Green policies are good

It isn't about sacrifice, it's about a better quality of life, says new party leader Caroline Lucas.

Caroline Lucas MEP, Green Party Leader

ANDREW MARR: Now then, the Green Party has always preferred to be a little bit alternative, but perhaps not that alternative anymore because this weekend they finally gave up on their system of having not a leader, but instead two speakers - one a man and one a woman - and they elected Caroline Lucas as the first female leader of a political party since Margaret Thatcher.

She's also a rare example of a Green who might actually get elected to Parliament at the next election, and she is with me now. Welcome and congratulations...

CAROLINE LUCAS: Thank you very much.

ANDREW MARR: ...on your victory. So what happened inside the Green Party to make this move from speakers to a leader?

CAROLINE LUCAS: I think we recognise essentially that it is so important to get our message across, that this was a way of communicating more effectively.

That's what's changed. We're not suddenly becoming like the other parties, don't worry about that, but what it's about is saying that really the climate crisis we face is so urgent, the situation with social justice is so urgent, we have to do more to get our message across.

Having a leader might be a way of doing that because it's one person who communicates on behalf of the party instead of having a rotating number of people that people get confused on who's who.

ANDREW MARR: Is it a bit of a sort of surrender to the sort of, the media environment in which you live then?

CAROLINE LUCAS: I think it's a recognition that we've got to get that message to as many people as possible as urgently as possible, and I think frankly it's to do with that urgency.

That when you see all the other parties pretending to be wearing Green clothes, that is very, very confusing for the public. We've got to get very clear that there's a massive gap between the rhetoric and the reality from the other parties.

ANDREW MARR: Well you mention the Green clothes. Of course this is at the time of the credit crunch and people's budgets narrowing and people having a very hard time wondering about unemployment. Not traditionally the easiest time to sell an environmental message.

CAROLINE LUCAS: Well I think we've really got to challenge that because it ought to be the easiest time to sell things like energy efficiency, to sell things like a massive programme of home insulation.

Those are programmes that Green councillors are actually unfolding up and down the country right now. So we need to challenge the government that somehow always wants to make Green sound like more taxation, more suffering, more hardship. It's not like that.

Green policies are actually good for people: they lower your fuel bills; they make it easier for you to have regular, cheap, affordable public transport. You know, this isn't rocket science. They manage it in many other European countries. It's about time we did the same.

ANDREW MARR: We've had a Green Party in this country for a long time now and yet you've never come close to breaking through. I'm sure you would say that's because of the First Past The Post system.

Do you think that what appears to be the decay of the Labour Party across parts of the country gives you an opportunity you've never had before?

CAROLINE LUCAS: I think we stand on the brink of a massive opportunity. There are so many people who joined the Labour Party genuinely believing it was going to be a party of progressive values and they've been betrayed.

You know when they joined the Labour Party, did they imagine it would be a party that would now become... make Britain the biggest arms exporter in the world, that it would lead us into two wars in support of a US President, more prisons?

ANDREW MARR: It sounds to me like those who say Caroline Lucas is to the Left on... of the argument inside the Green Party are right.

CAROLINE LUCAS: I think Caroline Lucas and the Green Party is about progressive policies. I'm not sure that the Left-Right spectrum is even very meaningful anymore when you've got David Cameron now trying to position himself to the Left of Gordon Brown. So Left and Right is not really the debate.

What the debate is: are you for progressive policies, policies that people... put people and the planet at the heart; or are you looking backwards to the, to the old politics, to the grey politics of the other parties?

ANDREW MARR: But are you not quite pleased to see somebody like David Cameron talking about the need for sacrifices, the need for Green taxes and so on? You may be sceptical, but surely that's good from your point of view?

CAROLINE LUCAS: The fact that he's talking about Green policies is good. It puts Green policies at the top of the agenda. People look more carefully at what he's saying. They recognise there's no real substance behind the veneer, so they come to the real thing.

They come to us; that's good. But it's not good that he talks about sacrifices. Can I just really say this because if there's one message I'd like to get across, it's that Green politics isn't about sacrifice; it's actually about a better quality of life for everybody.

ANDREW MARR: What about the windfall tax decision? Were you disappointed that there doesn't seem to be, to be a windfall tax coming on the big utilities?

CAROLINE LUCAS: I think it is absolutely shameful that this spineless government cannot stand up to the energy companies and put that windfall tax into, into operation.

When you see just three of those companies making �1,000 profit every single second in the first 6 months of this year while at the same time people are literally struggling, choosing whether to eat or to heat their homes, that is outrageous in the 21st century. Yes, I was very disappointed and I think the rest of the country was disappointed too.

ANDREW MARR: Caroline Lucas - Leader, sounding like a leader - thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning.

INTERVIEW ENDS

Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy

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