The climate credentials of Rishi Sunak’s cabinet :: Keir Starmer
While Keir Starmer is leader of the UK Labour Party and therefore notionally supposedly opposed to Rushi Sunak’s cabinet and government, he’s a Tory pretending to be a Socialist, a red Tory.
Keir Starmer has abandoned every one of his Socialist ‘pledges’ on taking over the Labour Party. Included in these pledges is
3. Climate justice
Put the Green New Deal at the heart of everything we do. There is no issue more important to our future than the climate emergency. A Clean Air Act to tackle pollution locally. Demand international action on climate rights.
… He denied that the 10 promises he made during the 2020 race to succeed Jeremy Corbyn had been abandoned and insisted they remained “important statements of value and principle”.
However, Starmer refused to confirm that he stood by several of them, including public ownership of utilities and rail services and the abolition of university tuition fees.
He has been repeatedly criticised by some on the left of the party who accuse him of shifting away from the platform he stood on three years ago.
Challenged on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme over whether voters could trust him to deliver the five new national missions, Starmer said the pledges made during his Labour leadership bid “haven’t all been abandoned by any stretch of the imagination”.
He said: “What I’ve had to do is obviously adapt some of them to the circumstances we find ourselves in. Since I ran for leader, we’ve had Covid. Since I ran for leader, we’ve had the conflict in Ukraine. Since I ran for leader, we’ve had a government that’s done huge damage to our economy.” …
On climate commitments specifically,
9 Jun 2023 Labour postpones £28bn green plan as it seeks to be trusted on public finances
… Labour has scaled back plans to borrow £28bn a year to invest in green jobs and industry as the party’s leadership looks to review its spending in an attempt to prove its fiscal credibility.
The shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, delayed plans for a green prosperity fund to start in the first year of a Labour government, saying it would “ramp up” by the middle of a first parliament.
She said the decision had to be taken as a result of the poor economic backdrop and rising interest rates, after Liz Truss’s short premiership crashed the markets last autumn. …
18 Jun 2023 Keir Starmer to ‘throw everything’ at plan to get UK to net zero
… Keir Starmer will pledge to “throw everything” at net zero and the overhaul of the UK’s energy system and industries, promising new jobs in “the race of our lifetime” to a low-carbon future.
The Labour leader will seek to regain the initiative on his plan for green growth on Monday, having rowed back earlier this month on a pledge to invest £28bn in a green industrial strategy, a figure that will not now be reached until the second half of a Labour parliament, as well as damaging rows with trade unions over the future of the North Sea.
Announcing a package of policies designed to decarbonise the energy system and industry, Starmer will say: “We’re going to throw everything at this: planning reform, procurement, long-term finance, R&D, a strategic plan for skills and supply chains … Pulling together for a simple, unifying priority: British power for British jobs.” …
This is when the Tories started accusing Labour of pursuing Just Stop Oil policies. “Grant Shapps, the energy secretary, accused the Labour leader of being “the political wing” of Just Stop Oil.” There’s also actually a suggestion of terrorism in Grant Shapp’s comment … that phrase.
His team also rebuffed suggestions of a U-turn on the North Sea oil ban. Rescinding permission for projects that have cleared all regulatory hurdles before the general election would be costly and legally complex, so the party’s proposed ban on new oilfields will not cover projects that have achieved all three levels of consent, for exploration, development and production.
It is unlikely that many of the more than 100 North Sea licences the government is mulling would fall into that category, though one of the biggest – the Rosebank oil and gas field – could clear the final regulatory hurdles soon.
It’s not possible to get to Net Zero if Rosebank is permitted. Just like everything else, Keir Starmer and the Labour party can’t be trusted on the climate.
Which is why he gets heckled by climate protestors