Windmills of his mind: but did Keir Starmer ever have any real intention to go through with his now-ditched £28bn Green Prosperity Plan?

No serious commentator could possibly describe any of Keir Starmer’s policies as “firmly held principles or promises” because he changes them with the wind, so the above is not strictly true for him – although it is for his party.

Labour had been adamant that, if elected into government, it would invest £28 billion a year on green energy projects like creating a publicly-owned green power company, building offshore wind farms and developing electric vehicles – until today (February 8, 2024), when the policy was unceremoniously dumped.

Why?

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According to the New Statesman,

Campaign director Morgan McSweeney and the national campaign coordinator Pat McFadden have long feared that the £28bn figure leaves Labour  vulnerable to a classic Tory “tax bombshell” attack – the strategy that helped deliver them election victories in 1992 and 2015.

McSweeney recently warned the shadow cabinet that … Labour has to “bombproof” its offer in advance.

Since economic modelling has shown that increasing investment to £28bn a year would break the party’s fiscal rules, the figure was never likely to be met in the next parliament.

Starmer’s move is not without political risk. It will encourage the charge from left and right that he is a “flip-flopper” who doesn’t stand for anything. Indeed, his chief of staff, Sue Gray, has warned him in advance of this.

Rightly so. This speech strikes home:

That’s the right-wing charge. Here’s the charge from the left:

Even Barry Gardiner, Labour’s Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary at the time of the 2019 general election – and one of the party’s most eloquent promoters – has turned on his boss over this:

Going back to the Statesman, there’s one final point to be made:

On a more fundamental level, it also raises the question of how a Labour government would increase Britain’s economic growth to the highest in the G7 and achieve its target of clean power by 2030. As recently as yesterday, Starmer insisted that £28bn was crucial to both. The policy may have gone but the arguments it triggered will endure.

So Starmer has ditched the Green Prosperity Plan because it would break Labour’s fiscal rules – but without it, the party cannot achieve its economic goals.

This Writer has a feeling that Starmer has created his own nemesis, rather than vanquishing it.

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