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About TRANSFORM

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https://transformpolitics.uk/about/

This is an era of crisis: climate change, the cost of living, the erosion of democracy and the spread of war.

We urgently need an answer. But in Britain, while the Tory party fuels these crises, the Labour Party is failing to provide an alternative.

The right wing has regained control of Labour. Jeremy Corbyn, and his politics that inspired millions across our society, have been cast out.

Labour now opposes a ceasefire in Gaza, doesn’t support strikes, rejects nationalisation, refuses to defend refugees, and won’t scrap student fees – or even the two-child benefit cap.

Keir Starmer has overseen the driving out of 200,000 Labour members. ‘The many’ who supported Labour politics from 2015 to 2019 are denied a political voice.

We need a political organisation that offers a real solution: one that challenges the system at the root of every crisis we face.

Over recent months, organisations and individuals from the labour and trade union movement have come together to discuss a way forward. These include existing left parties, Breakthrough, Left Unity and the Liverpool Community Independents, together with others who were in the Labour Party and more from across the left.

Now we’ve taken the next step: founding a new party of the left.

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https://transformpolitics.uk/about/

16/12/23 Link to X/twitter not working for some strange reason. Here’s the video

Continue ReadingAbout TRANSFORM

Rwanda plans are an affront to democracy and human rights, say Greens  

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Image of the Green Party's Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.

Responding to the government publishing plans to disapply sections of the Human Rights Act to get around a Supreme Court ruling banning the deportation of people seeking asylum to Rwanda for processing, Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer said: 

“The fact that the government is going to try to use its parliamentary majority to over-ride established human rights protections is an affront to democracy. 

“We need a system that welcomes refugees through clear, open, safe and legal routes, that offers quick and efficient determinations and support for resettlement into local communities with properly funded local services.” 

“Instead of creating an asylum system that works, the government is deliberately making it chaotic and inaccessible to put people off using their right to seek asylum.  

“It is the use of cruelty and inhumanity as a tool of public policy and cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. 

“Everyone deserves to be treated in a way that is fair and humane. This new legislation will remove fundamental legal protections designed to protect us all from the arbitrary power of the state.”

Continue ReadingRwanda plans are an affront to democracy and human rights, say Greens  

Warning: the UK government’s hydrogen plan isn’t green at all, it’s another oil industry swindle

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Kevin Anderson and Simon Oldridge

Membrane type LNG tanker Puteri Firus Satu in Tokyo Bay. Author Tennen-Gas shares under GNU Free Documentation License.
Membrane type LNG tanker Puteri Firus Satu in Tokyo Bay. Author Tennen-Gas shares under GNU Free Documentation License.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/04/uk-government-hydrogen-plan-oil-industry-taxpayer-blue-hydrogen-climate-crisis

A taxpayer-funded drive for ‘blue’ hydrogen is good news for fossil-fuel lobbyists, but bad news for the climate crisisMon 4 Dec 2023 12.25 CET

With the impacts of the climate crisis so apparent for all to see, it is becoming ever harder for governments to fob off voters with promises of action tomorrow. At Cop28 we’ll see increasingly overt action by fossil fuel companies and petrostates to preserve their traditional power. But it is just as important to scrutinise emerging so-called green or low-emission solutions, which sound plausible, but are often simply big oil’s business-as-usual in a new guise.

The UK’s much touted low carbon hydrogen standard (LCHS) is an example of this. While hydrogen can be a low-emission fuel, the UK’s plan is quite clearly a fig leaf for “blue” hydrogen – which is made from fossil fuels – and according to one study, is even more at odds with our commitment to limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C than burning coal.

Today, the vast majority of the UK’s hydrogen production is made from natural gas (the marketing term for methane) in a very carbon-intensive process. Blue hydrogen would also be produced from methane, but with promises that the resulting CO2 emissions would be captured and buried underground. But even if most of the CO2 can be safely captured (a very big “if”), blue hydrogen’s full life-cycle emissions are likely still to be high.

That is in part as a consequence of methane leaks across the vast North Sea supply chain. Methane is a very powerful warming gas, so even with relatively low leakage rates, blue hydrogen will be bad news for the climate. Currently, 84% of the UK’s misleadingly named “low carbon” hydrogen capacity under development is of this blue variety.

Companies will be awarded substantial taxpayer funding for blue hydrogen plants that are certified compliant with the new LCHS – and here, the hallmarks of lobbying are only too apparent. The LCHS method for calculating life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions appears rigged to greenwash blue hydrogen.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/04/uk-government-hydrogen-plan-oil-industry-taxpayer-blue-hydrogen-climate-crisis

Protest placard reads Greenwash detected
Protest placard reads Greenwash detected
Continue ReadingWarning: the UK government’s hydrogen plan isn’t green at all, it’s another oil industry swindle

UK likely to miss Paris climate targets by wide margin, analysis shows

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/05/uk-miss-paris-climate-targets-emissions

Exclusive: Under current policies, Britain could fall short of internationally agreed goal of 68% cut in emissions by 2030

The UK government is likely to miss its targets under the Paris climate agreement by a wide margin, analysis shows, dealing a devastating blow to Britain’s standing on the international stage.

Under current policies, the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions are likely to be 59% lower in 2030 than they were in 1990 – but the country’s internationally agreed target is for a 68% reduction by the end of this decade. The gap is likely to leave Britain in breach of these commitments.

The 2030 emissions goal was agreed at Cop26, the UN climate summit hosted by the UK in Glasgow in 2021, and has been reaffirmed at Cop28, taking place in Dubai this week.

Failure to meet the UK’s commitments would hinder international efforts to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial levels.

The estimate comes from analysis of publicly available and government data carried out by Friends of the Earth. It found that current policies would achieve just over half the emissions cuts needed by 2030.

The gap had grown significantly under Rishi Sunak’s leadership, Friends of the Earth found.

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/05/uk-miss-paris-climate-targets-emissions

Image of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reads 1% RICHEST 100% CLIMATE DENIER
Image of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reads 1% RICHEST 100% CLIMATE DENIER
Continue ReadingUK likely to miss Paris climate targets by wide margin, analysis shows

Chris Packham launches legal challenge over UK’s watering down of climate policies

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Chris Packham by Garry Knight from London, England - People's Walk for Wildlife 2018 - 04, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76235680
Chris Packham by Garry Knight from London, England – People’s Walk for Wildlife 2018 – 04, CC BY 2.0.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/04/chris-packham-launches-legal-challenge-over-uks-watering-down-of-climate-policies

Chris Packham has filed a high court legal challenge to the UK government over its decision to weaken key climate policies.

The broadcaster and environmental campaigner has applied for a judicial review of the government’s decision to ditch the timetable for phasing out petrol and diesel powered cars and vans, gas boilers, off-grid fossil fuel domestic heating and minimum energy ratings for homes.

A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said it rejected Packham’s claims and would “robustly” defend the challenge. The measures and their schedule had been set out in the government’s carbon budget delivery plan, which was put before parliament in March this year.

In September, Rishi Sunak announced he would delay the ban on selling new diesel and petrol cars from 2030 to 2035 and that 20% of households would be exempt from a new gas boiler ban among other changes, arguing that he did not want to burden ordinary people with the costs.

Following the announcement, Packham wrote to Sunak, the energy secretary and the transport secretary to challenge the decision, arguing that the prime minister did not have the legal right to change the timeline of carbon budget pledges at will, since the actioning of the carbon budget delivery plan was governed by statute.

Packham said he did not receive a satisfactory response to his letter and therefore filed the judicial review application.

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Image of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reads 1% RICHEST 100% CLIMATE DENIER
Image of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reads 1% RICHEST 100% CLIMATE DENIER

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/04/chris-packham-launches-legal-challenge-over-uks-watering-down-of-climate-policies

Continue ReadingChris Packham launches legal challenge over UK’s watering down of climate policies