Clegg urges green Labour defections

The Labour government lacks the political energy to combat climate change and its supporters and MPs should join the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg has said.

The Lib Dem leader has already called on Green party supporters to realise their votes would be better given to his party.

And at an Independent newspaper fringe event at his party's autumn conference in Bournemouth he repeated the same message to Labour voters.

'I don't think their green convictions are enough to resolve their political difficulties,' he said.

'I have friends in the Labour party, and my message to them would be 'join us'.

'The government has run out of energy, this is what happens in the ebb and flow of politics.'

The Conservative party, in Mr Clegg's eyes, potential partners in a hung parliament next May, suffered from the 'rank hypocrisy' exposed by David Cameron's supposed green credentials and his decision to join a conservative grouping in the European Union parliament that includes climate change deniers.

He said that the Tory's 'don't understand the political mechanics' required to fix the problem, which he dubbed a 'war we must win'.

Academic and writer Noreena Hertz earlier told Mr Clegg at the same event: 'You get the environment, you get the issues.

'Only the Lib Dems have the wisdom, intellect and policies to lead us to a safer, more secure and greener place.'

She said that 'blind faith' in financial markets could be equated to the denying of climate change still evident in Europe.

Mr Clegg later added that the nation state approach had become 'utterly redundant' in the fight against climate change, although he later championed the Danish government's attempts to create local collective's funding wind energy farms.