There is not a single political party in any European democracy that campaigns in favour of releasing clouds of poisonous soot into the atmosphere or adding strontium 90 to children’s diets or exploding nuclear-bombs in the ozone layer. Yet everywhere the Green (just love the-mandatory capital letter!) movement preaches at us as if it alone is opposed to such things. Without them, goes the imputation, international capitalism would have turned the equatorial rainforests into multistorey car parks, while captive whales would be frantically pedalling treadmills to cool the world’s data centres.
Yet wherever they have got into power – especially here – greens have proved themselves to be show-boating charlatans who are more interested in personal celebrity than making hard but well-informed decisions. From the green-sponsored government-act of the 1990s that made it illegal for civil servants even to consider nuclear power as an option, to the opposition to the Rossport gas-field, Irish greens have shown themselves to be shallow, posturing egotists. But for all their unprincipled gallivanting, they have never sunk as low as their English counterparts, with their recent, double-espousal of Urdu and Gaza.
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