With fewer than 100 days to go to the general election, speculation is rife about the make-up of the next government. One of the possibilities is the rather misleading ‘rainbow’ coalition. I say misleading because rainbow suggests something pleasant. In truth, it is difficult to think of something more fundamentally unpleasant than a coalition made up of Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens and possibly the SNP.
A rainbow coalition would of course lead to an annihilation of the British economy, an abandonment of criminal justice as we know it and an unimaginably worse immigration problem.
One of the less appreciated aspects of a rainbow coalition is the potential attack on personal freedom.
One look at Green Party health policy is enough to send shivers down the spine. Its pledges include:
- Ban all advertising of unhealthy food and drink on television before 9pm as well as banning all marketing promoting unhealthy food and drink aimed at children, including websites, texts and in-store placements.
Verdict: good plan – this will significantly decrease demand for advertising space making it much cheaper for independent tofu producers and hemp shoe makers to advertise their goods.
- Force schools to provide an area for children to learn how to grow food and add food and farming to the curriculum.
Verdict: perhaps we can take history, maths or science off the curriculum to allow time to teach ‘food and farming.’
- Enforce a limit on the number of takeaway food establishments in an area selling food high in saturated fat, salt and sugar and ban takeaways and restaurants from opening near educational establishments.
Verdict: why stop there? Why not just ban restaurants that serve food the Green Party deems to be unhealthy?
- Set mandatory sustainability and health criteria for all restaurants.
Verdict: Ah I see, that is where the ban comes in.
Many will argue that draconian Green Party policies are irrelevant. The Greens will win one, possibly, two seats in May, so even if they are part of a rainbow coalition, they will not play a significant role in determining Government policy.
This is indeed correct. However, it is not Green Party policy on health that is the frightening part.
It is the fact that Labour Party policy is almost identical.
Take the recent Labour announcements on health. They have said that Labour will:
- set maximum permitted levels of sugar, salt and fat in foods;
- consider the option of a watershed for advertising of products high in sugar, fat and/or salt;
- report on how children can be better protected from the advertising of products high in sugar, salt and fat in non-broadcast media, such as ‘advergames;’
- limit the future number of fast food outlets locally.
Did the two parties club together to hire a manifesto writer between them?
What on earth do these open-ended pledges actually mean? What is ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’? Who decides this? Ed Miliband? Andy Burnham? Natalie Bennett?
It is the principle which is so worrying. Labour and the Greens believe that the State should dictate what you can and cannot eat. They are seeking to seize the rights of an individual to choose, the right of parents to decide how to bring up their child.
Their disregard for individual freedom is as appalling as it is anti-British. British citizens wholly despise unnecessary intervention from the State. Red Ed being egged along (free range, of course) by the Greens in a rainbow of doom coalition that will spell disaster for individual freedom. Once these freedoms are taken, it is almost impossible to get them back.
