When Starmer first stated his intentions to campaign for a green economy, overstating his exhausting message of ‘change’, I was naturally distrustful. His track record of broken promises and U-turns is concerning, to say the least.
So, it came as no surprise when Starmer’s environmental promises began to drop off his agenda like flies.
First, he scrapped plans to nationalise the Big Six energy companies. Next, Labour abandoned its promise of a £28 billion green investment fund, which was deemed economically irresponsible.
In recent weeks, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has revealed plans to help mitigate Britain’s carbon emissions, whilst boosting economic growth.
The National Wealth Fund (NWF) is a £7bn plan for ‘strategic investment’ into green industries, supposedly aimed at averting the climate crisis and ‘kickstarting’ Britain’s economy.
In reality, it is an attempt to greenwash Labour’s capitalist agenda, throwing billions at big business in the vain quest for growth.
Growth?
Labour promises that this policy will see the creation of new green steel and hydrogen sectors, gigafactories, and a process of decarbonisation within industry.
Further, Starmer’s government promises to work with local mayors to help invest in constituency-specific issues, to “catalyse growth in all corners of the country” and generate a return for taxpayers.
This is all merely window dressing for Labour’s big-business agenda, however. The NWF is woefully inadequate to achieve any of the aims that it aims to achieve.
Britain has been at the bottom of the G7 for investment for the past 30 years. And the £7bn offered by the NWF is a drop in the bucket compared to the £370bn of subsidies that the USA has invested into its own industries.
This hope that ‘strategic investment’ will be able to kickstart Britain’s economy is a pipe dream. Under capitalism, investment only occurs if it will return a profit.
After decades of long-term decline, Britain’s economic trend is one of deindustrialisation and decay. It simply cannot compete with the likes of the USA or China.
The recent farce of HS2 is an indication of what ‘strategic investment’ looks like in Britain. You shower capitalists with money, and they run off with it!
Expropriate the monopolies!
Labour has yet to divulge whether these new industries will be privately or publicly owned. The clue to this answer can be found in who is already helping and backing the NWF – namely big companies like NatWest and Aviva.
Secondly, the notion of ‘local investment’ will fall short. The capitalists will allow the voices of local communities and businesses to be involved, but only if their suggestions fall in line with the interests of the big bosses, bankers, and billionaires.
Starmer’s promise to devolve more power to mayors, in reality, is essentially giving them the choice of which way they want to carry out austerity.
The notion that the very same capitalists who have grown rich from exploiting the workers and destroying the planet will be the ones to save us from economic decline and the climate crisis is comical.
Capitalism’s inherent drive for profits is destroying the planet. The way to fight the climate crisis is therefore not to throw billions at the bosses and billionaires, but to expropriate them and put them under workers’ control.
Only then can the economy be geared to producing and investing in what is actually needed. And only then could the climate catastrophe be actively combatted.
