“[The Government] should be putting welfare before warfare, and real human and common security, in addressing the greatest unaddressed challenges of poverty, inequality, climate and environmental catastrophe.”
Sam Mason reviews the first year of the Labour Government, the green promises made in their manifesto, and their failure to rise to the urgent challenge of tackling the climate crisis.
A year since the Labour Party came into power under an agenda of change and mission led government, it’s a mixed picture on how far they are living up to their manifesto commitments on climate change and the environment.
The opening line to Labours’ second mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower states “the climate and nature crisis is the greatest long-term global challenge that we face”. Yet having just emerged from the heat dome gripping much of the UK and Europe – the fastest warming continent on the planet – this mission is largely overshadowed by the drive to make Britain a war-ready nuclear nation.
A repeated refrain that the first duty of government is to keep the country safe, feels particularly vacuous when we’re sweltering through another heat ‘weather event’. Of course, climate change gets an obligatory reference in the news when these events occur, largely focused on how we’re going to cope in the future mixed in with some media banter on keeping cool in the hot weather, which can blur the more serious public health warnings and wider consequences such as the impact on food production.
With the warmest spring ever and driest since 1893, predictions are for the third worse harvest on record. All occurring in this decade, this is not an exception as climate change is leading to regular water shortages and summer droughts. Along with the pollution crisis of our waterways, all the more baffling is this government’s opposition to public ownership of water.
Coupled with alarm bells ringing around the Infrastructure and Planning Bill’s impact on the environment, and tree planting targets being missed, there’s not much optimism at the moment for reversing biodiversity losses.
A major element of Labour’s clean energy superpower mission was the creation of Great British Energy, now established as a publicly owned energy company but, not producing any publicly owned energy. Outside of the National Energy System Operator element of energy planning, energy remains fully in private hands with GB Energy and the Clean Energy Action plan 2030 working to leverage in private sector finance via public subsidy.
Initiatives therefore, like the welcome drive to use more solar energy outlined in the recently published solar roadmap, lifting the ban on onshore wind power and increased support for offshore wind will be underwritten by the public ‘seed capital’ for private profits.
Fears that funding for the Warm Homes Plan would be cut in the latest spending review were thankfully unfounded. However it still leaves the Government plans woefully short of what is required. As Fuel Poverty Action have pointed out, we have had 50 years of failure on insulation schemes and this Government’s plan “threatens to be more of a rebranding of existing fragmented and flawed schemes than the major improvements needed”.
Decarbonising our energy system and mass insulation/retrofit of homes should be a foundational priority. While we have all the hype for increasing energy demand through AI and data centres, this remains the one area which would address energy costs, reduce demand, and provide good skilled jobs under a nationally led, locally delivered, publicly funded scheme. The billions in investment being provided for unsafe, unclean, and overpriced new nuclear projects and carbon capture and storage to continue business as usual would go a long way to help finance this.
Some good news? The Committee on Climate Change recently reported that they are now “more optimistic” that the UK can reach its emissions reduction targets than they were prior to the election of the Labour government. And while there is a weaponisation of climate and environmental policy, Ed Miliband at least has to be credited for his commitment to this agenda and refusing to fall in-step with downgrading this to appease Reform. It should also be remembered that this optimism of course is possible because of the Climate Change Act 2008, a globally unprecedented piece of legislation to his and Labour’s credit that has framed climate policy ever since.
As we continue to fight for the NHS and a welfare system that properly looks after people from cradle to grave, so we must fight to keep climate change and the environment central to all government policy. It is tragic irony, that as the UK show more seriousness at the upcoming climate talks in Brazil (COP30) this November, this is overshadowed by its priority to make military spending and war readiness the central mission of government policy.
It’s also an unwelcome metaphor, that the backdrop to this latest weather event has been the ‘hot’ debate on welfare reform. Climate change impacts the poorest, disabled, children, women – the most vulnerable the greatest. Therefore climate considerations need to be central to ensuring we have a properly resourced welfare system that faces the challenges now and ahead.
If this Labour government truly stood by its duty to keep the country safe, then increasing militarisation, war including the heightened risk of nuclear confrontation is serious mission drift. Instead, it should be putting welfare before warfare, and real human and common security, in addressing the greatest unaddressed challenges of poverty, inequality, climate and environmental catastrophe.
- Join the year of trade union action on climate change from this autumn, starting with global days of action on 14th and 15th November. See Help build a trade union year of climate action | Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union Group for more details.
- Sam Mason is a trade unionist, climate and peace campaigner, and regular contributor to Labour Outlook.
- Over the next period, Labour Outlook is running a series of daily articles, reviewing one year of the Starmer Government across different key areas.
