There is an article in the Guardian this morning under the headline:
Labour scrapping £28bn green pledge could leave UK colder, sicker and poorer
I spoke to Fiona Harvey, the Guardian's environment editor yesterday afternoon as she was preparing this article. She quotes me:
“It's economically illiterate [to scrap the spending pledge],” said Richard Murphy, a professor of accounting at Sheffield University. “Any person who has done the most basic undergraduate economics knows that you have to invest to get growth.”
She also notes me saying:
The public money would attract private sector investment, probably enough to triple the amount invested, and would quickly pay off in economic growth and lower bills, as well as increased tax revenues.
“The fiscal multiplier [by which public investment stimulates growth] is a reality,” said Murphy. “It also generates income in tax revenues.”
And I offered the conclusion to the piece:
Without investment in a low-carbon future, the future is likely to be “bleak, barren, hopeless and devastated”, according to Murphy. “The scale of regret is going to be phenomenal.”
The whole article is worth reading. Other opinions are offered, I should add, but we all agreed that this is a disaster.
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If a government or potential government (of whatever political hue) shows itself to be reluctant or unwilling to invest in the country it governs, other investors may see this as a lack of confidence and look elsewhere.
Government spending, when done wisely, is always an investment in the future well-being of a nation and its people; and what wiser way to invest than in the means to turn away from a high-carbon economy to one which treads more lightly and could even reduce the damage already done?
Hi Richard, what I think is also missing in Labour’s position on this is any sense of urgency – the physics of climate change aren’t going to wait for the ”right” fiscal conditions or any made up rules! The impacts of climate change are being felt now and they will disproportionately hit the poorer both in UK and globally.
In short tackling climate has to wait because Starmer and his acolytes can’t be bothered to understand how the UK’s monetary system really works.
The only thing that can be done is to keep on trying to educate voters on these matters including the ways the greedy and dumb rich try to influence politicians and voters these issues don’t matter.
It is a tragedy that Labour has turned its back on the urgency of the climate crisis. It seemed hopeful in 2021 with the £28 billion a year pledge and a crime to row back first to a delay of 2 years on forming a government (if they win of course), and now to completely abandon the whole project altogether. As Starmer, Reeves, Streeting et al cosy up to the big corporate business, let the financial services go on a short-term profit bonanza completely ignoring the warnings from every climate scientist, David King ex Cheifr UK Scientific Officer the Secretary General of the UN, David Attenborough and even King Charles of the catastrophe that is coming unless there is a drastic reduction in emissions of CO2, methane etc is done now.
I have also never understood why people say reduding fossil fuels means job losses.
It’s not as if fossil fuels mean coal miners any more. An engineer working in oil or gas this year can become an engineer working in green energy next year, surely.
Essentially we face the necessity of abandoning fire – burning stuff – as the fundamental basis of our technology and society, something we and our ancestors have been depending on for a very very long time.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2015.0164
“Eventually, fire became embedded in human behaviour, so that it is involved in almost all advanced technologies. Fire has also influenced human biology, assisting in providing the high-quality diet which has fuelled the increase in brain size through the Pleistocene.”
At a very basic level that’s going to be hard to come to terms with.
The biggest tragedy of all is that we have FPTP. I suspect that if we had PR, the Greens would do rather well – and yes, it would be at the expense of Neo Liberal, Tory lite Labour.
MarP, just vote green anyway, regardless of the rotten voting system that should have been replaced years ago by Labour when they were last in.
As a progressive party, labour are an utter joke.
I’m beginning to think Starmer does not want to win the coming election. He is certainly doing his best to alienate any left of centre voter.
My diesel car gave up the ghost the other week in rather spectacular fashion in the middle of M56 (rather hairy actually).
I will miss the utility – but not the carbon it spewed out. We are a one car family now. The train and my trusty 29 year old Ridgeback mountain bike are in action.
Being on the bike though reminds me that the air quality around me is bad. I note that when I wash my hair, face, clothes etc., they are quite mucky and the frequency of coughing and spluttering has been such that I have resorted to wearing a particulate-rated face mask.
We have a long way to go, but no means it seems of getting there except the slow lane.
As for Clive Lewis, I don’t know how or why he is not been ejected from Starmer’s Caretaker Party yet (or should we be calling Labour ‘the Lame Duck Party’). He seems to be a really decent man.
I’ve been saying that about Clive Lewis for ages.
Perhaps Starmer would be more worried about him out of the party than in it. He stood against Starmer for leadership but not enough MPs voted for him.
I hope he’s on the Palestine march today in London. I could see a few labour MPs but not him.
About 300,000 people on the march, so I read.
Agree with all the comments.
The puzzle is, if companies such as Orsted (maj gov owned), Vattenfall (gov owned), Edf (gov owned) ……..think the UK is a good place to do business, why does the UK gov (or LINO) not think that a UK gov owned power company would prosper?
My guess is that politicos by nature don’t know much, they sometimes mean well but….. couple that to dumb ideology etc.
The bureaucrats take thier lead from the politicos, Few years back (2017/2018) had meeting with BEIS plus my client, Japanese corporate (one of the big ones). The client came away stupefied by the hostility shown by the assembled pen pushers/special advisers – & the client was not even asking for gov support (my view: we were the afternoon entertainment – on a slow day). I regret not having a small recorder with me – walking down the corridor afterwards, the head honcho admitted that he agreed with everything we said – but “gov policy old chap”. Most of em I wouldn’t employ as doorstops (politicos and pen pushers – ).
Which brings us nicely to LINO and no “gov support”. Investment surely? Nah don’t do that.
Warning to LINO, I’ll be campaiging against you lot – feel free to keep manufacturing bullets – but the way it looks to me – it’s more like fully equipped tank regiments you are making to use aginst you.
to round off
@19.23 today
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/03/labour-ditches-radical-reforms-as-it-prepares-bombproof-election-manifesto
How to hand the toxic Tory propaganda media a victory
They really are LINO – Labour In Name Only
It seems to me that Starmer is absolutely terrified of being demolished by the RW populist MSM, the way they did Corbyn. Maybe he’s right that he needs their backing (or at least approval) to get elected? I think he’s probably wrong, given how disgusted the electorate now are about the Tories.
Is there any hope that once in power he will change tack? I personally feel very ambivalent.
I think we are seeing the real Starmer doing what the real Starmer believes in
Ive been watching on IPlayer the three part documentary “The USA and the Holocaust”. It’s very tough viewing.
I have got to the point in part two where a group of Jewish children, at a school in Vichy France are granted a visa to America and arrive by ship in New York and see the Statue of Liberty. The voice of one of those people reflects that at the relief felt that they now had , that the right to no longer the right of not being murdered and a future taken away had been lifted.
Today, with the Labour Party making the anouncement that the £28bn of funding to tackle climate change has gone means all our futures, and the right to happiness and hope has been taken away!
Should we tell our children we are the last generation and our final years will be brutal and desperate. Or lie and go along with the ridiculous charade being fed us 24 hours a day 365 days a year?
Surely the Labour Party, having taken away any hope of fair and proportional representation and alternative solutions to this bat-shit crazy system, are now no better than the Nazi’s they seek to replace?
To take away hope is the most terrible crime of all.
God (or whoever cooked up the this existence) thank you, and all our fellow travellers, that life can indeed be better than this all mighty fuck up.
I’m working hard on an alternative. (There is one!)
Richard – how can people contact me if they want to know more?
I am happy to put them in touch
Tell us more, please.
Shall I connect you, Shelagh?
???? I’m also curious.
Same question Shelagh
Richard -please put Rick and Judith in touch with me.
Thank you.
Done
Dear Mr Murphy,
This is my first ever response to one of your blogs (this one is excellent, by the way) and reading it put me in mind of a not dissimilar lack of ambition, indeed complacency, that manifested itself in the late 19th century when “the workshop of the world” rested somewhat on its laurels whilst other nations – notably the US and Germany – grasped the potential of the “sunrise” industries – electricals, chemicals – leaving the UK trailing.
Yes, one can understand Labour’s reticence and caution when faced with a desperate Tory party and its hostile press allies determined to pounce on the slightest supposed mis-step from financial rectitude but I think they misread the country’s mood. Most people do not read the Daily Mail, most people are, in various and different ways, struggling with the cost of living and/or concerned for their children’s future, and most people are aware that something is rotten and needs fixing.
Labour needs to recognise these worries and be much bolder in its proposals. Restoring the £28bn green pledge – and it was a pledge – and arguing for it forcefully would be a good start – and also demonstrate that they DO grasp the elements of basic economics.
Best,
Lawrence
PS: Your book, The Joy of Tax, has an honourable place on my bookshelves.
Thanks