Murnaghan Paper Review with Baroness Jenny Jones, Green Party [only], 14.02.16

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Let’s start by taking a look through the day’s newspaper and I’m joined by Baroness Jenny Jones from the Green Party, she’s a Eurosceptic, Laura Sams was a Conservative MP until last year and she is now Chair of European Movement, a group campaigning for Britain to stay within the EU and also joining us is Eleanor Mills who is Editor of the Sunday Times Magazine and the paper’s Editorial Director and we don’t whether you are an inner or an outer, you can take your choice and maybe we will find out during the course of this review.  Let’s kick it all off with this from the Sunday Times, ‘Travel chiefs: Brexit danger to UK tourists’, what’s this about?   Jenny, does it sound like a bit of project fear?  The low cost airlines like EasyJet, Ryanair, they fly to a lot of countries outside the European Union already and keep the fares low.

JENNY JONES: Well if I were writing a story I would say ‘EasyJet: danger to the planet’ because quite honestly if we are talking about lots and lots more flights we are talking about damaging the environment even more than we are at the moment.  We have just had Paris, all the political parties made fantastic noises about it and yet people still think that saving the planet and slowing climate change down still means you can still fly.  

DM: But it is interesting through the prism of the debate about Britain’s continuing membership of the European Union, you’ve put a Green slant on it and said actually this might be one positive dimension, if air fares went up substantially people would fly less.  

LAURA SAMS: The rich would fly and the poor would have to stay at home.

JENNY JONES: I’m afraid that is still what happens now, it is mostly the rich who fly.  It is a tiny percentage – well a tiny percentage, something like 30% of people take all these flights so it is not something that everybody can do if you’re poor, it just isn’t.  And is that worth trashing the planet, that’s what you have to ask.  

DM: Let’s get it back to the European debate and the tactics that are being used here, I think we are going to hear a lot more of these sorts of things from both sides about how things will or won’t change if we stay in or leave the European Union, none of which can be proven unless you do one thing or the other.  Jenny Jones, the Germans say in the headline in the Mail but again that can only be proven if we actually did leave.  Do you think Britain could survive quite easily without the Germans and others?

JENNY JONES: Of course it could.  We are a really important trading partner for virtually everybody in the world.  I’d better say that the Green Party’s view on this is that we are very, very critical of the EU generally, that it needs reform but the Green Party’s view is that we should stay in. I personally disagree with my party’s policy on this because I despair of ever being able to reform the EU, I think it’s unreformable these days.  

LAURA SAMS: But you don’t think that the environment is in many ways protected by European legislation?  I have just set up the Environmentalists for Europe and universally they are saying what is important is the habitat’s directive, that our water quality, our beaches and particularly our beaches and pollution issues.

JENNY JONES: All of that is true, it is very, very good to have so much environmental legislation but this government is avoiding all sorts of ways of getting … for example they are going ahead with fracking near water sources, how is that environmental?  

DM: And you think that might change if we left.  Jenny, back to the EU and in the Independent.

JENNY JONES: Voters are losing confidence in Cameron and I think part of this is because of all the rubbish scare stories, the drama that’s untrue, people are just losing confidence in a lot of politician and I think that’s very worrying as a politicians.  

ELEANOR MILLS: I think that is rubbish that people are losing confidence in Cameron, he just won a massive election landslide, Labour is a complete disaster, the Greens aren’t offering a particularly important …

JENNY JONES: Sorry, which landslide was that?  

DM: An unexpected majority rather than a landslide.

ELEANOR MILLS: Corbyn is a disaster, he is ruining the Labour party.

JENNY JONES: He is not.

DM: But the point about that article is losing confidence in Cameron’s renegotiations about the European Union and the Brussels Summit, out of not very much is he going to end up with even less?   Jenny, you have this story in the Observer about mass trespass, that sounds interesting, tell us about it.

JENNY JONES:  Yes, I was there yesterday.  I have got to say it was huge fun, it was a bunch of us doing a really positive and good-hearted protest to say that it is absolutely mad that the public doesn’t have access to major parts of our cities, like the side of the Thames.  This building here at the back of the picture is City Hall which is the seat of London government and politicians have to carry a little card if we step outside to say we are authorised to have an interview or a picture taken or do TV or radio.

DM: On that part of the Embankment that we are looking at in the picture?

JENNY JONES: Yes, the government sold the side of the river and that building, we have that on a peppercorn rent for 25 years and after that it reverts to the private company who owns it.

DM: And there is talk in the Mirror about this new garden bridge and it being closed for parties and events.

JENNY JONES: Exactly, it’s private space and we are subsidising it.  I think it is absolutely outrageous and I think it’s time the government learned they cannot sell off public assets like this without some sort of backlash and I want to be part of the backlash.  

DM: Thank you all very much indeed we are out of time, very entertaining.