Keir Starmer's vision pamphlet for the Fabian Society is deeply disappointing. This is the bit on what green investment might achieve:
He adds this:
What this is not is a Green New Deal.
There is no mention of energy saving. The real job gains come from insulation, solar installation, and replacement of gas boilers with heat pumps.
There is no mention of transport investment apart from electric cars - which cannot be the answer to this issue.
There is no hint of tidal energy, which is absurd.
And clean steel is just a pipe dream right now.
What is more, the named ideas cannot deliver the hundreds of thousands of jobs. And nor can they deliver the carbon cuts he claims.
As an example of joined-up thinking this pamphlet is a dismal failure.
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Who”s going to pay for it? A short sharp answer is required for the dumbed down masses. Corbyn didn’t have one, and the Green party doesn’t have one. Guess what? People don’t like paying taxes or apparent ‘standard of living’ decreases. Starmer is doing his best to avoid being seen as a hair-shirt salesman; good luck with that.
And I have that answer….
Corbyn’s manifesto was fully costed with the backing of 163 major economists. Both the most inspirational AND the most credible manifesto ever to be put to the British people. Just a great shams some would rather believe the mad lying rantings of The S*n & The Mail rather than reality.
The Government just sold £10 billion of “green bonds” with bids attracted coming to over £100 billion in one day. Even if Starmer doesn’t want to acknowledge or admit that the Government can issue it’s own money, especially as the tangible assets that would be generated would be worth many more times than the cost to generate them, it’s fairly clear that there’s money chasing this future, he could be so much more ambitious even within the confines of “public understanding”!
I agree with the absurdity of not including Tidal Energy.
Tiday Energy is one of the few renewables that’s always availabe if there’s no wind or no sun. Unless the Moon decides to go walkabout, the tides will always be there day and night at regular intervals, and the UK has some of the largest tidal reaches in the world. The only issue is it needs vision and major capital investment.
Tidal Energy is a major priority of the Scottish Government and indeed is already in operation, albeit on a limited scale. This under-development results from the UK Gov’s lack of interest in supporting R&D, manufacture and deployment. UK Gov’s attitude makes no sense at all, but unfortunately it controls the finances for major investment programmes. The Scottish Gov has very limited borrowing powers and is therefore forced to build joint ventures with the EU and Canada to get the innovations into production. It’s happening, but slowly, and due to the lack of UK investment, without the benefit of significant employment in the UK.
The Blairites had the opportunity to tackle many of the troubles we face now from a position of strength. Now they have recaptured the LP I do not see why they would charge up the rhetoric now.
Mostly fair points. I disagree with this:
“And clean steel is just a pipe dream right now”
There are two ways to produce low-carbon steel:
apply carbon capture and storage to traditional steel making (i.e. basic oxygen funace etc) (not been done so far)
or
direct reduction using hydrogen. (DRI exists as a tech now – the Germans produce around 600,000 tonnes per year using DRI and natural gas)
Hybrit in Sweden this year produced its first low-carbon steel via the DRI/H2 process and supplied it to Volvo. So DRI exists, has been used for steel making at scale and H2 has been used in the DRI process to produce some thousands of tonnes of steel..
Port Talbot is close (+/- 30kms) to a sea area with high winds and shallow waters. North of 10 – 20GW of off-shore wind could be produced and much of that used to turn Port Talbot into a low-carbon steel town. For this to happen would require a plan, finance and a determination for it to happen. All three are lacking in the UK.
I stand partially corrected 🙂
Asking “who is going to pay for it” is a mindless question. Did anyone ask how the Second World War, atomic bomb, Covid measures are going to be paid for? No, the government just got on with it because they are a sovereign body with the ability to produce money via a computer keyboard to whatever extent they like within the constraints of the productive capacity of the economy and not threatening runaway inflation. A Green government would do the same with a Green New Deal.
I really cannot understand why Labour do not grab the Green New Deal proposals with both hands and run with it. They could rebadge it as something else but it just seems like not invented here.
Any theories as to what is holding them back?
Paranoia about balancing the budget
If so, then they do not understand at all how the national currency system works. How is this possible?
I wish I knew
The increasingly accepted word is that Starmer dropped the Green New Deal from his essay to curry favour with the GMB union. GMB apparently wanted Miliband E’s scalp as well. It’s that pathetic a reason.
PS no accident that I’m posting under my own name these days.
The GMB has always been a problem…
Basic, fundamental stupidity. And blind self interest.
I’m reading ‘The Road from Mount Pelerin ‘ and I’m not surprised really that Labour are so orthodox in their thinking.
This has Tim Snyder’s ‘inevitability politics’ written all over it – in Labour’s world, TINA rules I’m afraid, plus joining up with other parties is simply not the done thing.
Labour as a political project is more important it seems than anything else.
But as a political project, it is a shadow of its former self.
The climate campaigners have not got it. Another worthy list of what changes without clearly saying how how it will be paid for is not going to hit home.
I am a Sheffield Green Party Councillor (one of 13 and we are in an unsteady cooperative arrangement with Labour) and when called to speak at rally’s we need three short clear sentences that must be repeated time and time again.
My suggestion is:
1. “It can be paid for”
2. There is a money tree”
3. A Wellbeing economy is the System Change we need”
These three phrases can be adapted to campaigns around austerity, savage cuts to Local Authority funding etc.
Long speeches and you loose your audience concentration and impact.
Feedback please.
Hi
I am sorry that this seems to have been missed….
I am working on this issue. See here..https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2021/07/30/the-quest-for-a-green-new-deal/
Richard
What a shame, what a missed opportunity. Yes Stramer has completely missed the point. Who has advised him on this?
Anyone with a basic understanding of climate change will know that the majority of our emissions (about 60%) come from transport and heating our buildings. Dealing with these two sources are fundamental.
Yes, electric vehicles are a response but only a partial one. We need massive investment in public transport, and toencourage model shift to walking and cycling. We need to move away from the concept that we all need to own a car.
Electrification of transport is important, but electrification of heating is vital. We need to install hundreds of thousands of heat pumps, but more fundamental still is improving the energy efficiency (and comfort) of the UK housing stock through better insultation, improved airtightness and better ventilation. At the same time our homes need to be made more resilient to higher temperatures and wetter weather.
New jobs will not come from building a new “hydrogen wing”, but from designing, building and installing heat pumps, from improving insulation and air tightness and installing decent ventilation systems in our homes and buildings. The jobs will come from retrofitting our homes with passive shading and flood control measures to deal with a hotter and wetter climate.
New jobs will come from building a renewables based electricity distribution and generation system, including wind, solar and tidal generation. We also need to completely upgrade our power distribution networks.
All of these areas can provide decent, skilled, well-paid jobs.
Of course, other jobs will be created in the peripheral areas such as hydrogen production (see my previous posts on that subject) for specialised applications – such as steel production. But these pale into insignificance compared with the hundreds of thousands of job opportunities in energy efficiency, climate resilience building, heat pump installation, investing in new renewable generation systems and rebuilding our power distribution infrastructure.
Stramer has been badly advised, and yes, he has completely missed the point.
He also says, ‘would’ and not, will. Tells you all you need to know.
I would have done the housework yesterday but I didn’t because I wasn’t paying myself enough.
I would have sown some spinach last week but couldn’t because the seeds were out of stock.
I will do the garden at the weekend, which means if I do not, I have reneged on something I had pretty much set in stone and promised to do, which, ‘would’ have consequences if it was paid employment for eg.
He can promise the earth but he WILL never deliver, Starmer is a trojan horse, a Tory in Labours’ clothing just like T. Blair was.
England is a one party state, scary indeed.