Why is Keir ‘I hate tree-huggers’ Starmer gaining points over global warming?
UK opinion pollsters are recording an unlikely boost for Keir Starmer’s STP (Substitute Tory Part – formerly Labour) over climate change.
Despite the fact that he says he hates “tree-huggers” and wants the London ULEZ (Ultra-Low Emissions Zone) scrapped after he blamed it and not his own poor leadership on his party’s failure to win the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election, the i‘s Editor’s Choice newsletter tells me his party is enjoying a “bounce” of support over the issue:
Our poll results … show a Labour bounce after days of Conservative backtracking over net zero pledges. Sir Keir Starmer is now on 44% support, compared to the Tories’ 27%. If replicated at a general election would hand Sir Keir Starmer a landslide majority on a scale not seen since 1997.
Note that, like This Writer, the i can apparently no longer bring itself to refer to Starmer’s party as Labour!
But it isn’t all roses for the party that colours itself red. While
only 15 per cent trust Rishi Sunak to deal with this crucial issue. Sir Keir Starmer fares slightly better (21 per cent) but nearly half of those polled placed no trust in either of them – a stat that is hugely worrying.
As if the “era of global warming” wasn’t a serious enough threat, this week, the UN secretary-general declared that we had entered “the era of global boiling” after scientists confirmed that July was on track to be the world’s hottest month on record.
Our exclusive poll shows that three out of four people want action taken now – a figure that understandably ramps up among those aged 24 and under. It is their planet to take on, after all.
We all have our part to play in the climate fight but there is only so much we can do without governments around the world stepping up to the challenge. And that needs to start at home. Now.
And it’s not happening.
Instead – and for example – the Starmer party’s shadow Climate Change secretary, Ed Miliband, appeared on TV to push a false claim about its current policy:
Ed Miliband: "Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, has done more than any shadow chancellor before her to put [tackling climate change] front and centre of our agenda"
A reminder than John McDonnell proposed a £250bn Green Transformation Fund. pic.twitter.com/cRww5JpyHF
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) July 27, 2023
Reeves recently withdrew her promise to spend £28 billion a year on tackling the climate crisis.
Her – and Miliband’s – party’s current policy on climate change is to do nothing. There’s a vague offer to spend some money on it after being in office for an unspecified number of years.
Let’s remember (again) that Starmer himself – their party’s leader – used the ULEZ (Ultra-Low Emissions Zone) in London as the reason his party couldn’t win Uxbridge and South Ruislip in the recent by-election there and has tried to pressurise London Mayor Sadiq Khan to scrap it (in fact it seems that discontent with his own leadership had more to do with the failure to win that seat).
It is his stance that has encouraged Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak to water down his own policies on climate change. So perhaps it is poetic justice that Sunak’s own poll ratings have plummeted as a result.
But none of this does anything to stop the “global boiling” that is happening as I type these words. Our home is burning to a cinder and the men and women in suits are squabbling about money as though it matters.
They seem to have forgotten that money is made by using the natural resources produced by our planet and its eco-system. Destroy that system and those resources – in the way that these people have been doing (and yes, I mean Keir Starmer, Ed Miliband, Rachel Reeves, Rishi Sunak and all the shadowy businesspeople who employ them) – and not only will there not be any more money, but whatever they have will not be worth anything.
While they argue over whether cleaning the planet is cost-effective – like the imbeciles they are – some of us have been pointing out the obvious flaw in their thinking:
Even if you don’t believe climate change is man affected… the actions we need to reduce it leave us with clean air, less pollution , clean waters and cheap secure energy? Why the anger against that?
— Deborah Meaden 🇺🇦 (@DeborahMeaden) July 28, 2023
If Sunak, Starmer and the other stuffed suits can’t get their policies in line with that, then we need to fill Parliament with people who can.
I mean, it’s only a matter of survival. Ask your non-political friends how their non-voting – or even tactical voting – philosophy measures up to that.
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I put Starmer as a ‘low fat Tory’ implementing less if the same.