Cornwall Green Party launched its General Election campaign in Truro on Friday.

The party said its message was: “Yes, this is a Brexit election. But even more crucially, it’s a climate election. If ever there was a time to vote Green, that time is now.”

The five Green candidates running for Cornwall constituencies gathered at Boscawen Park in Truro, chosen, the party said, because – as a low-lying area next to a tidal river – it is vulnerable to the rising sea levels and flooding that threaten many of Cornwall’s coastal communities – and the party stressed that it aims to keep the climate emergency front and centre of the election campaign in Cornwall.

Introducing his four fellow candidates, Tom Scott, the party’s candidate for Truro and Falmouth, said: “Devastating flooding in Northern England and the Midlands, with thousands of ruined homes and livelihoods. Large parts of California, Australia and the Amazon rainforest ablaze. Venice under water. To see why this has to be a climate election, just turn on the news.

“Only the Green Party has the joined-up policies to really tackle the scale of this crisis. If we’re going to get to net-zero carbon in the very short time we now have to do this, we need action on the scale seen in the 1940s when we were threatened by Nazi invasion.

"We need to transform our entire economy, and to put carbon reduction at the heart of everything our government does.

“That’s why the Green Party is saying we need to spend £100 billion a year on a massive programme of home insulation and renewable energy. That’s why we’re saying cancel HS2 and new road building, and use the money to provide cheap or free public transport that can actually get people out their cars. And that’s why yesterday our co-leader Jonathan Bartley proposed the creation of a new, key ministerial post – a Carbon Chancellor, tasked with overseeing this transformation.

“In this and many other areas, it’s bold thinking by the Green Party that is setting the agenda we so desperately need for a viable future.”

The Greens are fielding candidates in Truro and Falmouth, Camborne and Redruth, St Ives, St Austell and Newquay and South East Cornwall.

To see all candidates standing in Cornwall's seats, click here.