The future's...green?
One of the most intriguing questions about the next Parliament is how many independents and MPs from smaller parties it contains. The Greens are hoping to elect their own Keir Hardie figure, in the shape of their leader, Caroline Lucas, who is in prediction mode on STRAIGHTtalk this weekend.
Andrew Neil: How many MPs will you have after the next election?
Caroline Lucas: I hope we will have at least one or two.
AN: Including yourself in Brighton?
CL: I hope including myself in Brighton where we are already ahead of all the parties, the ICM poll in December put us at 35%, the European Elections we were double the vote of Labour, over 6,000 votes ahead of the Conservatives. But the crucial thing is not just one or two MPs in Westminster, although I do think that would make a difference, but I was interested to see for example, that the length of time between the first Labour MP and the first Labour government was only a matter of 24 years or so, it wasn't a huge amount of time, I don't really want to wait that long but hey, what we're talking about is getting that first foot in the door and our experience is that once you do that, people see that Green Party policies are credible, they see that we actually do what we say and more Greens very quickly get elected....
STRAIGHT TALK WITH ANDREW NEIL can be seen on the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News Channel on Saturday 20 March at 0130, 0430 and 2230 and on Sunday 21 March at 0130 and 2230. It is repeated on Tuesday 23 March at 0330.
I'm Mark D'Arcy and I'll be writing about what goes on in the chambers and committee rooms at Westminster.
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