Labour’s broken promise on climate investment could have dangerous consequences
Who can forget Nick Clegg’s tuition fees pledge?
After standing for election with the promise to vote against any increase in tuition fees at the 2010 election, the Liberal Democrat leadership then joined in coalition with the Conservatives, went back on their word and bumped them up to a staggering £9,000.
That betrayal, and Clegg’s excruciating and widely-mocked apology video, has been etched on the brains of many MPs ever since.
It was a broken promise I was reminded of last week, when Labour Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced a U-turn on her party’s pledge to spend £28billion a year on green investment.
That £28billion annual funding will now not be put in place from the first year of a Labour government – instead ‘ramp[ing]’ up climate spending throughout their term, apparently reaching the magic £28billion figure by 2028.
The public elect politicians to keep their promises and deliver on their pledges – not only so they know what they are voting for, but also to build trust rather than betray it in the way that Nick Clegg did so blatantly 13 years ago.
Reeves’s announcement is incredibly damaging – because it risks the public becoming disillusioned with politics, and because investing to tackle this emergency isn’t just important, it’s critical to our survival.
It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, considering Keir Starmer’s recent record on pledge-keeping – ditching plans to adopt common ownership of energy and water, bring back free movement between the UK and EU, offer universal childcare to young children, and even scrap tuition fees himself.
Yet what’s so frustrating about this particular U-turn is how misguided it is. Reeves claims this is the ‘responsible’ thing to do, because of her ‘commitment to Labour’s fiscal rules.’
But this entirely arbitrary financial straitjacket needs to be placed within a context of climate and ecological breakdown.
Apocalyptic pictures of a toxic smog engulfing New York have been widely circulated, and barely two weeks ago we saw possibly the UK’s largest ever wildfire.
That means massively upscaling onshore wind; making solar panels mandatory on all suitable new homes; developing innovative wave and floating offshore wind technology; restoring our rivers; shifting to agro-ecological farming and incentivising locally-sourced food; and upskilling a new generation of workers in the green trades of the future, just for starters.
Yes, that investment comes with a price tag.
We’re not ashamed to say that the Green Party’s retrofitting plan, for example, would cost £25bn a year, for 10 years – because it’s a comprehensive, local authority-led mass insulation and retrofit programme that could slash people’s energy bills and carbon emissions.
Case in point: David Cameron’s decision a decade ago to ‘cut the green crap’ and curtail renewable investment, which actually ended up adding an estimated £150 to every household energy bill.
And rather than restricting ourselves to ‘fiscal rules’ as Labour propose, there are in fact so many ways to fund these measures that are staring us in the face.
Let’s start with a wealth tax – of 1% on the richest 1% of the country – which a working paper from the University of Greenwich estimates could bring in as much as £70billion.
Some of the estimated £55billion a year that currently goes on tax breaks for pension savers could be redirected towards creating more green jobs.
In contrast, there’s currently a potential loophole in the Energy Profits Levy or ‘windfall tax’, which gives record profit-earning fossil fuel companies 91p back for every pound they invest in climate-wrecking oil and gas extraction.
Will Labour continue with these vast fossil fuel handouts?
A Green Investment Bank – which did exist before this Government flogged it off in 2017 – could help leverage private finance to fund decarbonisation projects. Labour’s green investment U-turn shows they appear determined to repeat that same short-sighted mistake.
Reeves blames her party’s watered-down pledge on Liz Truss’s shambolic economic mismanagement – but we can’t afford to make the same mistakes she did.
Green investment will not only pay for itself over time, but quite literally bring dividends. One Oxford University study suggests that switching from fossil fuels to clean energy could save the world as much as £10.2trillion by 2050.
The solutions are there, and the money to fund them is too – yet because of the political choices of this Government and, increasingly, the Labour opposition, they’re simply not being taken.
That’s why having Green MPs in Parliament is so critical.
Whoever runs the country after the next election, Greens will always hold the Government’s feet to the fire so that the climate emergency isn’t simply ignored.
On tuition fees, taxes, and green investment – we honour our pledges.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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