The Politics of the Environment: Ideas, Activism, Policy, 2nd Edition

Party politics and the environment

Figure 5.1Environmental protection in British party manifestos, 1959–2005

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59 64 66 70 74 74 79 83 87 92 97 01 05

General Election

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Con

Lab

LibDem

parties most responsive at the mid-term stage of the electoral cycle when
public concern tends to be highest and leaders are more receptive to environ-
mentalists within their parties (Flynn and Lowe 1992 ). For the next decade, a
flurry of policy documents from the three established parties, each outlining
aslightly tougher environmental programme than before, appeared roughly
halfway between parliamentary elections. By the 1992 general election, the
programmes of all three major parties included extensive environmental
rhetoric. Yet Figure5.1shows that the space allocated to the environment
peaked for every party in 1992. Although all the parties continued to develop
their environmental programmes during the 1990s, the Conservative and
Labour parties noticeably tempered their enthusiasm for the issue from the
1997 election onwards – it was only the twelfth most important issue in
termsofcontent for both parties in their 2005 manifestos (Carter 2006 :
755). By contrast, the Liberal Democrats have continued to give considerable
emphasis to the environment, making it one of their top three issues in
every manifesto since 1992. The reluctance of the Labour and Conservative
parties to embrace the green challenge and the more positive response of
the Liberal Democrats can be largely explained by electoral factors and party
competition.
The principal reason for the limited party politicisation of the environ-
ment is that it is not a salient issue at general elections. Whilst opinion
polls report that the British public is certainly worried about the environ-
ment and millions belong to environmental pressure groups (see Table6.2),
it tends to be regarded as a distant problem, and people often recoil at
thepersonal costs involved in some proposed solutions, such as reducing
car usage or higher energy taxes. When considered alongside other issues,
theenvironment almost disappears from the radar. Between 1992 and 2000
monthly Gallup polls reported an average of no more than 1 per cent of
people ranking the environment as the most important issue facing the