Keir Starmer kills off £28bn Green Prosperity Plan pledge – and his election hopes?
![](https://voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/240208-Keir-Starmer-windmills.jpg)
Windmills of his mind: but did Keir Starmer ever have any real intention to go through with his now-ditched £28bn Green Prosperity Plan?
Word of the day is ‘apostasise’ (16th century): to abandon once firmly held principles or promises.
— Susie Dent (@susie_dent) February 8, 2024
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?
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:
It doesn't surprise me that we are seeing yet another flip flop from Labour – this time on their £28 billion green spending 'commitments'.
As I highlighted in the Finance Bill debate on Monday, they do have 'form' when it comes to flip flops. pic.twitter.com/cWDEgaWVxB— Nigel Huddleston MP (@HuddlestonNigel) February 8, 2024
That’s the right-wing charge. Here’s the charge from the left:
Keir Starmer: "Our Green Prosperity Plan will create growth, provide good jobs and lower bills"
So today Labour are officially dumping their plan for growth. pic.twitter.com/Y6ixQ1dJnK
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) February 8, 2024
Rachel Reeves: Labours Green Prosperity Plan is a real plan for tackling climate change, a real plan for growth, and a real plan for levelling up.
Today Labour are dumping the (real) plan. pic.twitter.com/3Ajn9zy4WW
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) February 8, 2024
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:
"Politically, it's strategically incompetent."
Barry Gardiner was Labour's Shadow energy and climate change secretary at the time of the last election.
He reacts to Sir Keir Starmer's decision to ditch its policy of spending £28bn a year on its Green Prosperity Plan.#R4Today
— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) February 8, 2024
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.
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:
The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
This is a tough call. The Tories are so unpopular there is a side of me that understands the call to play it safe, not take too many risks and, above all, not hand the Tories any propaganda gifts. On the other hand, the election is his to lose so one could equally argue, ‘why not put in some stuff the membership actually wants’.
The bigger question is whether the left should even support Starmer in the first place or put weight behind the Greens and other actually left options.
I think that’s the good question: why not put in some stuff the membership actually wants?
The only answer we can infer – because Starmer will never say it openly – is that the Labour leadership are imposters who don’t want what the rest of the party believe in, don’t have the same political principles or instincts, and solely want to make sure that those – traditional – Labour policies don’t have a chance.
My advice has been to examine the policy documents of each candidate in your own constituency and vote for the one who is promising the best deal for you and you alone. Which party – if any – wins the election is no concern of any individual voter.
Dear Mr. Shifty. As a staunch Socialist, which POS party shall I vote for?
I don’t know who “Mr Shifty” is but if you want my opinion, I’ve given it a few times in articles recently and will reproduce it below:
You simply cannot vote tribally – for the party you think represents you (none of them do; they’re all about enriching their MPs and nothing else) – at the next general election.
Instead – and I cannot stress this strongly enough – if you want your vote to mean anything, you have to actually find out what the candidates in your constituency are planning to do, if they are lucky enough to be elected.
That is what party manifestos are for. Independent candidates also have policy documents and they will all be online for you to find and read.
You need to find and read these policy documents, and then you need to make a dispassionate choice, based on what you have read.
Which of the candidates offers the most policies that fit what you need? And, by that, I mean: who will improve your own life the most?
Do not consider how other people will vote, either in your constituency or the other 649 around the UK. That is not your concern.
It is not for you to worry about which party will get enough votes to actually enact its policies. This will lead you down the usual garden path to voting in a government that won’t do anything at all for the good of the country, like the one we’ve had since 2010.
BE SELFISH. Bizarrely, it might be the only way to get the kind of government that all of us need.
I firmly believe that the Starmer plan has ultimately been to make Labour unelectable since he was elected. There are a lot of indicators that would seem to demonstrate this.