At yesterday evening’s Environmental Any Questions,the LibDems were represented not by either of their MPs who have been Defra ministers, and certainly not by Chris Huhne (remember him? He was a very good Climate Secretary despite everything else) but by the husky-voiced Baroness Parminter. Kate Parminter knows her stuff and was very impressive.
A little earlier in the day I had been across the road in Euston station and had happened upon Alastair Campbell and had a very brief chat with him about how he thought the election would pan out. There is, of course the prospect that the Labour Party might have to get into bed with the LibDems, occupying the not yet cold place in the bed vacated by an exiting Conservative Party.
Enough of such analogies! but a true partnership between the LibDems and Labour on environmental matters would be quite an arttractive prospect. Kate promised us:
- a Nature Act
- a Green Homes Act
- a Green Transport Act
- a Zer0-Waste Act
- a Zero-Carbon Act
- that LibDems think the EU is brilliant for the environment and it is essential that the UK has a strong voice in Europe
- to protect the Habitats and Water Framework Directives
- that LibDems believe in targets to focus action
- that the LibDems believe in regulation
- that the LibDems believe there is too much persecution of raptors
So, one of the many prospects for 8 May is another coalition government with the LibDems as an important player in it. It’s certainly not the worst option on the table.
And on a personal level Baroness Parminter generally did answer the questions clearly and with knowledge.
Maybe this is the place to say that if the audience had been offered a choice between a coalition of those on the left of Jonathan Dimbleby (Barry Gardiner, Eilidh Whiteford and Natalie Bennett) or those on his right (Kate Parminter, Rupert de Mauley and William Cash) then my feeling is that the left would have won hands down. but if a different coalition had been offered, a coalition of the women (Parminter, Whiteford and Bennett) compared with the men (Gardiner, de Mauley and Cash) then it would have been a landslide for the woman.
But you don’t get to vote for a coalition – largely because you didn’t vote for PR! UK coalition governments are an emerging property of our electoral system and so one may end up with some very strange bedfellows indeed.
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Sounds an attractive Lib/Lab agenda Mark. Let’s hope it works out that way. Re the points you list, also defending the Birds Directive is vital.
On Liberal person who should not be forgotten is Catherine Bearder MEP (currently the Lib Dems only one). Because she is an MEP (over the Channel in Brussels) she tends to get overlooked but she is a great defender and supporter of wildlife. A great conservation asset.