“The Tories like to counterpose tackling the climate emergency and addressing the cost of living crisis, as if we have to pick between one or the other (and carefully omitting the fact that they’re doing neither). The reality couldn’t be more different.”
By Nadia Whittome MP
After months of speculation, the Labour leadership has confirmed the news. Our flagship £28 billion green investment pledge, announced to much fanfare at the 2021 Party Conference, won’t make it into the manifesto.
It was hard not to notice the unfortunate timing of this announcement. The news was announced just as we learned that, for the first time, global temperatures across the whole year were more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. As the world is getting dangerously close to breaking the Paris Agreement, bold measures are needed more than ever. Meanwhile, the UK – once a world leader on climate action – is now falling behind other countries, as the Tories try to turn our very survival into yet another culture war.
Many will interpret Labour’s decision as an attempt to avoid that fight and neutralise some of the Tories’ favourite attack lines. The government has spent years preaching the gospel of austerity, misleadingly comparing the economy to a household budget and trying to brand Labour as the party of fiscal irresponsibility. But polls show that the British public is no longer falling for this.
People have had enough of endless cuts which have failed to deliver the economic stability and prosperity we were promised. The British Social Attitudes survey shows growing support for increased government spending, even if it were to mean paying more in tax. Last year, 55% of people supported higher taxes to increase funding for public services and benefits, while just 8% preferred tax cuts instead. Meanwhile, more than six in ten voters are in favour of the government borrowing money to invest in infrastructure.
Green policies can also be a vote-winner. More in Common found that, among people planning to vote Labour (so currently more than 40% of all voters!), the £28 billion investment pledge was our second most popular policy. While the leadership’s focus has been on the important task of winning over Tory voters, it’s also crucial for Labour to hold on to our existing coalition. This coalition includes younger generations, many among which are watching in horror as politicians continue to trash our future. Lee Anderson might claim that people don’t “lie awake at night worrying about net zero” – but the growing numbers of young people suffering from climate anxiety would care to disagree. The often repeated argument that caring about the environment is a luxury for the elites is an insult to those directly affected: whether that’s frontline workers such as firefighters, who are risking their lives putting out wildfires, or the tens of thousands of people, disproportionately from working class communities of colour, who die each year from air pollution.
The existential threat posed by rising temperatures would be reason enough to proudly stand by our climate policies. But when Labour talks about green investment, it’s more than just a decarbonisation plan. It’s an industrial strategy: to revive our stagnating economy, create good quality jobs up and down the country, bring down energy bills and improve the lives of working class people.
The Tories like to counterpose tackling the climate emergency and addressing the cost of living crisis, as if we have to pick between one or the other (and carefully omitting the fact that they’re doing neither). The reality couldn’t be more different: these are two sides of the same coin, and require solutions that address both.
Solutions such as GB Energy – Labour’s plan for a publicly owned energy company which would deliver cheap and clean power to our homes; or our Local Power Plan to support community-owned green energy schemes. Our British Jobs Bonus would mean employment opportunities in low-carbon industries and green infrastructure projects, in particular in former industrial heartlands and coastal communities. Meanwhile, the pledge to insulate millions of homes would bring down both household bills and carbon emissions at once, while improving public health and keeping families warm in the winter. All those projects together would create good, decently paid and socially useful jobs for millions of workers.
Rather than giving in to pressure from the Tories and rightwing pundits, we must defend these vital policies. In the midst of the worst cost of living crisis in a generation, ambitious plans for green investment are not a frivolity. Both for the economy and for the planet, it’s the only responsible way forward.
After 14 years of austerity, everything around us is crumbling, workers are still worse-off than in 2008, the economy has fallen into recession again and optimism is in short supply. It could be tempting for Labour to sit back, let the Tories destroy themselves and walk into government with as little backlash as possible from the rightwing media. But with the Tories 20 points behind in the polls, and the public crying out for change, we have a chance to do something far more powerful: offer hope.
The next Labour government will have a historic opportunity to reverse this decline and invest in our future. An ambitious plan for a green economic transformation should be at the heart of our vision.
- Nadia Whittome is the MP for Nottingham East and a regular contributor for Labour Outlook. You can follow her on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
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