It’s been clear during party conference season that the UK is about to enter an unprecedented culture war on climate. At the Labour conference, the question has been: is the party up to the fight?
Keir Starmer is attempting to counter Rishi Sunak’s doom and gloom about the supposed cost of climate action with a more optimistic message. He unveiled some long-awaited green policies, including a proposal for community renewable energy. The Labour leader also referenced the climate catastrophes that have swept the world this year, and reminded the audience “clean British energy is cheaper than foreign fossil fuels”.
He also reiterated his commitment to keeping Britain’s net zero targets, saying: “When Rishi Sunak says roll back on our climate mission, I say speed ahead.”
Starmer also promised more green spaces and pointed out it was under a Labour government that the first national park was designated.
Some had feared the party would join a race to the bottom, trying to match Sunak’s vandalism of environmental policies. But the opposite has been true; climate underpins the policies of nearly all of those who would hold the great offices of state, and is a clear thread running through Labour’s electoral strategy.
The shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves reiterated plans for a more extensive windfall tax on fossil fuel companies. She also countered Conservative plans to use the planning rules to make it more difficult to install onshore wind and solar, pledging to write new planning documents that enshrine net zero at their heart. Starmer also promised to “bulldoze through” the Tories’ restrictions on onshore renewables.
The next election will be a climate election, and as we saw at Conservative conference last week, fake news will be rife. It’s clear Tory ministers are unafraid to make up Labour policies that don’t exist, such as a meat tax, and spout outlandish claims about how much decarbonisation will allegedly cost households.
The shadow energy secretary, Ed Miliband, said: “The Tories are going to fight a very dirty and desperate campaign. For the record, we are not in favour of a meat tax. But Sunak wants to have a row about whether a clean energy future is good for the country or not. Let’s bring it on. Because what he’s saying is not just anti-green. It’s anti-business, anti-prosperity, anti-young people.”
He seems to be relishing the idea of being able to debate his favourite topic against Sunak, who clearly knows less about the subject. Miliband has linked the politics of Liz Truss and Donald Trump to the prime minister’s environmental policies, and mocked falsehoods such as the idea people would be forced to have seven bins.
“We’re not going to let these Tories cancel our country’s future,” he said, “The British people don’t want a pound shop Republican party. They don’t want an energy policy written by Truss and Trump. Let’s send these Tories to where they belong. Let’s recycle them from government to opposition. And chuck them into the seven dustbins of history.”
Labour’s environment team have incorporated a social justice bent to their pitch for the rural vote. The new shadow environment secretary, Steve Reed, said that access to nature was “bread and roses”, and he and junior shadow minister Toby Perkins have promised to take on the big businesses that are polluting the environment and ripping off food producers.
Reed also seems prepared for a dirty election fight. He referred to the claim that Labour would implement a meat tax as “fake news”, adding that Jacob Rees-Mogg’s comments about wanting to import hormone injected beef from Australia are great for Labour’s election chances: “They should put that on a poster: ‘Hormone injected beef – vote Conservative.’”
Labour’s approach this conference has been to counter Sunak’s misinformation and present a positive case of its own; pledging that green policies will lower bills and bring prosperity back to Britain.
“Labour’s task is to restore hope to our politics,” Reeves told the conference on Monday. And that is the bet Labour is making: that hope will win over fear.
