Unveiling the Dangerous Game Plan: Labor vs. Green Policies – Who Will Prevail?

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Good morning. Rishi Sunak is setting the stage for watering down some of his green policies, saying that achieving the UK’s net zero carbon emissions target must be done in a “proportionate and pragmatic” way. Strategic masterstroke or political mistake? Some reflections on this issue in today’s note.

Less than net zero

Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak have something in common: the things they have said and done since last week’s by-election are not That different from what they would have said or done things were different in Uxbridge and South Ruislip.

Had Labor won Uxbridge, Starmer would have arrived at the party’s national policy forum to outline some Labor manifesto guidelines with the message ‘we’re on the right track, don’t let talk of tax increases ruin it’. Instead, he told members “don’t let what happened with us in Uxbridge happen to us nationally”. Not so much for clever strategy or the result in favor of him: only for what was the only available message from him.

Similarly, if Sunak had lost all three by-elections, he would have faced a panicked party. (I never believe the talk that defeat is “priced”. In my experience, MPs “price” indicating that they will lose their seats in the same way the rest of us “price” that we will one day die: we still have a tendency to freak out when that happens.) He would have faced pressure to change his approach.

As with Starmer, however, Sunak doesn’t face a lot of pressure to do things she doesn’t want to do. The prime minister is not particularly attached to the government’s net zero targets and won’t cry over his Coke for watering them down. That’s one of the reasons he’s signaling his willingness to do it soften the government’s green policies.

But here, too, both leaders are taking risks. As regular readers of the newsletter will know, I think Labour’s tax vulnerabilities are real and the Labor leadership is right to worry about them. But the risk of trying to neutralize a series of problems is that it comes at the price of making it appear that Starmer would change nothing.

AS our podcast listeners will knowI do not think either party needs to draw a special lesson from the Uxbridge by-election. It’s an old, old story: Voters don’t like to shoulder costs, which is one reason most governments make their painful tax increases (or spending cuts) at the start of a parliament. I also think it would be a particular mistake for conservatives to see what happened as a signal to move away from green policies.

Green policies are like almost everything in British politics: voters like the idea of ​​the product, but often balk at the price. With many of the prices in question seem quite a long way off, even ones coming soon enough, such as the 2030 target to ban new petrol and diesel cars, or the 2035 target for all new zero tailpipe emissions cars and vans, I don’t think the Conservatives have much to gain from watering them down.

Furthermore, all these policies have expiration dates not only after the end of this parliament but also the next one. So they are exactly what Labor needs, given the party’s reluctance to talk about big spending in the next parliament – these are policies by which Labor can differentiate itself from the Conservatives, without having to have an awkward conversation about the next round of budgets.

The main reason not to water down the UK’s green policies is the need to decarbonise. But another reason, if you’re Rishi Sunak, is that he might just be handing Keir Starmer a weapon that he desperately needs.

Now try this

This week I mainly listened to Ludwig Göransson’s wonderful score Oppenheimer while writing my column. Göransson gave a fascinating interview about the soundtrack and his creative process to Curzon Cinemas’ in-house magazine, which you can read here.

Today’s best stories

• Politicians ‘fear’ of difficult decisions | The former chairman of the UK climate advisory body has been labeled a leadership “failure” and “incredibly dangerous” the Westminster policy he said has discouraged the government from doing more to tackle climate change.

• The radiographers leave | Approximately 5,000 radiology technicians will be out for 48 hours from 8am today, in the first solo break in the profession. It comes as new data showed some 68,000 hospital appointments and procedures were suspended due to last week’s strike by senior doctors.

• ‘Huge amount of work’ | Some new post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland, due to come into effect within weeks, will prove that “more burdensome” than the current provisionswarned a House of Lords committee, urging London to “press ahead” with negotiating outstanding details.

• Employment growth is set to decline, the report said | The punitive approach and the poor quality of the UK’s job support system are curb a much-needed recovery in the workforce to boost the economy and bring down inflation, according to a report released today.

  – The great reading of the FT today examines labor productivity in the UKasking why British workers are making less per hour worked than their counterparts in other advanced economies such as the US, Germany and France.