MEND broken Britain, the Green Party urged today as it launched an election manifesto full of Corbynite policies.
Aiming its pitch squarely at progressive voters turned off by Starmer’s Labour, the Greens pledged public ownership, higher taxes on the wealthiest and investment in public transport and housing.
The party’s co-leader Carla Denyer, who is set fair to win Bristol Central from Labour on July 4, said the manifesto “is based on investing to mend broken Britain and real hope and real change.”
Slamming Labour and the Tories for a “race to the bottom on tax,” she pledged “a tax on the very richest, the top 1 per cent of people requiring them to pay a bit more into the pot.”
The major parties’ plans, she said, would mean “even more devastating cuts to public services.”
The Greens would invest £50 billion in health and social care to get the NHS back on its feet, and spend £29bn over five years to insulate homes.
They would also dramatically increase the social housing stock, building 150,000 new homes each year and ending the right-to-buy scheme which has so depleted social housing.
In a clear echo of Corbyn-era Labour, the Greens committed to taking the water companies, railways and the major energy monopolies into public ownership.
Co-leader Adrian Ramsay said that both major parties were “running away from their promises on the climate” and added that “only the Greens understand that the solutions to the climate crisis are the also the solutions to the cost-of-living crisis.”
He promised that the Greens would cancel all fossil fuel projects in Britain and encourage a major switch to electric cars, alongside investing in public transport.
Mr Ramsay also called nuclear weapons “an outdated system” and said the money would be better spent on “humanitarian work around the world” undertaken by the army.
Other major manifesto promises include scrapping tuition fees, a further Corbynite commitment, boosting school budgets and introducing a clean air Act to “safeguard our children’s health.”
The Greens are currently polling at 6 per cent or more in voter preferences and are focusing their election hopes on four seats where the party is best-placed.
These include Brighton Pavilion, where Sian Berry is bidding to succeed Caroline Lucas, who is leaving the Commons after years as the party’s sole representative there.