Tories on bikes

English

Etymology

So-called due to bicycles being commonly prescribed as an environmentally friendly form of personal transportation.

Noun

Tories on bikes pl (plural only)

1. (politics, derogatory, UK, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand) Members or supporters of a Green Party who are politically conservative.
   • 2018 September 7, Ivan Mitchell, Daniel Lopez, “The Immodest Victorian Socialists”, in Jacobin‎^[1], retrieved 2021-04-01:

     The only viable alternative for decades has been The Australian Greens, formerly a protest party, but now a progressive middle-class party. It’s a coalition of Tories on bikes, socially conscious baby boomers who live in architect-designed homes, and millennials who haven’t yet graduated from edgy liberalism to socialism.

   • 2019, Danny Dorling, Rule Britannia: Brexit and the End of Empire‎^[2], Biteback Publishing, →ISBN, retrieved 2021-04-01:

     A derogatory name for the Greens is "Tories on bikes"; they also oppose building on green belts around cities, and thus inadvertently encourage car commuting, with its attendant car pollution.

   • 2020 September 11, Pat Flanagan, “Green Party out of touch with ordinary people and seem to like punishing poor”, in Irish Mirror‎^[3], retrieved 2021-04-01:

     But lest we forget the Green Party’s concern for the workers who make these cheap clothes in counties such as Bangladesh, the reality is that when it comes to employees’ rights they are merely Tories on bikes.