Is it time to get political?

For those of us in the UK, we woke-up yesterday to find that we had a new Government and a new Prime Minister. After 14 years of the Conservative party being in power, including one recent turbulent period where we had four Prime Ministers within three years, the people had overwhelmingly voted for change.

I tend to avoid being ‘political’ at Vegan Business Tribe because we have a wide range of views and values amongst our members – but that doesn’t mean that, as a movement, we shouldn’t engage with politics. And we’ve never been better represented. The Green Party here in the UK have quadrupled their representation in the UK parliament overnight and now have four members of parliament, including their co-leader Carla Denyer who is a passionate vegan activist. In Australia, the Animal Justice Party now have two MPs. And in the US, Eric Adams, the vegan Mayor of New York, recently challenged 8.5 Million New Yorkers to “Eat A Whole Lot More Plants”.

So whatever your own personal politics, it is important to keep engaged with the political system, whatever your access to it is. For example, in my constituency of Calderdale in West Yorkshire, it has just been announced that all food provided for council events will now be 100% plant-based to improve sustainability. That will introduce thousands of new people to plant-based food.

To quote our new Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s campaign slogan: “change will only happen if you vote for it”. And change in our food system can only happen if those in power encourage the population to change their habits through incentives, legislation and education. So it’s up to us to keep telling politicians that we both want and need them to do that, be that for health, for the environment or, most importantly, for the animals.