OK so the term 'green blob' does rather summon up images of Quatermass but Paterson is absolutely spot on in his condemnation of the so-called 'green' lobby:
I soon realised that the greens and their industrial and bureaucratic allies are used to getting things their own way. I received more death threats in a few months at Defra than I ever did as secretary of state for Northern Ireland. My home address was circulated worldwide with an incitement to trash it; I was burnt in effigy by Greenpeace as I was recovering from an operation to save my eyesight. But I did not set out to be popular with lobbyists and I never forgot that they were not the people I was elected to serve.
Indeed, I am proud that my departure was greeted with such gloating by spokespeople for the Green Party and Friends of the Earth.
It was not my job to do the bidding of two organisations that are little more than anti-capitalist agitprop groups most of whose leaders could not tell a snakeshead fritillary from a silver-washed fritillary. I saw my task as improving both the environment and the rural economy; many in the green movement believed in neither.
These things cannot be said too often. The 'green' movement is driven less by the interests of our local environments that by self-interest, the search for power and influence, and above all by an unwavering belief that improving the conditions for ordinary men and women comes at a cost to the environment. It doesn't. Just as no-one is poor become another is rich, the environment is not doomed by the desire of people like me to see poor people everywhere enjoying the fruits of capitalism's bounty.
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