My Green New Deal colleague, Colin Hines, has this post on the Green Alliance blog this morning. I reproduce it with his permission:
The rise of populist parties in Europe and the rout of the Democrats came about because progressives in Europe and the US have no coherent and easy to understand response to voters' desire for economic security for their families and their communities.
Yet, Labour is a lucky government, compared with its counterparts in Europe and the US as it has a huge parliamentary majority and a five year mandate.
However, to ensure any hope of re-election, it must focus on policies that address people's insecurities. Labour, and indeed all political parties, claim that ‘growth' is necessary to fund the social and environmental improvements the country needs. But exactly how to achieve and fund such growth is never adequately spelt out. Labour could provide the answer to this, but it would need its growth mantra to be redefined as an increase in economic activity directed predominantly towards rebuilding public services and turbocharging a green transition.
A successful ‘Social and Green New Deal' could become a beacon for other centre right or centre left governments in Europe, and indeed for the Democrats in the US as they recover from their crushing defeat by Donald Trump.
The public know the scale of the problems
Polling shows that the top concerns for Britons are inflation and the economy, the NHS and immigration, followed by housing, education, environmental issues such as pollution and climate change, poverty and inequality. People sense the scale of these problems and that huge levels of funding will be required to address them. Forty per cent of voters want an increase in spending on public services, even if it means they pay more tax.
The recently published Act now: a vision for a better future and a new social contract, by the Common Sense Policy Group, comprehensively costs the social and environmental transformation that polling shows the public wants. Its estimate of total cost is nearly £190 billion per year.
Sources of funding for the huge sums required have been comprehensively detailed in tax expert Richard Murphy's Taxing Wealth Report 2024. This sets out radical, and no doubt controversial, idea on how to raise £90 billion or more of additional tax revenues a year by increasing the taxation on income from wealth.
Savers can help
Another huge investment generator proposed by Richard Murphy, and something that could positively involve millions of savers, would be a change in tax incentives for saving in ISAs and pensions. This would require all new ISA funds and 25 per cent of all new pension contributions to be saved in ways that might help fund new infrastructure projects. Through this, £100 billion a year might become available.
One aspect of this approach was recently supported by Ros Altman, former Conservative pensions minister, who demanded that at least a quarter of new contributions should be invested domestically in UK infrastructure, social housing and sustainable energy, and into the businesses in these sectors.
Richard Murphy has made similar demands and calculated that this measure alone could raise more than £30 billion a year. The roadblock to this approach is the chancellor, Rachel Reeves's ill-defined growth obsession, with its damaging dependence on deregulation and decades' old fantasies, such as Heathrow's third runway and new nuclear power. To reverse her government's slump in the polls and the rise of Reform, Labour must pivot instead towards policies that ensure rapid social and environmental improvements as the majority of UK voters want, including the ‘savers as saviours' approach.
This can unite the politically active
A ‘Social and Green New Deal' approach would have huge public support, especially since it also answers the ‘how do you pay for it?' question always posed when any new policy proposals are put forward. It would also provide an overarching narrative and funding framework to unite the politically active. These would include those involved in the huge range of issues that make up social and environmental campaigns, including local community groups, NGOs, think tanks, academics, local government and MPs. Step one should be to pull together all the disparate interest groups concerned with the myriad of social issues into a social alliance.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
I hope what follows is relevant to this blog.
Community energy has to be part of any “Green New Deal”, if only because, if correctly structured, it will deliver at a minimum, much lower cost electricity to a given community. Looking at the Community Energy England map ( https://communityenergyengland.org/pages/nationalmap ) one things springs out – lots of communties spend circa £30k on “feasibility” studies. For a given community – it takes me perhaps half a day to identify what is feasible and knock up a four or five pager (did it for Otley). I don’t make a charge. Neither will my business partner for heat networks etc. This speeds things up e.g. the community does not need to answer the question: “where do we find £30k?”. It also gets some pointers: what is possible, what is not & thus this …grounds discussions in a realistic way.
Community energy is a blend of humans working together (the hard bit) and engineering (the easy bit – from my PoV).
I agree with: “Slogans are not enough: need has to be met” – here I stand – I can meet a need & get things moving.
Richard has my details.
If people want to contact Mike, just tell me.
Hi Richard,
I’m involved in the Independence Forum Scotland (IFS – https://independenceforum.scot). Our first convention is March 1 in Edinburgh. One of the working groups is on energy. It would be helpful to get Mike’s contact details so this group is aware of the work he is doing on community energy projects, something from which Scottish communities could benefit greatly.
Thank you very much in advance.
Leah
Sent to Mike – with your email
Richard
I recently went to the Sheffield Community Energy workshop, having been invited by John Carlisle. It’s clear that there is much interest in community energy, and by extension, community engagement. It must be possible – somehow! – to encourage more localised projects at the same time as rebuilding communities.
Having moved to Leicestershire from Dorset 6 months ago, my impression is that less well off areas are more likely to become engaged in local projects which bring people together and improve lives. I say that because wealthier areas have very little need to improve their lot. They have higher levels of income, more retired people and a rather bland attitude to anything with a whiff of “activism” ism.
A sweeping generalisation, and I’m happy to be corrected!
Nope – you are right. Which is why wales is fertile ground (& rural poverty in England tends to be glossed over “it’s their fault” etc).
Rachel Reeves at her best…or worst
https://x.com/BrianLeishmanMP/status/1881704862980915664
Why oh why are we living in such “interesting times”, as the wellknown Chinese curse has it?
Times ruled by “the Emperor’s New Clothes”, as a succession of governments since at LEAST 2010 have blundered their way from gaffe to gaffe, disaster to disaster, in the opposite direction from the Emergency Exit, and instead gone deeper into the collapsing edifice,
In the process their clothing has become increasingly threadbare (think Truss and Sunak) till now Reeves and Starmer are stark bollock naked, while the little boy who speaks out the truth – you, Richard, and here Colin – sets out sensible, coherent, achievable, DOABLE policies!!
We really have been governed by increasing stupidity, dogmatism and self-deception in recent years, reaching the current nadir – rule by blundering Starmer’s Faux-Labour administration of Keystone Kops 4th-raters such as Reeves, who seems to be incapable of observing – certainly of assessing – the evidence before her, so equally incapable of attending to the sound sense of Colin Hines and yourself. And Ros Alexander too?
Blasted autocorrect – Ros Altman
Those tongue-tied Labour MPs, who used to have a conscience, and who are tacitly supporting Starmer’s failing government need to read this, understand it, advocate it, stand up for it, the hell with their whips, or their re-election prospects.
Courage is required.
What chance?
@ Helen Heenan
” ……..understand it, advocate it, stand up for it, the hell with their whips, or their re-election prospects.”
Hmmmmm…..? If they carry on as they are doing, what re-election prospects ? Currently the imperative must be to avoid losing the whip. But why bother?
I emphatically agree with this. The problem I foresee is that the politicians we have in this country refuse to see the merit of it. I have never been politically active and now regret that as I feel I care about many things our two parties proclaim to want to improve but never do. Since finding your blog and reading your views on the economic policy that should be enacted but isn’t, it’s very hard not to feel cynical over our whole political landscape.
After watching quite a few of your videos on YouTube I now see how magnificently economically illiterate I have been. I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to educate me and surely countless others. I have a long road ahead with many books to read to further this education.
You are making the change happen
Without undertsanding it cannot
Well, good for Colin is all I can say. All of it laudable stuff and accurate.
But the problem is, it will not get traction because of the corruption engendered by the self preservation of the rich elite.
Helen speaks of courage – but whose courage?
It takes a lot of courage to walk a way from a meal ticket the likes of which Blair and the ignobly ennobled Mandelson now have and which Starmer, Reeves and Streeting are hankering after. And I bet they do not have one jot of such courage between any of them.
And then look at the people we have in the UK.
Lots of hard pressed people who could do with help, taught to worship the rich who with rich person’s tales about taxation and immigration have them salivating like Pavlov’s dogs over the very unnecessary riches that that the rich have have acquired by denying everyone else the basics such as job, wages pensions and healthcare.
Too many self interested people stand in Colin’s way I’m afraid.
I have to hope otherwise
Well, that hope is part of your self employed job so I understand your position.
And I am about to fulfil my moderate aim of just about getting all but a small number of the affordable houses I’ve had in development built by the time I want to retire. So it goes……………
🙂
Why the compulsion? I’m sure many people with positive cash balances would be happy to invest in a number of government bonds aimed at retail investors to finance such things as green energy infrastructure, repair of schools and hospitals, construction of social housing, much needed railway improvements, etc. But with the choice of what they want to finance! I for one would be worried that the lack of choice would allow governments to make all the appalling, uneconomic, destructive, vanity driven choices they’re famous for such as nuclear power stations, airports and super high speed rail.
Why?
Because tax subsidies should be well used. That’s why.
I find it notable that Ros Altmann is supportive of the notion of redirecting pension investment and other savings funds into UK infrastructure, in the same way that I found it notable when she spoke out in favour of the WASPI campaigners.
She’s more than a little selective though, as you might expect given her politics. I understand that she states that her pensions commentary as entirely apolitical, but I don’t see that as a plausible claim.
I first became aware of her about 20-25 years ago. At that time, it seemed that she was offered airtime on the BBC nearly every day, or at least with a frequency that was borderline ludicrous, appearing as ‘pensions expert’.
In my recollection, the pensions expertise Ros Altmann repeatedly offered was that defined benefit schemes were terminally unaffordable (they were not) and that employees simply needed to accept a massive unilateral transfer of risk from their employers without compensation because anything else would be ludicrous and naive.
It seemed very clear to me that this was part of an orchestrated campaign to soften people up and enable employers to do exactly that, which of course they did.
I am aware I have disagreed with her often.
But soemtimes, needs must when friends have to be found.
It may even have been Ros who coined the phrase ‘gold-plated pensions’. Her argument, I think, was that it was extremely unfair that some people had DB, so the right thing to do was to take it away from them.
…just to end this ghastly few days with a high note, and apropos nothing at all:
https://www.ganjingworld.com/video/1g2oqutqjg343FsDjA4WFgQG918i1c/
Very good
Wow! Thank you for the link. They are amazing!
Here’s the problem: the planet is finite. Water, air, land, forests are finite. Arable land is finite. But public policy makers do not cop to that fact when hollering Growth.
So let’s get real.
There’s sustainable growth, and there’s the marketocracy model. They are incompatible.
What’s sustainability? Probably about 2 billion humans , depending on your sources, and working with the UN’s sustainable development goals of social, environmental, and economic sustainability, which are incompatible with marketocracy capitalism. Or to be more exact, incompatible with kleptocratic mafia states like Russia, and now the US, run by war criminals.
Idealistic policy description at https://www.imd.org/blog/sustainability/economic-sustainability/#:~:text=Economic%20sustainability%20is%20about%20creating,care%2C%20and%20quality%20of%20life.
More ismism
If you want to abolish markets what are you going to out in their place?
Give me an example where it has gone well
And now tell me why market regulation is not a better solution
I am very much in favor of market regulation. But we just spent 40 years losing it in the USA. It’s Heartbreak Hotel here.
So, now we know and can take it back. I don’t look back. I work forwards.
With your permission I want to pose this analysis by Jason Hickel by way of a discussion on the Green New Deal and other possible social economic systems:
“Social democracy is not a viable alternative to capitalism. It is a tempting prospect, but ultimately suffers from violent contradictions that cannot be sustained.
Social democracy tries to establish a compromise between (a) capitalism, and (b) socialist demands for fair wages, good public services, and environmental protections. But the latter represents a real problem for capital. It increases input prices, and increases workers’ bargaining power, and makes capital accumulation very difficult to achieve.
One way to resolve this tension is to abandon capital accumulation and transition to a post-capitalist economy where production is democratically organized around human well-being and ecology (in other words, socialism).
But social democracy, which is ultimately committed to capitalism, takes a different approach. It resolves the tension through imperialism. Social democratic states appropriate cheap labour and nature from the global South, from an external “outside”, thus allowing them to offer good wages and public services at home while also maintaining the conditions for capital accumulation.
Even states that may seem neutral or benevolent, like some of the Scandinavian countries, benefit from a massive net-appropriation of labour and resources from the global South through dynamics of unequal exchange, which enables them to sustain the social democratic compromise.
Crucially, while this option is available to states in the imperial core, it is generally not available to states in the periphery. In the periphery, when capitalists face progressive demands from unions and environmental defenders, they don’t have the option of conceding and then relying on imperialist appropriation to maintain accumulation. There is no “outside” for them. Their only option is to crush the progressive demands. Indeed they often do this with the direct support of the core states.
This is why so many capitalist states in the South are characterized by violence and repression. It is not because they are somehow intrinsically given to violence… it is because capitalism *requires* violence. By contrast, the core states can have nice human rights at home because they externalize the violence that capitalism requires.
Social democracy offers only the illusion of a solution. An illusion for some, that is. The Congolese coltan miners and Bangladeshi sweatshop workers that supply Western multinational firms are of course under no such illusion.
The only real solution is to overcome capitalism and achieve a post-capitalist economy. It is 100% possible to have a functioning economy that ensures human well-being and ecological stability *without* needing imperialism. But it requires abandoning capital accumulation.”
“The North net-appropriated 12 billion tons of embodied raw materials, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labour from the global South in a single year”: https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802200005X
“In 2021, the economies of the global North net-appropriated 826 billion hours of embodied labour from the global South, across all skill levels and sectors. The wage value of this labour was equivalent to €16.9 trillion in Northern prices.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49687-y
When we sweep away the illusions and false solutions, it always comes down to the one choice that humanity faces: socialism or barbarism.”
see: https://x.com/jasonhickel/status/1891078438972182898
I have also recently come to the view that “ideologies” are inadequate and usually detrimental. However, I also realised a very long time ago that capitalism and its variations in the Global North (or ‘the West’ as it is more usually known) are entirely dependent on imperialist extraction and appropriation. Hence posting this here to invite reflection if you will allow. Many thanks.
So, Hickel has no answer to anything then becase he is hung up with isms and wishes to deny people the chance to work for themselves
Good luck with that I say
If he wishes to abolish the way I have lived in self employment – unsurprisingly I am opposed
His failue to idemtify what capitalism mght be is quite astonishing. No wonder the green / left makes no progress
And since socialism is all about the control of material rsources – and not wellbeing – it is no answer to absoluetly anything at all
It would be great to have some real world politics, and not this nonsense
There are a couple of companies that transitioned from single owner to collective (& funtioned better when they did).
Extraction from the South could be curbed through a range of actions wrt food (grow & consumer locally as much as possible), clothes – buy to last (not fast fashion) or buy second hand (obvs this runs out of road @ some point). etc etc.
We live in increasingly difficult (terrible?) times. However, Hickel is defeatist, there are always solutions – some sub-optimal (& we don’t live in a Utiopia) but I have a sense that this guy has given up before he has even started.
Much to agree with
Richard, I’m about 30 mins from Ely near St Ives and I think Mike’s community energy has relevance for our local village community. Could you email Mike’s details please.
I will send your details to Mike
” Step one should be to pull together all the disparate interest groups concerned with the myriad of social issues into a social alliance. ”
Maybe the Common-sense Policy Group – who produced the ‘Act Now ‘ report could be the umbrella group to convene such a social alliance. Their ambition seems to be a latter day Beveridge – which transcends political parties.
It certainly would be worth trying to channel a social movement – which has enough salience so that political parties cant ignore it. But given that this govt’s whole modus operandi is not to discuss or respond to ideas about anything – least of all whether money is available to invest etc ….
Hannah V’s request to look at Jason Hickel’s analysis ‘to invite reflection’ – perhaps should not be rejected out of hand.
We do need to ask why if many or even most people understand that public services need investment – and they are aware it would be possible to do so why dont the parties respond.
It might be difficult to deny at least some of of Hickel’s perspective – it does seem plausible that politics, and parties in particular are being corrupted by the way mature capitalism – with its massive accumulation of money and power in a few corporate hands – is making it harder and harder for progressive politics to get a hearing – never mind implemented.
One doesn’t want to embrace conspiracy theories or ‘isms’, but the more one learns about the capture of the US state by corporate interests and the way CIA /USAID intervenes to ‘promote democracy’ around the world , one wonders whether its no accident that anti-semitism was weaponised in Labour to get rid of a social democratic programme , or that the Green New Deal has not been implemented after all these years. Labour is making no secret of its take over by dark money, private interests – and that it sees these interests as the policy solution.
Hickel may be extreme but we do have to ask whether indeed the mature capitalism we have now is making it more and more impossible for social democracy.
Piketty and Monbiot in their different ways – see the tendency to accumulation, inequality and oligarchy to be the natural tendency – only interrupted by wars and plagues etc.
Cheerful stuff.
My reason for reacting as I did was a) it’s naive to suggest all private enterprise – all of which could fall under the umbrella term he uses – should go. I am not going to apologise fir my own private enterprise career, and think those who would demand that I do show their remarkable lack of understanding of the real world and what private business contributes b) socialism is a materialist construct that is very hard to reconcile with any green agenda or a concern for rounded well-being. Maybe Hickel was quoted out of context, but there are good reasons why I have never enthused about his work.