‘If you’re not a socialist before you’re twenty-five, you have no heart; if you are a socialist after twenty-five, you have no head,’ goes the old, oft-misattributed saying. But if you’re a Green party supporter on a university campus today, you’re more likely to have no friends.
It was reported last week that the Green party’s share of the student vote has almost halved in the past two months – falling from a peak of 28 per cent to a paltry 15. In January, the Greens’ vote was creeping up on Labour (the consistent student favourites) but it has now plummeted below even that of the so-called ‘Tory scum’ you hear so much about on tuition-fees demos. The pollsters at YouthSight put this down to limp media performances from Green leader Natalie Bennett, whose ‘dislike rating’ has doubled since September. It’s clear, though, that the eco-party’s plunge in student popularity goes beyond the shortcomings of ‘brain-fade’ Bennett.
The traditional view was that the Greens appealed to students’ idealism and radicalism.
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