The British Labour’s Party’s pledge to borrow billions of pounds for green investment has been omitted from a new ‘campaigning bible’—a 24-page document designed to help current and prospective Labour MPs win votes—but it is still very much alive. Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves unveiled the original pledge, which would involve investing £28 billion (€32.6 billion) every year in as-yet undefined low-carbon infrastructure, in 2021, declaring that she would be Britain’s first “green chancellor.”
The omission likely stems from Labour’s desire to focus its campaign on economic growth, which the document describes as its “number one priority.” In particular, the party believes that after years of decline, voters will no longer look almost exclusively to the Conservatives for economic competence, a theme they previously monopolised.
Now that the Tories are trying to distance themselves from their own net zero pledges, any green talk from Labour parliamentary candidates could prove disadvantageous. One probable influence here is what appears to be changing perceptions of climate change, especially among the young.
Much has been made of the increasingly irrelevant Oxford English Dictionary branding “climate change” the “Children’s Word of the Year” for 2023. More representative is new polling, which suggests that just shy of one third of UK teenagers believe that climate change is being “purposefully overexaggerated.” The Guardian expectedly pinned this on online “climate disinformation,” though Ross Clark, writing in The Spectator, said it shouldn’t really be surprising that “not all teenagers are on the same page as Greta Thunberg.”
Labour officials on the campaign trail are likely to have encountered this sentiment that climate claims are exaggerated.
It would, however, be wrong to assume that just because Labour is softening its rhetoric now, in anticipation of a general election, that it will affect its attachment to the Net Zero while in power. Leader Sir Keir Starmer’s worldview has, as Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens often points out, “green zealotry” at its core. And Labour sources have already told The Daily Telegraph that they remain committed to the borrowing plan, regardless of whether or not it features in the campaigning document.
While the costly scheme will likely receive less scrutiny over the coming months, senior party figures will encourage Starmer to “stick to your guns” after the election..
