Early last Friday morning the people of Brighton Pavillion proved that a green vote is not wasted, as they elected Caroline Lucas as their MP with a 1,252 majority. Finally, after a 25 year wait a voice for the Green Party in the House of Commons. Across the country however, the story was a little different. As Julian Baggini points out in his
Guardian piece “The stark facts are these. Nationally, the Green Party's share of the vote actually went down 0.1% to 1%. In terms of vote share, the BNP (1.9%) and UKIP (3.1%) both did better than the Greens.” Ouch. That must have put a little damper on the celebrations. Still, a remarkable achievement nonetheless, as the
Independent points out, she is the “…the first Green MP anywhere in the world to be elected under the first-past-the-post system…”.
Along with Lucas's voice, the House of Commons will also soon be hearing from former Ecologist Magazine editor and new Conservative MP (and ResPublica Advisory Board Member) Zac Goldsmith, who has been elected in the Richmond Park constituency with a majority of 4,091. Back in 2005 Zac Goldsmith was asked to oversee a wide-ranging review of environmental policy for the Conservative Party and he is likely to play in large part in future policy formation in this area in what is likely to be a Tory-Lib Dem government.
And what might the Tory- Lib Dem policy approach to the environment look like? Well, judging by their manifestos: For the Lib-Dems environmental protection is seen as a matter that requires action across government and as such they have integrated green policy suggestions into every chapter of their manifesto. For the Tories, green issues are apparently at the heart of their politics and their government. So, by the looks of things both are keen to support the environmental lobby cause.
But, they do have their differences also. For one the Lib Dems have pledged to ‘reject a new generation of nuclear power station, based on the evidence nuclear is a far more expensive way of reducing carbon emissions than promoting energy conservation and renewable energy' and the Tories want to clear ‘the way for new nuclear power stations- provided they receive no public subsidy'. Some disagreements on nuclear power seem likely there, but on the other hand they may be able to find common ground in wind power. The Lib Dems have pledged to invest up to £400 million in refurbishing shipyards in the North of England and Scotland for the manufacturing of wind turbines, whilst the Tories have pledged to deliver an offshore electricity grid in order to support the development of a new generation of offshore wind power.
Of course, we will have to wait and see what the result of the current negotiations are before we can guess as to which policies are likely to be implemented, but whatever the outcome may be Caroline Lucas and Zac Goldsmith are certainly the ones to watch in this policy area.