Why the Greens could be onto something with their policies - Yorkshire Post Letters

Which is a greater threat to the UK/humanity over the next decades: the climate crisis or Donald Trump?

One of the wettest recorded winters in England has just ended (13 per cent more rain than average). Last summer we had the largest area of wildfires since 2012. Any amount of science fails to convince the climate doubters/deniers.

Is it only personal experience that will convince them? Do they need a flooded house or a wildfire in their garden? As for political leadership: imagine if the array of activist groups: Greenpeace to Stop Rosebank, the RSPB to Just Stop Oil, were to combine. Climate would get its essential agenda position.

But such a realignment would underline the inequality in our society. How can our ‘community’ continue? The ‘top’ 20 per cent has 36 per cent of the income and 63 per cent of the wealth; the bottom 20 per cent has 8 per cent of the income and 0.5 per cent of the wealth.

Progress comes brick by brick. Start with the recently energised Green Party and their ‘provocative’ policies eg. reforming NATO. Is it reliably strong when its leader, Trump, says the only restriction in his foreign policy is "his own morality".

For Iran he demands unconditional surrender and his choice as replacement ruler as if he's in the movies. Results of his ‘moral’ war are likely to be real damage to the world economy as the price of oil rockets, civil war in Iran which will destabilise the Middle East for an indefinite period and many, many thousands of new refugees fleeing to the EU and the UK.

He has no care for human rights, pursues wealth for his family as a primary consideration, attacks universities, the US legal system and media just as a dictator would. And how much of this is a distraction behind which he can hide?

If he doesn't make himself president for a third term his replacement could be JD Vance: he proposes that women's role is child rearing and that "Christian values" should be forced on America by Government action.

Meanwhile a top US general tells his troops that Trump is chosen by Jesus to start the last ever war in Iran to bring on Armageddon. Are the Greens wrong to suggest a re-evaluation of our dependence on ‘Uncle Sam’?

They also suggest replacing the UK's deathly ‘war on drugs’ with a more sane approach. 2024 saw the highest number of drug-related deaths in the modern period, this figure rising for the 12th consecutive year.

We can learn from Portugal, drug use was decriminalised in 2000. Drugs are confiscated, the user referred to a dissuasion commission. Drug related deaths and use are consistently below European averages. The percentage of prisoners sentenced for drug crime has fallen from 40 to 15 per cent. Aren't UK prisons at bursting point?

Ignoring these issues makes no sense. A Green coalition government would begin to make progress. This could be achieved by adopting Proportional Representation so that many more of us would have a government that represented our views.

It will also be essential to reject Reform at all upcoming elections. Farage still takes us for children. His big success to date has been Brexit. Why does he never list the advantages that it has brought?