YOU might think that, as someone fearful of global warming, I would be a natural to support the Green Party.

But, despite my passion for the green agenda, I’m afraid I cannot vote for the Green Party.

I’m disappointed that there isn’t a green party I can vote for, and I’m upset that the people in the (capital letters) Green Party are wasting the name.

I think the title “Green Party” should belong to a party focusing entirely on green issues, as the name suggests. But the bunch currently using the name give me the impression that they are more interested in bringing about socialism than in saving the planet.

What was to become the Green Party started in 1972, when it was called the People Party. Three years later it changed its name to Ecology Party, finally adopting the title Green Party in 1985.

The new name seemed to attract voters and the Green Party won an impressive 25 percent of the vote in European elections. But in 1991 a TV sports presenter, David Icke, was the Green Party’s spokesman. On Terry Wogan’s peak-time BBC1 chat show he proclaimed himself a son of Godhead. That disastrous broadcast was followed by a collapse in the party’s popularity.

To revive its shrunken vote share, and to avoid bankruptcy, the Greens took a crucial decision – to stop being a single-issue party. So from 1993 the Green Party of England and Wales abandoned the political middle ground. Instead it adopted policies to the left of Labour.

You can’t blame them for moving to the extreme left, because it seemed to work. The Greens hadn’t had membership of anything bigger than a council but in 1999 it won two seats in the European Parliament. Things got better still. In 2010 the Greens got their first MP. Still espousing leftist social policies, the party continued to increase its popularity at the general election in July this year. Now its number of MPs is four.

I still don’t like the Green Party. In its election manifesto, the supreme urgency of stopping global warming was crowded out by policies on everything from dentistry to housing, assisted dying to nationalisation.

The world needs green policies such as shifting the tax burden to polluting practices (aviation, big cars, feeble home insulation etc). As a rich democracy, the UK should be setting an example to other nations. As I see it, a proper green party in the UK should try to use its power for good not so much by getting elected – although it would be fine and dandy if that did happen. No, a more realistic way for a green party to give us green legislation is to influence the big parties: Labour, Tories, Lib Dems etc.

The aim should be to get other parties thinking: “The Green party is getting more and more seats in the Commons. They’re taking seats from us, so we had better start enacting more green policy ourselves.”

Casual voters may not notice that the Green Party is not entirely what its name suggests. I think right-leaning environmentalists vote Green without realising they are voting for a party left of Labour.

Things will eventually fall apart for the Green Party if it continues to become more popular, and therefore more scrutinised. Then its policies will be widely exposed, and the rejection that befell Corbin will happen to the Greens, unless they change.

Only a single-issue green party can unite planet-conscious voters on both left and right to bring about a politically moderate government prioritising Earth’s climate.

Many in the Green Party may honestly believe that leftist policies are best for countering the climate crisis. I believe only the free market produces the wealth needed for the green agenda to be made reality.

In Hampshire and nationally, I wish the Green Party well. But I wish it would live up to its name.