Keir Starmer’s lukewarm response to Ed Miliband’s energy policies reveals a widening rift within the party. His prioritisation of sustainable job creation over “tree huggers” is threatening the party’s unity. The Sunday Times has more.
Ed Miliband gave an animated Powerpoint presentation to the shadow cabinet on his revolutionary energy policies, speaking excitedly of the hope and change he believed they would bring.
His reception from Sir Keir Starmer, however, was decidedly lukewarm.
“[Starmer] thanked him for his presentation, but said he wasn’t interested in hope and change, he was more interested in creating sustainable new jobs to replace jobs in old sectors that were being lost,” said a source. “He then said he was not interested in tree-huggers, before adding to everyone’s surprise, ‘In fact, I hate tree-huggers’.”
The comments surprised some in the meeting, which took place the day after Starmer gave a speech on energy strategy in Aberdeen last month, but they are symptomatic of the divide that exists between him and Miliband.
Those close to the leader believe it is the economic challenge, not climate change, the party needs to focus on. They see Miliband as an eco-warrior who is more interested in the green agenda than the party’s central priorities of jobs, bills and energy security.
A shadow cabinet minister said: “Keir is always trying to anchor the party. Ed will always try to toe the line by saying that the party’s priorities are jobs, bills, energy security and climate change in that order. He can’t help himself, he is a hopey-changey kind of person.”
Morgan McSweeney, Labour’s election chief, is frustrated by those in the party pushing the green policies. A source close to him said: “He sees everything through the prism of electoral success. He sees everything else as a distraction. He wants to throw the excess baggage off the boat and just concentrate on the economy.
He thinks the focus, for example, on the party’s pledge to end all North Sea gas and oil licences has been an unhelpful distraction, and something the Tories can easily weaponise.
In contrast, he wants to see more focus on the party’s Bidenomics-led policies, which amounts to an ambitious plan for creating the industries and jobs of the future.”
Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, and Pat McFadden, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, are among the “sceptics” who think the focus on a green agenda is complicating Labour’s key messages. A source familiar with their thinking said: “They want to talk about economic change not climate change.”
Another member of the shadow cabinet said the party risked shooting itself in the foot by becoming obsessed with the climate-change agenda, where there are “very few votes”.
The row has been rumbling on since last year’s annual party conference in Liverpool, when Starmer’s most senior advisers, including Deborah Mattinson, his director of strategy, and Peter Hyman, a former aide, wanted to change the colour of the party’s red rose emblem to green. They argued that commitment to the environment and “green stuff” should be one of the Labour leader’s overarching messages.
They were overruled by others, including the unions, who thought the idea was “mad”, given the inflation crisis.
A senior party source said: “Much of the tensions that exist now are a throwback to conference. There have been those who have been pushing the green agenda, but recent events have shown that tactic could easily backfire, and there is an overriding sense among most in the shadow cabinet that we need to strip everything back and talk about our core messages.”
In recent weeks, Labour has faced scrutiny of policies seen to have been the brainchild of Miliband, including the plan for £28 billion a year in capital spending on green growth and a commitment to ban new oil and gas developments in the North Sea.
Worth reading in full.
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**WARNING** This 6min video will raise your blood pressure. Have any of these scumbags been taken to task yet? ”Never forgive, never forget.”
https://twitter.com/FunctionGain/status/1677779199946366977
Thanks for that. My hatred index needed a top up.
Lest we forget….
Seconded 👍
Thanks Mogs – needed and appreciated.
Marvellous.
You pinched my words. 👍
This just comes across as the Sunday Times doing a party political broadcast for the Labour Party; to try and paint Max Headroom as a centrist and genuinely interested in the things that people care about.
It’s all smoke and mirrors. We know he’s a stooge for the WEF and will do as much as he can to implement their evil policies if he becomes PM.
And who could forget when he couldn’t even give a straight answer regarding if only women can have a cervix? Doing the usual politician waffling/evasive claptrap that they all do when a one-word answer will suffice. It’s ‘Max Cringe’ as far as I’m concerned.
”Asked whether it was transphobic to say that only women had a cervix, Sir Keir told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show: “It is something that shouldn’t be said. It’s not right.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-trans-rights-duffield-b1927169.html
It was ofcourse the squirming eco parasite Miliband that gave us the absurd Climate Change Act in 2008. Since then in 2019, a supposed conservative (Teresa May) gave us the Net Zero amendment that made cutting emissions from 80% of 1990 levels up to 100% the law. ———–So how can we all have a go at an eco cretin like Miliband when conservatives are doing the very same pretend to save the planet stuff? Net zero was waved through parliament with not a single question asked by anyone about cost/benefit (apart from I think one labour MP) There is no point in hammering the dumb Miliband for stuff that everyone ese in Westminster is also doing ————-They are all pretending to save the planet and forcing millions into fuel poverty, ripping out our fantastic gas central heating, getting rid of perfectly good petrol and diesel cars, and covering the place in huge industrial turbines so they can all get a little gold star on their lapel from the UN and WEF ————–Disgusting people the whole shebang.
Absolutely spot on, Varmint
Well no doubt they’ll go quiet(er) on eco-lunacy until they can count on winning. Then they’ll ramp it up again because they feel they’re in the right.
There should be penalties for radically altering manifestos post-election. No matter which side wins, they always find ways to weasel out of so-called promises.
I think any party which gains power must implement 90% of their manifesto. Anything promised on a timescale should have +/- 5% leeway. If they do not deliver then an election is called. If, after 5 years, they have not implemented 90% of what they promised, they cannot stand in the following election.
Any MP who breaks the Law, any MP who lies is immediately removed from office and his party is not allowed to stand in the bye election.
They have taken us for mugs for far too long. They work for us. We pay them. They should do what we tell them.
Yes, Groundhog, but there should be even bigger, nastier “penalties” for any politician who adopts and promotes policies that are irrational, based on absurd exaggerations or barefaced lies and who hasn’t INSISTED on a reasonable cost / benefit analysis BEFORE the policies are rolled out across the long suffering Nation.
Must be the third or fourth time I read the headline today and it is such a naive headline. It is a clash between what Starmer is willing to lie about to get power and what Labour really intend to do. Anyone noticed there is no cement, sand or even water behind Starmers sound bites?
The Sheeple are going to elect him without even having a clue he intends to ruin their lives. Who was the chief architect behind Corbyn in two elections? Who is married to a Jew and stood by whilst Labour forced out all but 2 Jewish MP’s? Who commissioned Gordon Brown to write the book on how the Labour party intends to remove democracy?
This is just Janus signalling to the “two tribes” the Labour Party needs to vote for it in order to win a majority:
Nothing more; nothing less.
All establishment parties are now beyond the Pale – rotten to the core.