Lumley goes Green in European elections
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REUTERS
The actress Joanna Lumley has thrown her support behind the Greens in the European elections, saying that they are most likely to bring about real change
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It is the celebrity endorsement that all the major political parties would have loved to receive. But Joanna Lumley, who shamed ministers into granting immigration rights to Gurkha veterans, has given her backing in next week's European elections to the Greens.
Her decision is a blow for the Liberal Democrats who had been wooing the Absolutely Fabulous star during the Gurkha campaign.
But the actress – named as the female celebrity the public would most like to run the country – said the Greens were most likely to bring about real change. "I urge you to cast a positive vote for a better future by voting Green in the European elections," she added.
Ms Lumley, a champion of human rights in Burma, the free Tibet cause and animal rights, paid tribute to the party's leader, Caroline Lucas, "a tireless campaigner... staunchly defending human rights and strongly promoting greater protection for animals".
A YouGov survey today says the Greens are the most trusted politicians. Asked which party's politicians they thought were most likely to put their own financial interests before the interests of their country, only five per cent of respondents named the Greens.
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Comments
I mean, if Patsy says the single-issue Greens are good for us, then it must be true, musn't it?
This continues is the UK, with a policy of "a basic citizen's income" (doesn't say who will pay for this). A policy (MG204) of recogniding the rights of some peoples to protect their traditional lifestyles, but denying such right to others.
Most of the rest of the poicies seem t be apple-pie statements, except the envrionment ones - which are not bad.
Even the environmental policies of Petra Kelly et al were occasionally incomprehensible - e.g oposing nuclear, the safest and least-polluting of any power-source so far known. This continues in the UK: e.g. the party asserts that organic food is too expensive because the government does not subsidise it. They say that "Genetically Modified Organisms...threaten to damage our health" despite all evidence to the contrary and despite their promise to use science to understand the world. (Indeed, they seem to support mostly that science which furthers their beliefs system and agendae - and say they wish to curb that which does not.)
Having read through their policies, I still find them single-issuse with a number of bolt-ons in other feilds, some ill-advised.