After weeks of dither, delay, u-turns, confusion and flip-flopping, Sir Keir Starmer is set to finally kill of his flagship policy to spend £28 billion a year on green investment. The news emerged last night, sparking confusion after Sir Keir said on Tuesday that the huge sum is “desperately needed” for his party’s clean power mission, and boasted he had been “unwavering” in backing the long-stated policy.
The Labour leader is set to speak later today to confirm a long-speculated flip-flop, a move the Guardian has described as Sir Keir’s “biggest policy U-turn since becoming party leader”.
The policy has caused nothing but headaches for the Labour Party since Rachel Reeves first announced it at their 2021 party conference.
This morning the Conservative Party has shared a whopping 311-tweet thread, showing off all the times Labour MPs backed the policy.
However the Tories’ obvious attempts to use the huge spending spree as proof Labour cannot be trusted with the economy or tax sparked a fevered attempt by Sir Keir and his Shadow Chancellor to jettison the albatross around their neck.
News of today’s pending announcement has already sparked fury at the Labour leadership, with former Tony Blair advisor John McTernan telling Newsnight last night that the U-turn is “probably the most stupid decision the Labour Party’s made”.
He asked: “If you don’t have a great cause – you want to change from this government, sure, but change to what? What’s the change Labour now offers? It’s very disappointing.”
The Spectator’s Andrew Neil speculated whether the u-turn could spark a further crisis with the resignation of Ed Miliband, who has fought with Rachel Reeves in a failed attempt to keep the policy front and centre of his party’s election offering.
Mr Neil posted on X, formerly Twitter: “I reckon this is about the 5th time it’s dropped this policy in the last 12 months.
“Perhaps this is the definitive ditching, in which case I expect we’ll wake up to Ed Miliband’s resignation from the shadow cabinet tomorrow. Or not.”
The timing of the u-turn is additionally awkward, as this morning the New Statesman has published an interview with northern mayors Andy Burnham and Steve Rotherham, both of whom call on Sir Keir not to change his mind.
Andy Burnham said Labour must “stick to the pledge around green transition”, calling it: “The best possibility that we have, sitting here today, of a fund to reindustrialise the north of England in a good way… [It’s about] prosperity, and future-facing industry in all parts of the UK, and Labour’s commitment to that fund is really important in that regard.”
Mr Rotherham suggested a failure to stick to the policy would signal “a lack of ambition” by a Labour government.
He asked: “Why wouldn’t you invest in something like that?”
A new poll out this morning shows the public is unimpressed with Labour’s economic policies.
Just one in five back Labour’s support for the Tories’ abolition of the bankers’ bonus cap.
Just 27 percent say they support the policy of keeping the current rate of corporation tax.
Chris Hopkins, Political Research Director at Savanta, said Labour risks “a significant missed opportunity if they fail to the make case to the public for a new way of running Britain’s economy”.
