Caroline Lucas urges Jeremy Corbyn to discuss electoral pacts
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Version 0 of 1. The Green party co-leader, Caroline Lucas, has urged the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, to enter last-minute talks about electoral pacts to stop a Tory landslide with a mandate for “extreme Brexit”. Lucas, who is defending Brighton Pavilion, her party’s only seat, said there was “a huge amount of enthusiasm and energy” for deals between parties such as the Greens, Liberal Democrats and Labour to defeat the Tories in marginal seats. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme she said: “What we ought to be doing is saying: how do we stop the Tories getting the kind of landslide that will allow them to impose not just an extreme Brexit but extreme social policies, long-term damage to our health, education and so forth.” She cited the Isle of Wight as an example where Labour and the Liberal Democrats should withdraw their candidates to ensure the Green party candidate won. She said: “If Labour and Lib Dems came together with us we would have a chance at least of getting rid of a Tory and replacing it with a candidate who will fight for this change to the electoral system. For this to happen we need Jeremy Corbyn to get around a table with us, and I think what is so disappointing is that he talks about doing politics differently and yet he is betraying the mass of the people that he says he represents by allowing them to be hit hardest by a massive Tory majority.” Lucas urged the leadership of Labour and Lib Dems to agree to talk about a “series of electoral alliances” rather than a single pact. She said: “It is right that people on the left and centre left are talking together to see if in a handful of marginal constituencies they might be able to come to some arrangements to try to make sure that the person best able to beat the Tories and get back into parliament, and crucially to push for a change to our electoral system, to see if that could be possible.” Lucas urged Labour to follow the lead of the Green party. “The Greens have already stood down unilaterally for the Labour party in places like Ealing Central and Acton, in places like Brighton Kemptown, in other places too,” she said. The Lib Dems have agreed to stand aside in Brighton Pavilion for Lucas but Labour rejected a similar deal for the Isle of Wight, despite Greens standing down for Labour’s Rupa Huq in London. Lucas added: “Over a million people voted Green in 2015, that could have led to 24 Green MPs. People don’t want in marginal constituencies parties on the left and the centre left to spend all of their time fighting each other and for the Conservatives to come through the middle.” She insisted there was still time to “do politics differently”. She said: “We’ve still got a few more days where we could build on these alliances, which it isn’t just the Green party asking for them, it is people up and down the country begging parties of the left and the centre-left to get together to do grown-up politics and to be able to put in place a group of people who have a better chance of serving the interests of the people rather than allowing a massive Tory landslide, which is what we are on course to see.” |