A Shocking Paucity of Ambition

Former Ambassador, Human Rights Activist

An old man in a comic opera uniform was dragged by carthorses in a gilded carriage through the streets of London, then bedecked in diamonds and more gold, all to very little purpose.

That we truly have a uniparty could not be better proven than by a new captain taking over the ship of state, and not moving the tiller one inch, instead merely making minute adjustments to the trim of the sails.

Take the centrepiece Great British Energy company, to be sited in Scotland as a butcher’s apron branded beacon of unionism. GBE will invest in renewable energy with a bugdget of £8.3 billion over 5 years.

£1.6 billion a year. That sounds impressive until you realise that the turnover of the renewable energy sector is already £80 billion a year. And that the UK has to invest £77 billion a year in renewables, insulation and the grid to meet its carbon reduction obligations – of which it is estimated that £26 billion a year needs to come from the public sector.

£77 billion a year. Of which on these plans 2% is to come from the public sector.

This is what remains of Labour’s Green New Deal plans after being gutted by Starmer.

The other big headline announcement is that Thatcherite staple of deregulation. In particular planning controls on housebuilding are to be relaxed in order to stimulate housebuilding by the private sector.

By reinstating compulsory housing development plans for councils to hit housing targets, New Labour boldly rolls the regulatory regime back to… err back to…[checks notes again]… 2023.

Yes, this great measure reinstates the situation in place under Tory governments until last year, when Michael Gove gave more powers to local councils in England and Wales to protect green belts.

The timidity on public investment in both energy and housing is ludicrous. Nothing is being done to build more public housing. Nothing is being done to address the fundamental problem of the housing market, which is rentier landlordism.

What keeps house prices so high is competition to buy between commercial landlords. Mortgage payments are lower than rent payments, but ordinary people lack the capital formation or income as percentage of property price to secure mortgages at the inflated house prices.

So commercial landlords who have the capital for deposit and security own an ever escalating percentage of domestic property.

Landlords can rent at exorbitant prices to renters who have no choice, and landlords can abuse them by neglecting property maintenance.

Public sector homebuilding, rent controls and restrictions on lending for landlordism are the necessary measures that any government which was not a continuity conservative government would take. Starmer has no interest whatsoever in actually pursuing social justice.

The Labour Party has shackled itself to austerity. Rachel Reeves is to boost the power of the Office for Budget Responsibility, which is the institutional enforcement of Thatcherite economics and the total rejection, not just of modern monetary theory, but even of Keynesian demand management.

This is astonishing for what pretends to be a social democratic government.

Not everything is appalling. Ed Milliband’s sipport for onshore wind and for autonomous consumer energy production is to be welcomed. The improvement of workers rights is also welcome, though it should include a real move to a proper living wage and immediate abolition of age wage bands.

Children are to be sacrificed to maintain Kid Starver’s macho Thatcherite credentials, with the maintenance of the two child benefit cap having been elevated to a symbol of “toughness”.

Only 34% of those who voted, voted for this government. Why anybody would bother to do so I have no idea. We still have a conservative and unionist government.

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