A letter from 30 Labour PPCs to the Observer has been prominently featured today and has earnt top billing on the BBC news and current affairs programmes this morning. The letter calls on Ed Miliband to make public ownership of the railways a key part of Labour policy going into the general election.
Rupert Read the Green Party spokesperson for Transport issued the following response:
After many years of being in government, sitting and watching the privatised rail monopolies rake in huge profits, are Labour about to do something? Or at least "consider" doing something?The Labour Party might finally be starting to catch up with the Green Party, on this key issueThe truth is that the British public have been down this road before with the Labour party and they have been let down time and again. You simply can't trust Labour to do what they say they are going to do."Caroline Lucas MP has a bill in the House of Commons right now calling for exactly this. Labour had more than a decade in government to do something about this and they didn't lift a finger to help.This is a flagship Green Party policy; Caroline Lucas has made it central to her agenda; the media really ought to report that Labour is hardly engaging in original thinking: simply stumbling falteringly toward something that voters can already plump for in unadulterated form by voting Green.
The letter from the Labour PPCs come as another poll shows the Greens overtaking the Liberal Democrats in the European Elections. The Green Party is on course to return its highest ever number of MEPs on May 22nd.