PROTECTING the natural world is at the heart of Sarah Lunnon’s campaign to become the MP for Stroud - and she believes that more Green voices are needed in parliament.

Sarah’s main priority in parliament would be to move the country away from fossil fuels.

“I’d like to move our energy supplies towards zero carbon energy, so basing our whole economy and energy on a zero carbon basis,” she said.

“The most important issue is protecting our natural world, because if we don’t have that, guess what? There is no economy, there is no community, there is no society, there is no food supply, and that’s why the EU was so important, because it was a way of managing those kind of transnational issues and we’ve lost it.”

Recently the Gloucestershire Green parties tried to organise a ‘progressive alliance’ with Labour and the Lib Dems.

No agreement could be reached so all the parties put forward a candidate.

“The progressive alliance was not about the Greens standing down, the progressive alliance was about parties working together for a common aim, and that needs to be agreed.”

“So it seems to me that unless we get that agreement in place, unless there is an agreement of what we want to achieve in terms of a progressive alliance, the Greens have got to stand and make our voice heard on a national level.

“If we don’t stand in the Stroud election, if we don’t stand in other constituencies, then our national voice is subdued and diminished and then that impacts our ability to have conversations at the local level at Gloucestershire County Council, at Stroud District Council, so that’s why we have to stand.”

Sarah is very concerned about the impact of Brexit.

“It’s going to affect Stroud in the same way that it will affect everybody. Food is going to become more expensive because we import so much of our food.

“Our farmers are going to be impacted in terms of the grants they receive, they may be impacted for the good, they may be impacted for the bad, there is massive uncertainty.

“There’s a whole range of industries that are going to be impacted in terms of them being able to employ labour from Europe.

“That’s not even talking about what customs and tariffs we are going to have, that is going to impact us, the extra layer of bureaucracy which is going to be coming down the line in terms of imports and exports.

“We’ve already got businesses re-locating, it’s going to have a huge impact, it really is going to be massive.”

She believes that travelling to the EU will become harder and so Brexit will curtail our freedoms.

Sarah would like a second referendum, this time on the Brexit deal, and doesn’t think invoking Article 50 has to be final.

“No one has left before, they’re just making it up as they go along.

“Even if you voted Leave, on what terms?

“You may have thought I want to Leave on WTO terms, you may have voted to use the Norway model. Nobody actually knew what Leave meant.”