Cameron's Tories barely greener than Thatcher's, says MEP

In a piece in The Guardian's Comment is Free pages today, Jean Lambert MEP reveals the truth behind Conservative leader David Cameron's apparent greening of his party.

London's Green MEP reminds Guardian readers that "The eighteen-year stretch of Conservative government marked the golden age of Tory roadbuilding and airport expansion, of Thatcher's 'Great Car Economy,' of bus de-regulation and rail privatisation and other policies that have contributed heavily to increasing CO2 emissions. Given her neoliberal ideology, all this was probably inevitable. The market was the solution to all problems, including the problems it was clearly hopeless at dealing with, and this trend still exists in Conservative policy."

She acknowledged that David Cameron has improved on his predecessors' policies in some respects, but insists he still has the wrong climate change targets, and inadequate policies even for meeting the wrong targets.

"David Cameron talks about liberating Britain from oil-dependency and from the vulnerability of potential energy price fluctuations, but the bulk of his energy plans involve making us dependent on imported coal and uranium. This is still not the committed change in direction we need," she says.