The “Green Surge” has thrust the Green Party into the limelight in recent weeks, so papers like the Telegraph have been shining a spotlight on the party’s fabulous policies. It’s already a given that the economy would be absolutely destroyed, and the Greens don’t seem to have grasped that if you try to tax the rich, and companies, “till their pips squeak”, you’ll find that in this age of unprecedented global mobility, they’ll be on the next plane out of the country. Or, given the Green Party wants to make flying so inconvenient and restricted, the next pedalo.
Considering that the most tax-productive members of society will have left, the remaining citizens had better have something pretty impressive to offer the economy in this Green New World, because the “Citizen’s Income” plan, to give everyone in Britain £71 a week, is projected to cost between £240 billion to £280 billion a year on top of massively inflated spending on almost every government department.
Their policies were last amended in September 2014, so these aren’t meaningless like the 2010 UKIP manifesto which contained policies, such as compulsory uniforms for taxi drivers, which attracted ridicule from the media. I thought that given immigration is such a hot topic these days, it’s time to shine a light on the Greens and some concrete policies for who is to share with us this green and pleasant land of unlimited welfare spending.
MG401: We will allow the partners, prospective partners, immediate families and prospective families of British residents to join them without excessive delays or unreasonable requirements for proof of relationship. This will be independent of the financial status of the resident and will not be dependent on her/him providing accommodation (We recognise that this must be implemented in association with a housing policy).
This sets the tone, really, to a migration policy that is a free-for-all and that money and resources are no object. The supposedly Green Party would be quite happy to concrete over the countryside as they strive to fit in to the country pretty much anyone who wants to enter the UK.
They’re certainly not trying to out-UKIP UKIP, as leader Natalie Bennett has accused the Labour Party of doing over immigration, as MG420 states the party “will resist all attempts to introduce a ‘barrier round Europe’ shutting out non-Europeans or giving them more restricted rights of movement within Europe than European Nationals”, whilst in MG403, they say they will abolish the “primary purpose” rule, under which partners are refused entry if it is thought that the primary purpose of the relationship is to gain entry into the UK. With these rules, unless you’re incredibly unimaginative, there’s an easy way in for everyone.
Considering the stress on “finite resources”, none of this seems particularly conducive to an environmental message. The manifesto does pay some lip-service to overpopulation and “carrying capacity”, and they have a foolproof plan to prevent population growth – ensuring condoms are supplied free on demand, and “to support research into new methods of contraception.”
Why yes, the reason our birth rate has shot up is obviously because people are lacking a spare couple of quid for condoms (which, I think can be acquired free of charge from family planning clinics as it is), and because the myriad methods of contraception currently available are just too inconvenient.
The Green Party can now pour millions of pounds perhaps into researching mind-controlled contraception, where brainwaves tell the reproductive system whether it should be switched on or off.
I’m not sure how happy all these migrants will be under the Greens when they get here, mind. Religious teaching will be strictly prohibited in school hours (ED175) and within school hours, the only permitted mentions of religion will be in the guise of celebrating diversity and all religions (ED170). I’m not sure the members of terrorist groups that the Green Party intends to legalise will be the biggest fans of this plan. They also don’t consider that with open borders and hundreds of thousands of new migrants from vastly different cultures, this will be controversial, to say the least, and likely to cause significant strife.
One of the party’s core values is for people to live “free from discrimination whether based on race, colour, gender, sexual orientation, religion, social origin or any other prejudice.” While the Green Party is very welcoming and respectful of other cultures, they seem to have, in their sparkly-eyed optimism, and essentially patronising attitude to people from other countries and cultures, overlooked the possibility this won’t necessarily be reciprocal. It might come as a shock to ever-presumptuous Green Party supporters that it might take more than LGBTQI public service announcements on the Green’s now purely educational BBC channels to change hearts and minds.
Not everyone is welcome as an immigrant in this brave new Britain, however (though I probably shouldn’t say “Britain”, as they want to end the idea of a British nation or nationality). Greentopia isn’t quite a free-for-all. While MG205 stipulates preference, with regards to immigration, “should not be given to those with desirable resources or skills”, MG204 instructs that there should be the right to restrict immigration when ” prospective migrants have, on average, equal or greater economic power than the residents of the recipient area”.
It’s like they read some economics books and decided to do the opposite of everything said to be sensible. People intending to vote for the Green Party are either ignorant of their policies, or they despise Britain and all who dwell here so much they want to see us all abandoning these dystopian lands to seek asylum in North Korea, which would look like a paradise land of plenty in comparison.
Their long-term goals give another insight into the Green mindset, stating that communities and regions should have the right to restrict inward migration if “the recipient area is owned or controlled by indigenous peoples (eg Australian aboriginal people) whose traditional lifestyle would be adversely affected by in-comers”.
I assume “indigenous Europeans” don’t count, as a group, in the Green Party’s mind. In fact, France’s traditional lifestyle had for hundreds of years involved being able to satirise religion without fear of being gunned down for it. Not since World War II were Jews, in the Netherlands, requiring 24 hour protection from bodyguards just because of their religious background. Also in the Netherlands, people displaying the wrong flag have been assaulted and had Molotov Cocktails lobbed at their properties, and in the UK the media self-censors, fearful of fatal retribution.
As a result of mass migration to Europe at an unprecedented rate, freedom of expression in Europe has not been so imperilled in a long time, and due to the Jihadis in our midst, the country is close to signing all our privacy away as we are warned that in order to prevent attacks, government agencies need access to all our phone calls, emails and browsing habits.
There’s another area of border control on which the Green Party will be keeping a close eye. In EC777 we’re told that after implementing stratospheric taxes (as opposed to the now sky-high) on cigarettes and alcohol, “particular concern” will be given to “the issue of the smuggling of these products from other countries in which duty levels are lower”. There will be import taxes levied, “to undermine UK public health policy.” God forbid!
The Greens have thought of everything, and people smoking cheap cigarettes is clearly more of a threat to the country than the prospect of “terrorism,” which is accompanied by scare quotes throughout the manifesto and, we’re told, is the result of “interventionist foreign policies” and “unjust divisions”. I imagine Christians in Nigeria would be interested in this revelation.
Considering the Green Party wants negative growth and a shift in work from the private sector to the ‘third sector’ and public sector (again, how will this be paid for?), with far fewer people in formal work at all, how can this possibly square with throwing the borders open wide? They want the pie to shrink, but by allowing more people a slice of the diminished pie, it seems would-be migrants from poor countries would be better off staying there, given that the UK’s living standards would crash to such levels that Oxfam would be making adverts about us. What’s the point in having lots of free time to basket-weave and make feminist artwork out of period blood if your country is in violent strife, resulting from deeply divided social values, and there’s nothing to eat?