demonstrate the delights of democracy.
Three of us were chosen as candidates; we would write manifestos and the winner would be decided by secret ballot. Let’s call my rivals Anne and Barry.
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I crammed my manifesto with what I thought were sensible and practical ways I would improve school life. I don’t remember Barry’s offering, but he was a dolt so it probably promised fewer lessons and more football.
He got more votes than me. However, Anne won the election. Her “manifesto”, hardly worthy of the name, was a drawing of some flowers and an assertion that she would “do lovely things” in the school.
What I learned from this was: (a) sensible and practical is not a vote-winner; (b) “lovely things” are a vote winner, even when they are unspecified; (c) it probably helps if you have a birthday coming up and most of the class is invited to your party.
Two years ago, shortly before the last general election, I wrote gloomily of my dissatisfaction with all the parties’ manifestos and suggested that “none of the above” should be an option on ballot papers.
Labour then came to power with a “landslide” that amounted to about 20% of the electorate, their success being largely down to voters’ determination to vote for anyone but the Conservatives.
You will have your own views about what happened next, but opinion polls suggest that the public is very disappointed not to have got whatever “lovely things” it was expecting.
Both Labour and the Conservatives are widely predicted to get a good kicking at the imminent local elections as voters veer further right or left to find a party with more enticing promises.
The Greens are enjoying a surge in support so I had a look at their current manifesto. A manifesto may of course bear very little resemblance to what actually happens when a party gains power, but I’ll assume that it is at least an indication of intention.
There is an overt commitment to spending, which many people will think is a “lovely thing” because they expect to benefit from this largesse, but don’t expect to be taxed to pay for it because taxes will only be on “wealth”.
I’m appalled by Green policies on drugs, defence and immigration, though others may find them “lovely”. But what, specifically, do the Greens intend for farming and the environment?
Financial support for farmers will be “almost tripled”, but only “to support their transition to nature-friendly farming” and “linked to reduced use of pesticides and other agro-chemicals”.
Government control won’t end there, either. Manifesto pledges also include: an end to badger culling; no more factory farming; enforcement of maximum stocking densities; 30% of land to be set aside for nature (which will be given its own “rights”); no emergency authorisation of neonicotinoids and a ban on the “unnecessary mutilation” of farm animals.
In short, policies that carry within them the tendentious implication that everything farmers are currently doing is cruel to animals and/or damaging to the environment and must be stopped.
Plenty of people who have never been anywhere near a farm will no doubt think that these are very “lovely things” indeed.