The Rover 75 CDTi Tourer is a diesel estate car with a two litre BMW engine. According to the AA, the version with manual transmission could average forty-five miles per gallon of diesel; cars with automatic transmission were five miles per gallon less economical.

A seventeen year old two litre Rover diesel is probably not the most efficient of cars, its emissions will be considerably greater than those of the electric and the hybrid cars. The level of pollution caused by the exhaust particles from the engine of a 2003 Rover 75 will be a multiple of that caused by the engines of more recent vehicles.

Were I the driver of a seventeen year old, two litre diesel-engined car, I think I would be hesitant about laying claim to being a protector of the environment, not so the driver of the Rover whose rear window was covered in stickers declaring the driver’s support for the Green Party.

Compared with recent cars, it is a veritable gas guzzler. A Green who wished to drive a car might have been expected to have bought a model with stronger environmental credentials. Perhaps it is easier to display stickers than to make purchase choices that would reflect the declared beliefs of the Green Party.

The green Rover estate car seemed an embodiment of the humbug of the Greens.

The driver of the car was driving because in rural Somerset there is no public transport, in a sparsely-populated area of scattered villages no public transport system would be viable. Were the driver of the car to have been challenged, there would undoubtedly have been an assertion that the car was being driven out of necessity rather than choice. Such an assertion would apply to very many other drivers in rural communities, not just those who have Green Party stickers on their car windows, yet the Green Party persists in support for policies that hurt rural dwellers and rural communities.

Greens seem like evangelical Christians in preaching one message and living another.

The logical corollary of Green policies is that people should live a lifestyle fundamentally different from the mainstream of Twenty-First Century England. The image of the bearded, vegan who wears home woven clothes and leather-free sandals, and who travels by bicycle might be a caricature, but it is closer to the fulfilment of Green philosophy than those who live lives identical to those of their neighbours, while standing in judgement over everyone else.

As I turned off the A39 to drop down onto the Levels below, the Green Party BMW-engined two litre Rover continued eastward, heading towards Glastonbury, a place where no-one would notice oddity or inconsistency.