Caroline Lucas MEP, leader of the Green Party, delivered a blistering attack on the failure of Britain's biggest parties to develop a stable, sustainable economy. Dr Lucas said the big three were incapable of meeting a moral challenge head-on and dealing with it properly. She likened the government's half-hearted approach to the climate crisis to those who, in times past, have stood in the way of other kinds of progress, from abolishing slavery and acknowledging women's rights.
"Imagine if they'd said: slavery is wrong, so let's cut down a bit - own one slave instead of two... Or if instead of letting women vote, own husbands had just agreed to ask us our views before they went to vote."
The government, she said, was responding to the climate crisis with "a few low-energy light-bulbs here, a bit of loft insulation there.
And she spelled out how a Green industrial revolution would create hundreds of thousands of jobs across a wide range of sectors, and give Britain a new economy grounded firmly in social justice and ecological sustainability.