The Green MP makes a direct appeal to Labour supporters ahead of the European elections.
This is the election which wasn’t supposed to happen. It’s also one where a lot of voters are looking for a home. If you don’t want to leave the EU, and are repelled by the populist rants of Nigel Farage, who do you vote for?
We know many of you hate the Tories’ austerity, but you also value freedom of movement and want to remain in EU. If that’s you, Labour isn’t really offering you a home.
Young voters came out strongly for Labour in 2017, but we know you also are also overwhelmingly in favour of staying in the EU. While Labour may reflect your progressive values, Jeremy Corbyn’s ambiguous stance on Europe is letting you down. Who can say what Labour’s policy really is?
Progressive pro-EU voters want certainty and leadership, which is why so many of you are turning to the Green Party in search of a new political home. Our support is surging: since our success at the local elections, at times we have been welcoming a new member every three minutes.
It’s not just Europe which is bringing them. We know many of you, particularly young people, are deeply worried about our survival in the face of the climate crisis and the frightening warnings about disappearing species and mass extinctions. We are the party which demanded urgent action on the climate right from the start. We’ve been leading the way in the European Parliament on environmental protections since 1999. I know, I was one of those MEPs.
If you’ve voted Labour in the past, I understand why you wouldn’t want to support the centrists at ChangeUK who are making almost no impact, or the Lib Dems who supported the Tories’ austerity programme for five years.
That’s why I’m asking you to give your support to the Greens. We have shown we can win, and deliver when we do. Our councillors are making a real difference in their communities across Britain. Our support is growing steadily as we show we’re a rising force in British politics.
No-one wants to abandon a party which they supported in the hope of a better future. But Labour and Jeremy Corbyn are not offering the future you deserve if you want to stay in Europe. We are. The Green Party is offering you a home. Please give us your support.
Caroline Lucas is the Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion.
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16 Responses to “Caroline Lucas’ open letter to Labour Remainers: “Corbyn is not offering the future you deserve””
Eric Walker
Dear Patrick and anyone else, if you want to see who is behind the Brexit campaign, spend a few minutes on badboysofbrexit.com Itis an eyeopener. Compiled by Molly Scott Cato it lists 24 people who are the people who poured money in to support Nigel Farage. Click on their faces to reveal who they are and their philosophy. They don’t give their money away expecting no return.
Christopher Keene
Politics is broken. Vote Green for the EU election, but long term we should replace politics with sortition, with randomly selected citizens advised by independent experts governing us
Christopher Keene
The way to get sortition is to join Extinction Rebellion (XR) in mass non-violent civil disobedience. Our action last month got the government to declare a climate emergency. Now we need more people to join us to force the Tories to hand over climate decision making to citizens assemblies selected randomly by sortition. The next XR action is in September, so please join us, and get all your friends to join to. Remember, we are fighting for our lives, or, if we are already old, for the lives of our children and grandchildren
Sam Keogh
Hellooo, Neeaumannnn.
Always wanted to say that.
The only thing holding Labour together is FPTP. – The corrupt, immoral, thieving voting system invented by the Tories to help them keep power for generations after their relevance diminished. And Labour shored it up and helped them.
Labour and the Tories (joint motto – “you complete me – why would we ever need anyone else?”) will be ex-parties and almost entirely irrelevant the moment people can be confident that they can have their vote meaningfully count toward what they actually believe in.
Labour will soon be history, and deservedly so. Blair’s war ended whatever credibility they had as a party concerned for the wellbeing of ordinary people. The Labour party has been a bunch of graceless, proceduralist, kiss-up and kick-down authoritarians since the 60’s.
The Greens are the future of progressive thinking, just as the industrial revolution, labour unions and smog are the past.
You can stick your “junior partnership”. We play to win, and we will too, because we’re right, and we’re better.
Stephanie Pride
I voted Labour in the last GE because it was the only possible way to get the incumbent Tory ‘no deal’ Brexiteer/pro-fracking/pro-let’s build more roads and do favours for our friends in business OUT. I voted that way because we have a lousy unrepresentative voting system and voting Green would have been a wasted vote.
I voted SNP when I lived in Scotland because we had a lousy Labour Party under Ed Miliband who made pledges about the minimum wage which have already been surpassed by the Tories. And because I supported Scottish independence. I also voted Green for the Scottish Parliament because I had a choice to do so and I wanted to see more Green MSPs in the Scottish Parliament.
I also had no hesitation in voting Green for the European elections (I had a postal vote), not because I want to stay in the EU but because I support green policies on climate change and the environment. And because I also support XR, I was ticked off by Corbyn claiming the Labour Party were ‘leading the way’ in this respect, when they are merely playing catch-up. (And were among the majority of MSPs who laughed at the Scottish Greens for their climate emergency motion – the day before UK Labour adopted a similar policy!)
We have a thoroughly broken democracy and I no longer really care whether we’re in or out of the EU because there’s no Brexit (or EU) on a dead planet. For this reason, I see voting as just a small part of being an active citizen and there are many more effective ways of bringing about change. But I welcome the green surge and wish the Greens well in these elections.