GREEN Party of England and Wales co-leader Jonathan Bartley put a second EU referendum at the heart of the party’s European election campaign at its launch in north London today.

“Every MEP elected from our brilliant team of candidates will be a commanding voice calling for what this country needs now: a people’s vote,” he declared at the event in Islington.

He said there were “three Remain parties,” citing the Liberal Democrats and Blairite Labour split Change UK, but argued that the other two’s support for the existing political and economic set-up meant only a vote for the Greens would be “tough on Brexit and on the causes of Brexit.”

The Greens increased their number of council seats from 87 to 273 in last week’s local elections and their Brighton Pavilion MP Caroline Lucas said the party was recruiting strongly amid the explosion of Extinction Rebellion protests, with more than 1,500 people joining over the bank holiday weekend.

But Communist Party leader Robert Griffiths said it was a shame the Greens had dropped “their trenchant criticisms of EU policies from heavy lorry pollution to the austerity and privatisation punishment programmes imposed on several member state governments.

“A party serious about the environmental threat we face would look askance at a bloc whose Common Agricultural Policy subsidises industrialised agriculture while driving small farmers in developing countries out of business and whose pursuit of deregulating global trade treaties empowers some of the worst polluters on the planet.

“But the Greens have no need to bring out a new manifesto when they can continue to recycle European Commission press releases. Their determination to prevent implementation of the biggest democratic vote in our history is deeply concerning.”

The Communist Party is calling for a boycott of the EU vote on May 23, arguing that Britain should have already left the EU and the elections to its “parliament,” which cannot initiate legislation, are therefore illegitimate.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) will launch its election campaign tomorrow and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is also expected to make stopping Brexit a key campaign issue. SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford said today that Scotland would “not accept” a Tory-Labour agreement on departure terms.