Politicians know they can’t win an argument without making it. Yet unfortunately that is what Sir Keir Starmer seems to believe. In 2021, the party earmarked £28bn a year for a green industrial strategy to rid the economy of its carbon addiction and create a wave of “clean jobs”. This summer, however, the spending was postponed to the second half of the next parliament. Then it was reported that it would take a full term to ultimately redeem the pledge. Last week, because of self-imposed fiscal rules, Sir Keir suggested it might not happen. This was unsettling, especially as Labour is miles ahead in the polls. Yet more disappointment is in store. On Tuesday, according to reports, the Labour leader will extol the virtues of small technocratic policies rather than big transformative ones.
Sir Keir is mistaken if he thinks he can avoid a fight by not turning up. British governments are unusually free to overhaul the country’s economy, but electoral support is the crucial precondition for such changes. Green policies won’t happen by themselves. This week, Cop28 will reach a climax, spotlighting the climate emergency. Inaction is not an option: relying on volatile gas prices would cost Britain double that of achieving 2050 net zero targets. Sir Keir knows that Labour spending will be caricatured as a “tax bombshell” by the Tories. Ministers hope to overwhelm facts with emotional force. But Labour should take heart that Rishi Sunak’s U-turn on climate targets in September, coupled with a conspiracy-laden assault on the opposition, fell flat with voters.
In a cost of living crisis, Sir Keir is right to worry that a majority of Britons think getting to net zero means higher prices. But who pays for green plans can be answered by Labour saying Britain can borrow to invest. Labour has vote-winning policies: strengthening energy security, generating employment and creating new industries. The cost of new technologies, such as heat pumps, will fall as they are more widely adopted. Sir Keir could also sell his green prosperity plan as a way of helping households by promising cheaper energy bills. Properly taxing oil and gas windfall profits would mean less borrowing.
The polls show only 9% of people are aware of Labour’s plans. The risk is that if Tory scaremongering is all the public hears, then Sir Keir may lose support. However, if voters heard “a confident, united Labour case first, the opposite is true”, wrote the pollster Steve Akehurst last week. When he ran focus groups that pitted Tory attacks over fiscal profligacy against Labour’s positive messaging, Sir Keir’s party gained support. Labour’s rebuttal, if grounded in economics, defused Conservative attacks. Mr Akehurst is right that public attitudes to the idea of borrowing to invest are more permissive “in a country that is falling apart at the seams”.
Reaching net zero will be costly and disruptive. Long-term targets are needed to drive transitions in energy, transport and homes. But voters want to know that Labour has a well-thought-out plan to share the cost equitably between government and private sectors. In cutting energy-efficiency measures in homes and slowing down the transition from carbon-powered cars and boilers, Mr Sunak left voters more exposed to the high costs of imported fossil fuels. The government’s climate advisers warn that there aren’t the policies in place to meet net zero. By contrast, Labour’s plans are electoral assets, not liabilities. It has popular green arguments. Sir Keir should sell them.