| "Promising to stop dawn raids on children went down very well," one of those two intense young aides tells Berry, afterwards in the pub. (Wonks talk like this. It's a good sign that Green wonks are talking like this, too.) "Yeah, I enjoyed tonight," she says, sipping a pint of bitter and adeptly rolling herself a free cigarettes. "Apart from when they brought us bottled water on stage..." (Mayday, Mayday! Anti-mineral water campaigner in own goal alert!) "Generally it felt like home turf for me." Even though none of the issues was overtly environmental? "The Green Party has always been about social justice as well as the environment," she explains. I can feel the intense young aide sitting next to me clenching with frustration that this needs explaining. He's Scottish, Green and So******t; Sian is a (non-active) member of the anti-capitalist party grouping, Green Left. She continues to explain, patiently,"There's an environmental aspect to housing, because to talk about affordable housing, you have to talk about insulation, which I would get free for Londoners – but I admit, there's nothing environmental about the London living wage. It's just about what's fair and right." |
