BELOW is an email that 19 signatories in Year 13 at Downfield Sixth Form have composed and sent to Green candidate in the upcoming general election Molly Scott Cato.

As students of a local sixth-form taking an interest in politics, we would like to commend you on your ongoing work as an MEP and your dedication to the environment, co-operative economics, and the south west as a whole.

As we are all left of positions currently expressed within the Labour Party, your representation of a necessarily radical ideology is valuable.

However, as I am sure you are all too aware, first-past-the-post voting renders parliamentary elections an essentially binary choice.

We likely share the view that it is undemocratic and wholly unsatisfactory electoral system but, nonetheless, it is the system in which we find ourselves.

In some constituencies, there is room for a three-horse race but, as prior election results in Stroud Constituency clearly demonstrate this is not one of these seats - every election since Blair, around 80% of the vote has been shared between Labour and the Conservatives.

Labour have, with the support of the Green Party, enabled the declaration of a climate emergency, committed to carbon neutrality, strongly opposed the fracking industry, and increased public and political support for the Green New Deal.

This is a stark contrast to the Conservative Party, who have systematically dismantled the policies put in place under the Climate Change Act of 2008.

Furthermore, their main objective of creating a strong economy through maximising growth is undeniably a recipe for ecological disaster - their manifesto for this election does not even include reducing carbon emissions.

We hope that you agree that Labour winning the election in Stroud would be a better outcome than the Conservatives, and note that you have in the past collaborated with the Labour Party in outreach events.

David Drew places great political and personal importance on the environment, and is a good representative for Stroud’s generally green outlook.

We note that Labour and the Green Party overlap in terms of their supporters and see that in 2010, if Labour had received all votes submitted for the Green candidate, David Drew would have won the seat as opposed to Neil Carmichael.

This is especially worrying given the popularity of the Conservative candidate Siobhan Baillie.

We urge you, as young members of Stroud district, proponents for the Green Party, the Labour Party, and left-wing politics as a whole, to pull out of this election, in this time of national crisis, tactical politics is more crucial than ever before.

Oakley Pollard and Jacob Phypers

Downfield Sixth Form