Letter: Splitting the Green Vote Can Mean a Tory Victory

Published on: 11 Apr, 2021
Updated on: 11 Apr, 2021

From: David Roberts

In response to: Don’t Pave Over Our Green Countryside

Mr Peters tells a great story. I’d vote for him any day in preference to the Tory candidate, an MP from the 1990s who told The Dragon in 2019 that he was “proud” of his party’s odious Local Plan.

The problem is the Greens’ status as a national party which, as national parties do, has come to a cosy agreement with the Lib Dems to field only one candidate in Shere Division.

This is odd, because the Greens’ only local councillor, on Guildford council, is allied not to the Lib Dems but to a truly local party, R4GV.

They, in turn, have agreed not to compete in Shere Division with Julia Osborn, candidate for the Guildford Greenbelt Group, another truly local party that for the past eight years has promoted the exact policies now adopted by Mr Peters.

Thus, Mr Peters threatens to split the green vote and let the Tory in. While trying to straddle two horses locally, the Greens’ manifesto [https://campaigns.greenparty.org.uk/manifesto/] shows their real loyalty is to a rag-bag of fringe left-wing causes, among which defending our countryside hardly even figures.

Compare that with the policies in GGG’s newsletter [https://www.guildfordgreenbeltgroup.co.uk/].

I do hope residents will choose wisely and not be baffled by two apparently different green options, the Green Party and GGG. The key questions are:

1. Which party better reflects local rather than national concerns; and
2. Which has the better track record of sticking up for the local environment.

With the May 6 elections looming, all parties are scrambling to steal GGG’s clothes. Even the Tories suddenly want to review their own Plan, though seemingly only to boost enough road-building to justify their existing, inflated housing targets.

In 2015 their election leaflets were headed “Save the Green Belt”. Voters won’t be fooled a second time if they back authentic, local parties.