When will the Greens get real?

There is something a little refreshing about the Green party. In contrast to Rishi Sunak, who has no option but to carry on pretending he has the slightest chance of remaining in Downing Street after 4 July, Green party co-leader Adrian Ramsay admitted at his manifesto launch this morning that his party isn’t looking to form the next government. The party’s realistic hope seems to be to double its number of Commons seats, from one to two. Nevertheless, the Greens do have a full manifesto for government, so let’s do it justice by taking it seriously.

Mercifully, the Greens seem to have not bought into the fashionable concept of ‘degrowth’ (i.e., permanent recession). In fact, there is a rash of spending promises that seem to rely on a rapidly-growing economy. The Greens want to spend an extra £50 billion a year on health and social care, £20 billion of it to fund free personal care.