Politics

Do the Green Party’s policies stack up? Although its membership and prominence have rocketed in recent weeks, little focus has been put on what the party campaigns for. Green leader Natalie Bennett was subjected to a dissection of her party’s principles on the Sunday Politics today (watch above) and demonstrated why most of its proposals are pipe dreams. Bennett said her party wants to ensure ‘nobody is living in fear’ but exactly how they would pay for that remains unanswered. One of its policies would be a ‘Citizens’ Income’, ensuring everyone has a minimum weekly income of £72. This would cost up to £280 billion and Bennett said it would be funded in part by abolishing Jobseeker’s

First Cameron, then Miliband – now it was Nigel Farage’s turn to be granted the status of a January interview on the Marr sofa. And there was plenty to discuss: the Sunday Times’ splashes on the story  that a party official joked that Ukip represents ‘hundreds of thousands of bigots all over Britain’, the Sunday Mirror’s splash on the same official saying the NHS is a waste of money — plus the Sunday Telegraph’s news of MEP Amjad Bashir’s defection to the Tories, and carries an interview with him saying the Tories (with their referendum pledge) are the true flag bearers of Euroscepticism. Whether it’s dry January or a restful period away from the spotlight, Farage did a good job of looking not

Greek voters are currently going to the polls in an election that will have profound consequences for the Eurozone. If the anti-austerity Syriza party wins, as the polls suggest it will—and its lead has actually been increasing in the past few days, the Eurozone crisis will enter a new and more acute phase. Syriza will demand a softening of the terms of the Greek bailout. But the Merkel government, the European Central Bank and the European Commission are adamant that they’ll be no leeway given. With Merkel already deeply unhappy about the ECB’s quantitative easing programme, she isn’t going to sign off on any concessions to Athens. Another reason why

Although Louise Mensch was once heralded as a ‘Cameron Cutie,’ the former Conservative MP’s relationship with the Prime Minister has soured after he paid tribute to the late King Abdullah. The Saudi Arabia monarch’s death was announced yesterday, with the cause of death thought to be a lung infection. Speaking following the news, Cameron gushed that he would be remembered for his ‘commitment to peace and for strengthening understanding between faiths’. However, the fact that his reign in Saudi Arabia has seen a higher number of beheadings than those carried out by Isis appears to have not escaped Mensch’s attention. She took to Twitter to say that if Cameron or any other Conservative politician dared praise Abdullah in spite of his treatment of women, she would

An email arrives from the excellent Zoe Williams, Guardian columnist and leftyagitfem middle-class propagandist. It requests that I should sign a round-robin petition to ensure that the Green Party is included in these proposed TV general election debates – much as David Cameron has, rather disingenuously, demanded. I couldn’t sign the petition. I can’t think of a reason why the Greens should be excluded from the debates if, say, Ukip is to be there as well. The Greens’ current opinion poll standings put them level with the hapless Lib Dems. They have an MP. They should probably be in there, somewhere – even if they lose their sole MP come May,

This election is going to be terribly confusing, something the latest TV debate proposals from the broadcasters highlight very nicely indeed. The debates are starting to resemble an episode of Take Me Out with the number of parties who’ll be standing behind lecterns growing – and calls for even more to join. One of the things that’s adding to the confusion is that no party appears to have the momentum, and what momentum there is has become difficult to discern in the usual ways as Parliament is emptying on a Wednesday night as MPs head off to take part in 650 by-elections. Because no one party has momentum, both main