I was pleased to see this headline, hidden somewhat low, in the Guardian this morning:
Labour unveils £30bn plan to create 400,000 green jobs
Hallelujah, I thought. Labour has finally announced its Green New Deal. And about time too, I added, a fraction later.
So I want to look for details on the Labour Party website. And I can't find any. There is no hint of such a plan that I can see on the front page or in the latest news section. So I can't cover the story.
Larry Elliot says this about it:
Keir Starmer has announced a £30bn plan to revive UK manufacturing by creating 400,000 green jobs.
In an attempt to mitigate the blow to employment caused by Covid-19, the Labour leader said the proposed investment in secure low-carbon jobs would have knock-on effects across the economy.
Hundreds of thousands of jobs would be supported in manufacturing sectors including steel, offshore wind, automotive and aerospace, Starmer said.
Excellent. But it would be great to be able to find out more. Because this is what the country should be talking about so it should have pride of place on their website. But right now it hasn't. And that makes me wonder whether they really mean what they're saying.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
This is the report you are looking for. It was published last November but it includes the same figures of £30bn for 400,000 jobs and how they arrived at these numbers. Although I’m not sure why Labour are now “unveiling” a plan that was published five months ago.
https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/GER-10.11docx.pdf
That’s bizarre….
No wonder I did not find it when looking in new stuff
You are right, Labour seems very coy about promoting anything like a Green New Deal or “Green Industrial Revolution” as they were under Corbyn. I checked my local Labour Party website to see what they were promoting for the local elections. In the section “Where we Stand” the pieces on employment, business and the economy there was no mention of green policies whatsoever.
If they are unable to think deeply about things like this you have to ask what the hell they have been spending their time doing?
The main preoccupation of the Starmer team is its internal warfare against the left. They have not addressed policy issues at all and seemingly have little interest in doing so. This recycling of a vaguely worded ‘green agenda’ is simply a hasty reaction to the widespread criticism of Starmer’s invisible opposition, as it is far wider than the left sectors he is attacking. There was nothing else in the locker. This obsession with internal ‘cleansing’, almost unreported in the mainstream media, is not about to end and there will be no flesh added to the policy bones. It might be difficult to accept, but Starmer simply has no interest in specific policies at this stage.
£30 billion is less than Track and Trace cost. Labour is showing no signs of ambition. Biden is leading the way. Why not at least match his commitment to cutting carbon? This ultra cautious approach, both in holding the government to account, and providing an exciting alternative, is driving its supporters away. I don’t blame them. As a member of the Labour Party I find its approach exasperating. Waiting for the Tories to trip over themselves is not what I signed up for. The leadership is desperately lacking in ideas. How hard can it be? I’m wondering why I bother.
I agree
Agree with all this. Starmer ought at least to be able to mimic the Biden strategy – of being ‘conservative’, ‘safe’ – while presenting a far reaching radical programme – as merely the sensible thing to do. Biden seems to have tried to accomodate his radicals – rather than bothering with witch hunts.
Labour get a tiny proportion of media coverage – with government providing its own opposition, and monopolising coverage. Labour could very rationally, insistently but not stridently, but continually point out all the truths that are being trashed – including the immdediate one Richard points out – while the contracts corruption and the Dyson fiddle was happening, hundreds of offers to make PPE and ventilators, testing and tracing etc never got a response from Government.
Why don’t Labour say that, and keep repeating the estimated 50000+ unnecessary deaths due to rejecting science advice in September – instead of merely bleating for ‘an inquiry’?
It doesn’t matter whether Labour shouts about its wares from the rooftops or murmers about them in seminars. They’re just not cutting through. Not enough voters see them as a credible alternative to the current incompetent and mendacious crew in government. And even if they could manage to convey an impression of credibibility and competence, voters just can’t see them going from where they are now to where they need to be in one leap – or even two.
At the last general election, Labour and the Lib Dems, together, were neck and neck with the Tories at around 14 million votes each. Despite what we’ve been through in the last year, I don’t think very much has changed. Indeed, the Tories probably have been boosted by the vaccination programme, the gradual opening and the seasonal lengthening of days and better weather. The current evidence of sleaze will dent the Tories’ lead, but I can’t see it shifting the dial to any significant or sustainable extent. Labour, from 1994, was able to eviscerate the Tories over the sleaze of that era because they were able to present themselves as a fresh, competent and credible alternative government. One would be hard pushed to use these adjectives to describe the current Labour party.
If Labour and the Lib Dems were prepared to engage in seeking to achieve the late Shirley Williams’s driving objective of “hammering out a compromise between capitalism and social justice, a compromise that would secure sufficient political support”, then voters might begin to glimpse the embryo of a credible alternative. With the Biden administraton pivoting away from neoliberalism and advancing fiscal activism – and with Mrs. Merkel’s Covid Recovery Fund presenting a tentative move in the EU towards a fiscal union – the pendulum is swinging back. Labour and the Lib Dems should be reinforcing this swing back.
But tribal, inter-personal and quasi-ideological feuds, both within and between the factions, remain the order of the day. Their combined failure to provide a credible alternative governance option to voters is both reprehensible and unforgiveable.