THE Green Party’s Senedd manifesto 2026 has been released. I have read it so that you don’t have to; the majority of Green voters probably won’t either, probably preferring to watch the short TikTok videos promising a Welsh Utopia on their Wales Green Party page.
It seems to be aimed at the younger age group and indeed recent Statista research on voting intentions showed that most 18-to-24-year-olds intend to vote Green. I’d like to add the word ‘appropriately’, but I ought to refrain – we have all been young, naive and idealistic. I even believed that democracy actually existed once upon a time . . .
The clear indications of who the target audience is include the following:
- The focus upon rented properties in its ‘Our Homes & Communities’ section;
- The reference that ‘We will immediately address the mental health pandemic in Wales’ in the section entitled ‘Our Key Priorities’. (Do they realise that ‘pandemic’ means an epidemic that has spread across multiple countries or continents?);
- The promise of £1 bus fares and free travel for under-22s;
- The promise to support ‘urban sports such as skateboarding, BMX and parkour’. Yes, I had to look up the last one too! In my day it was a jacket worn by mods (albeit with a different spelling).
Obviously this manifesto contains many altruistic claims about hope, the NHS, education, housing and the usual topics that interest voters. Also one can imagine the party’s stance on ‘green’ matters. Therefore I won’t focus on these issues. I will mainly list a few interesting phrases and paragraphs; the red flags and the implicit warnings, so to speak. Where you see bold letters, these will be mine.
The Green party will embed the ‘Right to Adequate Housing’ in Welsh law. Note that this comes from a United Nations document which I have previously written about.
The document says: ‘Building regulations will require all new homes to meet low- or net-zero carbon standards, including solar panels as standard and fossil-free heating systems such as heat pumps’ and suggests providing ‘grants and affordable loans’ to do so.
‘We aim to double the proportion of journeys made by walking, wheeling, cycling and public transport by 2030.’
Under ‘Buses’: ‘Contactless payment will be rolled out nationwide’.
Interestingly, this section ends with: ‘Finally, we will review public investment in the aviation sector, including funding for Cardiff Airport, with the aim of ending such subsidies by the end of the Senedd term and focusing instead on sustainable transport alternatives.’ Ask yourself what those ‘sustainable transport alternatives’ might be if you are in that 18-to-24-year-old Green-supporting demographic, especially if you like updating your Instagram with your latest holiday snaps from overseas.
The Greens want to introduce a Culture Bill ‘that guarantees every community access to cultural spaces, services and opportunities’. They include this box-ticking statement: ‘Wales’s cultural life must reflect its diversity. Migrant, racialised and minoritised communities will have the right to see their stories and creativity represented in national institutions.
‘We will support multilingual, multicultural and migrant-led arts, including initiatives such as a Music of Black Origin Wales Fund and community-led festivals.
‘We will advocate for broadcasting and media powers to be fully devolved to Wales, allowing the country to shape how its stories are told and funded.
‘In the meantime, we will establish a Local Journalism Fund to support independent local news organisations, including Welsh- language media, ensuring communities continue to have access to trusted local information.’
(Implicit meaning: ‘We don’t like independent media and alternative viewpoints; we like groupthink.’)
Under ‘Health & Wellbeing’ they state: ‘We will retain the 20mph speed limit in built-up areas, helping to reduce serious injuries, save lives and ease pressure on the NHS’. Surely they must know that the 20mph debacle was never primarily about safety?
In the same section is a nod to intersectionality: ‘We will improve placement stability, particularly for LGBTQIA children tackle racial inequalities [sic], ensure children can maintain their language and identity, and campaign for care experience to become a protected characteristic under equality law.’
And: ‘Poverty is a mental health emergency’ and: ‘We will support gender affirming care for anyone who requires it.’
The Greens wish to provide better ‘person-centred’ care for older people (sounds encouraging), however: ‘This will include earlier palliative care, appropriate deprescribing and better shared decision-making.’
Also: ‘We will establish a dedicated gender service for young people under 17 to access support and therapy, provide resources such as voice training, and offer advice to parents, alongside dedicated routes to healthcare provision (both mental health and physical) . . . While HRT may need to be delayed for younger people due to Westminster rules, puberty blockers have been shown to be safe and effective as a treatment method.’ (On the subject of ‘safe and effective’ there is no mention of providing a pathway of NHS diagnosis of vaccine injury for which Alison Butler, whose petition to the Senedd garnered over 11,000 signatures in 2024, has been campaigning.)
Under ‘Food, Nature & Our Environment’ the manifesto says: ‘We will not weaken Wales’s climate commitments. We will require all new laws to demonstrate “no regression” on environmental protections. The Green Party opposes nuclear power, including small modular reactors. We will maintain the ban on fossil fuel extraction, including coal mining, oil and gas drilling and fracking, and we will not support new high-carbon infrastructure’. (No ban on fossil fuel refining then – arguably the backbone of the local economy here in Pembrokeshire?)
‘We will work with the UK Government to ban “forever chemicals” contaminating rivers and seas.’ Ironically, solar panel and windmill production involves a significant amount of ‘forever chemicals’ or PFAS (per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances) which contaminate the environment and human health!
The Greens say: ‘We’ll back universal childcare from nine months,’ then state that ‘one third of children in Wales are growing up in poverty’. No mention of ‘emotional poverty’ though, where children are being raised by daycare assistants.
This paragraph under the heading of ‘Our Future’ troubles me as an ex-teacher: ‘The curriculum should prepare young people for the world they will inherit. We will ensure it combines play and fun with eco-literacy, health and wellbeing education, food literacy and relationships education inclusive of LGBTQIA relationships, alongside civic education that prepares students for democratic participation.’ (Er, life skills, anyone?)
Also on the topic of education: ‘All staff will receive in-person anti-racism training as an implementation of the Anti-Racist Wales Plan’. Because what most people don’t realise is that it’s not enough to be – as most people are – ‘not racist’, one has to be ‘anti-racist’,which in the eyes of the current liberal-left political establishment means vociferous and proactive in one’s ‘anti-racism’.
On the subject of university: ‘Our goal is to increase participation in higher education so that 40 per cent of young people attend university by the end of the Senedd term,’ and goes on to say, ‘The Green Party ultimately supports free higher education, ending the burden of excessive student debt’.
Under the Government section it says: ‘We will strengthen Wales’s international engagement, particularly with our European partners, recognising the importance of collaboration in areas such as climate action, research, culture and economic development.
‘We will commission an independent assessment of Brexit’s impact on Wales, examining how leaving the EU single market, customs union and research programmes has affected the Welsh economy and society.’ Greens will defend the UK government’s membership of the ECHR.
In a section entitled ‘Migrant Justice’ it says: ‘The Nation of Sanctuary Programme will be protected and expanded, and the Migrant Victim of Abuse Fund will continue to support survivors who face barriers to safety.’
I don’t know if it’s just me, but once again there appears to be little to no difference between the Greens’ manifesto and Labour’s manifesto. Although just to be different, they could have challenged the word ‘manifesto’ for not being inclusive enough – ‘personifesto’, anyone?
This article appeared on The Welsh Economic Forum on April 7, 2026, and is republished by kind permission.
