The Green Party has the most popular policies on public transport, the NHS, public services and job-creation - and the media will be doing British democracy a service if it reports all of this fully between now and the general election, one of Britain's top Greens tells Guardian readers today.
Jenny Jones, a London Assembly member and former deputy mayor of London, says in today's online Guardian (1):
"That the party which blazed new trails and pioneered joined-up thinking was caricatured as single-issue was against all logic, and against all the evidence. In fact it's one of the biggest ironies of modern British politics."
Now, she says, the media needs to present the full picture of the Green option facing the voters - because there are social and economic policies which only the Green Party is now offering, and which the public want to hear about.
In her comment piece, Ms Jones, who will contest the general election for Camberwell and Peckham against Harriet Harman, adds:
"Most of the time, most of the people get most of their information about politics from the mass media. It's a relief to see that the media has recently been giving more attention, for instance, to the Green Party's economic policies. Indeed, one highly respected journalist in the Daily Telegraph last week congratulated the Green Party for being ahead of the economic curve with its Green New Deal (2)."
But, she added, the myth of the "one-issue Greens" has reappeared in the media even in the last few days.
Voters deserve to hear about the options - not just about three "increasingly similar and equally unappealing" parties
Jenny Jones said today: "Good democracy is based on good information. The voters deserve to be told about the options open to them in an election - not just about the increasingly similar policies of the biggest three parties.
"When the media gives 99 per cent of the coverage to just three parties, it's no wonder those parties win most of the seats. And when those parties are widely seen as equally unappealing, because they all have basically the same policies, it's no wonder so many people don't bother to vote."
She concluded: "The media could do British democracy a massive service. Let the voters see there is a very distinctive option in the form of the Green Party. The Greens are offering policies on transport and the NHS and the Royal Mail and job-creation that we know are popular - and it's not good for democracy that these policies are drowned out by over-reporting of Labour and the Tories."
Jenny Jones is our candidate for London Mayor 2012. For more information on her campaign, please visit www.jennyforlondon.org
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Notes
1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/16/green-party-policies
2. "These green shoots mean business," Geoffrey Lean, Daily Telegraph, 12th June 2009, in which he said: " ... the Greens' pitch is plausible, so much so that decidedly brown Governments around the world have endorsed similar programmes of their own" - although Gordon Brown has "paid little more than loud lipservice to it." See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/5516785/These-green-shoots-mean-business.html.