A tiny number of people take the vast majority of flights. We need a frequent flyer levy. Simple and fair. pic.twitter.com/uOfM1oYS91

— Green Party (@TheGreenParty) 21 July 2017

Green co-leader Jonathan Bartley has proposed a new tax to “penalise those who take flights multiple times per year“. Frequent flyers are already clobbered by air passenger duty: the state taxes flights on a sliding scale from £13 to a whopping £450 per passenger depending on service class and distance flown. As such frequent flyers already pay much more in duties than occasional travellers. The Greens’ tax isn’t anywhere near as progressive as they’d like to claim: frequent flyers are not just businessmen and jet-setters, what about migrant workers visiting their families? Do the Greens really want to go after them? The disincentives for business and trade are obvious. Chillingly, the proposal would require the government to spy on the flight patterns of every single citizen, treating every flyer as if they were on a watch list. Even Gordon Brown thought it was a bad idea…

Bartley’s tax isn’t a new idea: it’s supported by a coalition of environmentalist groups under the front campaign A Free Ride. The Greens might be pretending to be on the side of holidaymakers and non-frequent flyers, but the A Free Ride website reveals their true aim:

“The best thing for the climate would be if everyone were to stop flying immediately.”

Then Green Party leaders couldn’t jet around the world for those environmental conferences…