Three Answers

(1) I am speaking to you from Ten Downing Street, and I shall start by refusing to pardon my predecessor. That might sound unusual, but, in effect, for several decades, each new incumbent here in Ten Downing Street has tacitly pardoned the previous one by continuing with much the same policies. These have led to a country in which the social divide is daily growing, larger than it has been in close on a century.

“Central to all this is successive Governments’ refusal to come to terms with the crucial issue of our times.

“This is climate change.

“By refusing to do so, they have created a situation in which it becomes all the harder to address social issues, all of which amount to the fair use of finite resources.

“The very readable Australian scientist Tim Flannery put it succinctly, as long ago as 2004: ‘the best evidence indicates that we need to reduce our CO2 emissions by 70 per cent by 2050. If you own a four-wheel-drive and replace it with a hybrid fuel car, you can achieve a cut of that magnitude in a day rather than half a century. If your electricity provider offers a green option, for the cost of a daily cup of coffee you will be able to make equally major cuts in your household emissions. And if you vote for a politician who has a deep commitment to reducing CO2 emissions, you might change the world.’

“Now that, thank you very much, you have voted for such a politician, we have that task before us. I was always shocked in Hove and Brighton that the Labour Party derided climate change as a Green ‘pet project’. It is not that, it is crucial, and we should not regard it as daunting; it can yet be done, even though time has grown far shorter. It is not only something in which everybody must play a part but this can provide a renewed and sustainable economy – across the spectrum, from designers to fitters – which will enable our society to function in a mutual fashion.

‘We cannot risk the Earth becoming a bare cupboard. We have been burgled, and we have to replenish it now.”

(2) Yes. E M Forster gave it two cheers, “one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism”. He highlighted a belief in Parliament which is “often sneered at because it is a Talking Shop. I believe in it because it is a talking shop. I believe in the Private Member who makes a nuisance of himself. He gets snubbed and is told that he is cranky or ill-informed, but he does expose abuses which would otherwise never have been mentioned, and very often an abuse gets put right just by being mentioned. Occasionally, too, a well-meaning public official starts losing his head in the cause of efficiency, and thinks himself God Almighty. Such officials are particularly frequent in the Home Office.”

The situation has changed even more for the worse since Forster wrote that. Not only have officials – in the form of “Advisers” – infiltrated Government premises but international corporations, who have no interest in climate change, have done likewise. The result of this is that the main parties’ Private Member is no longer told that he is cranky or ill-informed – he is simply ignored.

We need more Members of Parliament who are prepared to speak out rather than be paid off by appointment to some trumpery post or other. A few Green MPs can, in this way, be far more visible, far more effective than the general run of Backbench stodge.

And, of course, democracy is not simply a matter of there being effective MPs. It is a matter of residents, at the hour of their death, being able to look back not with regret (“I wish I had…”) but at a fulfilled life which had made the best use of precious time and brought the best use of diverse, different talents rather than being forced into falsehood of targets and grades. Residents should not have to contend with lives of quiet desperation but achieve quiet satisfaction.

(3) The need and the spirit are there to prevent the devastation of the Earth: the most effective revolution is a new cast of mind.