Informing a party’s election manifesto

Published: 25th March 2010

• YOUR reviewer (March 4) rightly described The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone as “brilliant, profound and provocative”, (Review, Fairer shares all round? March 11) and noted how the Labour Party reaction to its conclusions, that rising inequality is damaging to all, and throughout our society, has been non-existent.
But he was wrong to say that it is “unlikely to be found in any election leaflet”.
The findings have strongly informed the Green Party general election manifesto, detailed in my recent letter to voters delivered throughout Holborn and St Pancras.
These policies include raising pensions to £170 a week, raising the minimum wage to £8.17 an hour and a 35-hour working week that would help to share the work around.
And co-author Kate Pickett addressed a packed session at the Green Party conference at Finchley last month, receiving a rapturous response.
As your reviewer so neatly put it, money “like muck, needs to be spread around”.
The Green Party is the only party that both understands this, and is prepared to take action to achieve a new balance in society from which strong, healthy, sustainable, green shoots can grow.
NATALIE BENNET
Green Party candidate
Holborn and St Pancras