However unpopular the drive to net zero becomes, ‘moderate’ Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer cannot help but show off his eco-zealot roots.
Starmer’s shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, last month bragged that the likely incoming Labour government would be more pro-business than former prime minister Tony Blair—on the proviso that plans to raise £22 billion (€25.57bn) for private sector investment are shaped around green energy projects.
The opposition is now working overtime to out-green the Green Party, which made gains in last week’s local elections (albeit partly due to the Gaza issue as opposed to climate change).
Labour officials have drawn up a ‘dossier’ of Green Party activists who stand accused of blocking environmental schemes across the country. According to the i newspaper, this includes Greens opposing proposals for new solar farms, onshore wind farms, and low-traffic neighbourhoods.
One ‘senior’ party source even said that to stem off the more-left Greens, Labour activists should take an “eco-warrior” approach when campaigning in some areas (presumably not oop north).
It would certainly be difficult to dispute that Labour’s tactic here isn’t ‘gung ho,’ given that the Greens say they have opposed these particular developments because they were “bad idea[s], for example a solar farm proposed on a nature reserve when there are far more appropriate places for the development.” Is Labour saying, then, that it would push ahead with such applications regardless? That, at the very least, wouldn’t be out of character.
And as (Tory-spun) talk turns to the possibility of a hung parliament after the next general election, which would see Labour require the support of smaller parties to form a coalition government, Green Party grandees are rubbing their hands at the idea of “how some Green Party MPs could improve the Labour government [that is, make it even more green] by holding them to account.”
All of this will give prime minister and Tory leader Rishi Sunak something new to bash Labour with. But the reality is that it shows his party is doing so badly that Starmer can big up his (widely unpopular) green credentials and manage—one way or another—to form the next government, anyway.
