what we should do is go round painting everything blue red that will save us a lot of money
‘Tories reckless spending has adverse effects on Green initiatives’
Nice non-biased headline there BBC
> Labour has rowed back on its pledge to invest £28bn a year in green industries if it wins power, saying it needs to be “responsible” with the public finances.
> In 2021 Labour promised to invest £28bn a year until 2030 in green projects.
> Instead shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said she would now ramp up investment over time from a 2024 election win, reaching £28bn a year by 2027. She told the BBC that after the Tories “crashed the economy” it was important not to be “reckless” with spending. Ms Reeves added that after prices and interest rates increased “financial stability has to come first”.
> Factors including the war in Ukraine have seen inflation soar and the Bank of England has increased interest rates, making borrowing more expensive, in an attempt to tame rising prices.
> Former PM Liz Truss’s mini-budget last year, which included billions of pounds of unfunded tax cuts, also prompted turmoil in the financial markets and led to interest rates rising further.
> “The truth is I didn’t foresee what the Conservatives would do to our economy,” Ms Reeves told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “We will get to the investment that is needed. But we’ve got to do that in a responsible way.”
> However, pressed on how much investment there would be in the first year of a Labour government, Ms Reeves would not commit to a figure, arguing the economic backdrop would not be clear until closer to the time.
> Announcing the party’s Green Prosperity Plan in 2021, Ms Reeves said the £28bn would come from borrowing and would be spent on projects like offshore wind farms and developing batteries for electric vehicles.
> A senior Conservative source told the BBC that it wasn’t surprising Labour had watered down its pledge. “The pledge was made when interest rates were at rock bottom,” they said. “To borrow £28bn each and every year for a decade would fuel inflation, and force [the Bank of England] to raise interest rates even further. It’s the height of irresponsibility.”
> The source added there were “still issues with the pledge” and “a lot of deadweight cost where the private sector would’ve invested anyway”.
Absolute car crash of an interview. What’s worrying is that she has no understanding of what is driving the economy currently and the headwinds that have caused the current situation not just here but globally. With one year to go we still have a party in Opposition that’s coasting on sound bites and political rhetoric but appears to have little grasp on reality and more importantly what needs to be done to change things for the better and how to deliver these changes and how they are going to be paid for. Given the big pill leads the voting public are clearly not yet bothered to look behind the curtain to see if there’s anything there. We must truly live in a country of optimists. Not a bad thing I suppose
Sounds like they’ve just re-crunched the numbers and determined it’s not affordable any more. People will call it a “classic Starmer U-turn” but it seems believable to me. There will genuinely be things we could afford in 2021 that we can’t afford now. And it’s definitely fair to say they could never have accounted for Ukraine or what Truss was about to do.
Exactly as I predicted.
Expect more of this dithering and incrementalism under Labour, as more and more of their policies are watered down or quietly dropped altogether.
We seem to be heading for a U.S.-style political system, in which there isn’t much meaningful difference between the two main parties.
The irony in the accusation is astonishing
Embarrassing. We can’t delay any more. It doesn’t matter if the Times will be mean about him, Starmer needs to invest in green.
You can guarantee that anything good Labour say they’ll do they’ll actually backtrack on later. I just cannot vote for them.
If Labour is going to water down their pledge, then where is the water coming from, because if it’s from rivers in the UK they are generally so polluted and befouled that it’s sure to kill stone dead any pledge or policy it touches.
feeling really unenthusiastic about voting next election
Why dont they just spend as recklessly as the Tories have for the past 12 years, but focus the reckless spending on renewables, hospitals, schools etc. Because lets face it, they might only have 4 or 8 years in power, and they might as well leave it to the next Torie government to deal with, just as the Tories have to them.
Not surprised, did people read the Daily Mail’s front page two days ago? “Bonkers labour green policies would cost £1000s to British households” or something similar. Astounding how much power the tabloids have.
Can we just say that we’ve given up on green stuff….we are been gas lit by our ‘leaders’…I don’t see the building, development needed…so I assume we’ve basically given up
Reeves shouldn’t be anywhere near the chancellor’s office, she’s made it quite clear in the past that she’ll be another pro austerity pro big business anti worker chancellor (And thats without mentioning her nasty habit of making anti immigrant, anti benefits and anti trans comments as well as basically saying she was happy Johnson won 2019 because of her rabid hatred of Corbyn, which is especially fucked up when you look at how deprived her seat is), she’d rather water down pledges than actually commit to a serious rise in corporation tax, probably because she’s in their pockets.
I generally dislike most if not all of the shadow cabinet but Reeves is the embodiment of everything wrong with Starmer’s labour (only Streeting is worse). There isn’t anything remotely progressive about her and its funny seeing people defend her reactionary stances with BUT ITS THE TORY’S RUINING THE ECONOMY, labour did much more progressive things after 1945, you know after a world war. Reeves’s politics are awful and she’s just a generally awful person as well, i want the tory’s out but forgive me when i say, i’m not excited by the prospect of diet Jeremy Hunt becoming chancellor.
Delaying investment in the green economy will only result in increased costs in the future. Not buying that we can’t spend £28bn (1.3% of GDP) on investment because of the Tories. Another decade of low-growth austerity politics on the way?
Make no mistake, the idea that we can’t afford to go all out on a comprehensive approach to climate change (we can and must), is just a continuation of the decades long propaganda campaign designed to influence all levels of government and public opinion. Things like this show that Labour is caught looking both ways and don’t know which side to land on, and for that reason, I’m out.
A senior Conservative source told the BBC that it wasn’t surprising Labour had watered down its pledge.
“The pledge was made when interest rates were at rock bottom,” they said.
“To borrow £28bn each and every year for a decade would fuel inflation, and force [the Bank of England] to raise interest rates even further. It’s the height of irresponsibility.”
Completely ignoring the fact that interest rates shot up because of their short term PM
Impressive
Labour want a harsher Online Safety Bill
Labour are against net neutrality
Labour went on an illegal war under false pretences and peppered us with propaganda on the BBC “war on terror”
Obviously FUCK the tories even more. But labour shouldn’t be seen as our only option.
She and Wet cabbage Starmer will pick up where the Tories leave off. We now have main parity that will serve the establishment.
Tax the banks, corporations, oligarchs, hedge funders the money they actually owe- stop the dodgy contracts to chums worth billions , cut out the tax loopholes,- use that money to fund the NHS, schools, communities, invest in the country, the future etc…
BUT doing that would upset a few dozen billionaires, so the Tories and Vichy Labour will continue the same old same old, while millions use food banks/ heat or eat/ linger to death on hospital waiting lists/ have absolutely zero hope of homeownership and live in dread of a private healthcare system.
Vote Tory or Tory Labour, it really doesn’t matter now, THAT was the plan all along, the select few at the top always win.
This is the problem with Starmer u-turning so much. Even if they have good reason to do this, it will just be seen as more “classic Starmer, lol” and it’s another example for the Tories to use when they actually start to attack during election time.
How is this the top story on the BBC news site as I post this comment?
Well, we know how, but still…
State infrastrucutre spending results in significant return on investment (assuming no significant corruption). This decision is unlikey to be related to cost, but to apease donors and the right wing media.
I’m very critical of labour at this moment, partly as I can see they’re basically going to moonwalk past the tories to power at the next election by all likeliehood and partly because of their methodology- I know it’s working and they’re popular but the way they’re ONLY appealing to disenfranchised conservatives is infuriating- but this really does take the cake. It’s not just embarrassing that they’re walking back on something they’ve been speaking about since 2017 which I get because of our economic issues, but the fact that the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing- Reeves writes a paywalled article in the times selling her intent to work up to what the starting goal of Green investment was before, I get that even if I’m not happy- but Milliband tweeting about it seemingly unaware that the pledge has been watered down shows a complete failure to correspond at an upper level.
I hate the tories so much, I’ve been under them since uni and I’ve watched the, to quote Teresa May, “CoUntRy I LoVe” decline in terms of every area of infrastructure- but labour are just infuriating in so many ways at the moment.
Why should I vote for Labour when I can’t trust them to take something like climate change seriously? Like, this is technically what could end up killing me later on, given my age?
The effects of climate change, the world over, won’t develop a human consciousness and spare these sacred isles of Britain because it kept to economic orthodoxy, will they?
Or has Reeves developed telepathy and the ability to communicate with man-made disasters now?
Why can’t we just tax the fuck out of the rich?
Ultimately they are the one that have benefitted most from the earth’s demise…
I see they’re already getting their Tory style “it’s not our fault, it’s because of the previous government.” excuses in
Oh come on, at least get into government before winding back your already tepid promises labour.
What every the right wing press asked for, New Labour delivers, say what you want about the rat tories but they have a lot more backbone when it comes to doing things they believe in.
So along with no more gas and oil projects, is it back to candles with these fuckwits?
I cannot believe it. I am so shocked. How could this happen that Labour 2023 would go back on a pledge?
31 comments
what we should do is go round painting everything blue red that will save us a lot of money
‘Tories reckless spending has adverse effects on Green initiatives’
Nice non-biased headline there BBC
> Labour has rowed back on its pledge to invest £28bn a year in green industries if it wins power, saying it needs to be “responsible” with the public finances.
> In 2021 Labour promised to invest £28bn a year until 2030 in green projects.
> Instead shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said she would now ramp up investment over time from a 2024 election win, reaching £28bn a year by 2027. She told the BBC that after the Tories “crashed the economy” it was important not to be “reckless” with spending. Ms Reeves added that after prices and interest rates increased “financial stability has to come first”.
> Factors including the war in Ukraine have seen inflation soar and the Bank of England has increased interest rates, making borrowing more expensive, in an attempt to tame rising prices.
> Former PM Liz Truss’s mini-budget last year, which included billions of pounds of unfunded tax cuts, also prompted turmoil in the financial markets and led to interest rates rising further.
> “The truth is I didn’t foresee what the Conservatives would do to our economy,” Ms Reeves told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “We will get to the investment that is needed. But we’ve got to do that in a responsible way.”
> However, pressed on how much investment there would be in the first year of a Labour government, Ms Reeves would not commit to a figure, arguing the economic backdrop would not be clear until closer to the time.
> Announcing the party’s Green Prosperity Plan in 2021, Ms Reeves said the £28bn would come from borrowing and would be spent on projects like offshore wind farms and developing batteries for electric vehicles.
> A senior Conservative source told the BBC that it wasn’t surprising Labour had watered down its pledge. “The pledge was made when interest rates were at rock bottom,” they said. “To borrow £28bn each and every year for a decade would fuel inflation, and force [the Bank of England] to raise interest rates even further. It’s the height of irresponsibility.”
> The source added there were “still issues with the pledge” and “a lot of deadweight cost where the private sector would’ve invested anyway”.
Absolute car crash of an interview. What’s worrying is that she has no understanding of what is driving the economy currently and the headwinds that have caused the current situation not just here but globally. With one year to go we still have a party in Opposition that’s coasting on sound bites and political rhetoric but appears to have little grasp on reality and more importantly what needs to be done to change things for the better and how to deliver these changes and how they are going to be paid for. Given the big pill leads the voting public are clearly not yet bothered to look behind the curtain to see if there’s anything there. We must truly live in a country of optimists. Not a bad thing I suppose
Sounds like they’ve just re-crunched the numbers and determined it’s not affordable any more. People will call it a “classic Starmer U-turn” but it seems believable to me. There will genuinely be things we could afford in 2021 that we can’t afford now. And it’s definitely fair to say they could never have accounted for Ukraine or what Truss was about to do.
Exactly as I predicted.
Expect more of this dithering and incrementalism under Labour, as more and more of their policies are watered down or quietly dropped altogether.
We seem to be heading for a U.S.-style political system, in which there isn’t much meaningful difference between the two main parties.
The irony in the accusation is astonishing
Embarrassing. We can’t delay any more. It doesn’t matter if the Times will be mean about him, Starmer needs to invest in green.
You can guarantee that anything good Labour say they’ll do they’ll actually backtrack on later. I just cannot vote for them.
If Labour is going to water down their pledge, then where is the water coming from, because if it’s from rivers in the UK they are generally so polluted and befouled that it’s sure to kill stone dead any pledge or policy it touches.
feeling really unenthusiastic about voting next election
Why dont they just spend as recklessly as the Tories have for the past 12 years, but focus the reckless spending on renewables, hospitals, schools etc. Because lets face it, they might only have 4 or 8 years in power, and they might as well leave it to the next Torie government to deal with, just as the Tories have to them.
Not surprised, did people read the Daily Mail’s front page two days ago? “Bonkers labour green policies would cost £1000s to British households” or something similar. Astounding how much power the tabloids have.
Can we just say that we’ve given up on green stuff….we are been gas lit by our ‘leaders’…I don’t see the building, development needed…so I assume we’ve basically given up
Reeves shouldn’t be anywhere near the chancellor’s office, she’s made it quite clear in the past that she’ll be another pro austerity pro big business anti worker chancellor (And thats without mentioning her nasty habit of making anti immigrant, anti benefits and anti trans comments as well as basically saying she was happy Johnson won 2019 because of her rabid hatred of Corbyn, which is especially fucked up when you look at how deprived her seat is), she’d rather water down pledges than actually commit to a serious rise in corporation tax, probably because she’s in their pockets.
I generally dislike most if not all of the shadow cabinet but Reeves is the embodiment of everything wrong with Starmer’s labour (only Streeting is worse). There isn’t anything remotely progressive about her and its funny seeing people defend her reactionary stances with BUT ITS THE TORY’S RUINING THE ECONOMY, labour did much more progressive things after 1945, you know after a world war. Reeves’s politics are awful and she’s just a generally awful person as well, i want the tory’s out but forgive me when i say, i’m not excited by the prospect of diet Jeremy Hunt becoming chancellor.
Delaying investment in the green economy will only result in increased costs in the future. Not buying that we can’t spend £28bn (1.3% of GDP) on investment because of the Tories. Another decade of low-growth austerity politics on the way?
Make no mistake, the idea that we can’t afford to go all out on a comprehensive approach to climate change (we can and must), is just a continuation of the decades long propaganda campaign designed to influence all levels of government and public opinion. Things like this show that Labour is caught looking both ways and don’t know which side to land on, and for that reason, I’m out.
A senior Conservative source told the BBC that it wasn’t surprising Labour had watered down its pledge.
“The pledge was made when interest rates were at rock bottom,” they said.
“To borrow £28bn each and every year for a decade would fuel inflation, and force [the Bank of England] to raise interest rates even further. It’s the height of irresponsibility.”
Completely ignoring the fact that interest rates shot up because of their short term PM
Impressive
Labour want a harsher Online Safety Bill
Labour are against net neutrality
Labour went on an illegal war under false pretences and peppered us with propaganda on the BBC “war on terror”
Obviously FUCK the tories even more. But labour shouldn’t be seen as our only option.
She and Wet cabbage Starmer will pick up where the Tories leave off. We now have main parity that will serve the establishment.
Tax the banks, corporations, oligarchs, hedge funders the money they actually owe- stop the dodgy contracts to chums worth billions , cut out the tax loopholes,- use that money to fund the NHS, schools, communities, invest in the country, the future etc…
BUT doing that would upset a few dozen billionaires, so the Tories and Vichy Labour will continue the same old same old, while millions use food banks/ heat or eat/ linger to death on hospital waiting lists/ have absolutely zero hope of homeownership and live in dread of a private healthcare system.
Vote Tory or Tory Labour, it really doesn’t matter now, THAT was the plan all along, the select few at the top always win.
This is the problem with Starmer u-turning so much. Even if they have good reason to do this, it will just be seen as more “classic Starmer, lol” and it’s another example for the Tories to use when they actually start to attack during election time.
How is this the top story on the BBC news site as I post this comment?
Well, we know how, but still…
State infrastrucutre spending results in significant return on investment (assuming no significant corruption). This decision is unlikey to be related to cost, but to apease donors and the right wing media.
I’m very critical of labour at this moment, partly as I can see they’re basically going to moonwalk past the tories to power at the next election by all likeliehood and partly because of their methodology- I know it’s working and they’re popular but the way they’re ONLY appealing to disenfranchised conservatives is infuriating- but this really does take the cake. It’s not just embarrassing that they’re walking back on something they’ve been speaking about since 2017 which I get because of our economic issues, but the fact that the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing- Reeves writes a paywalled article in the times selling her intent to work up to what the starting goal of Green investment was before, I get that even if I’m not happy- but Milliband tweeting about it seemingly unaware that the pledge has been watered down shows a complete failure to correspond at an upper level.
I hate the tories so much, I’ve been under them since uni and I’ve watched the, to quote Teresa May, “CoUntRy I LoVe” decline in terms of every area of infrastructure- but labour are just infuriating in so many ways at the moment.
Why should I vote for Labour when I can’t trust them to take something like climate change seriously? Like, this is technically what could end up killing me later on, given my age?
The effects of climate change, the world over, won’t develop a human consciousness and spare these sacred isles of Britain because it kept to economic orthodoxy, will they?
Or has Reeves developed telepathy and the ability to communicate with man-made disasters now?
Why can’t we just tax the fuck out of the rich?
Ultimately they are the one that have benefitted most from the earth’s demise…
I see they’re already getting their Tory style “it’s not our fault, it’s because of the previous government.” excuses in
Oh come on, at least get into government before winding back your already tepid promises labour.
What every the right wing press asked for, New Labour delivers, say what you want about the rat tories but they have a lot more backbone when it comes to doing things they believe in.
So along with no more gas and oil projects, is it back to candles with these fuckwits?
I cannot believe it. I am so shocked. How could this happen that Labour 2023 would go back on a pledge?