SHOULD we really believe Keir Starmer hates tree huggers?
That is what the Labour leader is reported to have said to his Shadow Climate Change and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband in response to a presentation Miliband made to the Shadow Cabinet.
Starmer, we are led to believe, put down his colleague by saying that jobs and economy, not green policies, would be the priority for his government.
Sorry, but it all seems a bit too neat to me, a bit too much like the product of spin doctors.
Labour’s strategists have realised the party’s green policies could make it extremely unpopular with many voters, who fear being lumbered with a large bill for net zero.
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Starmer wants those voters to think he is on their side, and that they will have nothing to lose by voting Labour.
But if Starmer really thought Labour’s green policies were over the top, surely he would be doing something to change those policies, not just feeding us an anecdote to make us think he is disavowing much of what Ed Miliband stands for.
What has Starmer actually done to water down green policies?
The acid test is with the expansion of London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s Ultra Low Emission Zone to cover the whole of the capital, due to take effect next month.
The policy has been attacked by many people across the political spectrum, including Labour MPs. Not least because of its highly regressive nature.
It will mean a daily charge of £12.50 for the owners of 15-year-old petrol cars, backed up with fines for non-payment — while imposing no charge at all on wealthy individuals who turn up every summer to rev up their supercars around the streets of Kensington.
Everyone wants clean air, but London also needs nurses, carers, tradespeople and shift workers of all kinds, not all of whom can use public transport.
Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy recently showed what little idea he has of how the real world works by suggesting plumbers could avoid the charge by taking the tube to work.
Has he ever looked inside a plumber’s van and seen how much kit it takes to fix a shower or fit a new bathroom?
As Labour leader, Starmer presumably has some influence over Khan.
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He could pick up the phone to City Hall and tell the mayor, “Look, ULEZ is threatening the livelihoods of thousands of working people in London, and in danger of losing us seats in the capital. Can you just hold back on it?”
But that is evidently more than Starmer is prepared to do.
On the contrary, when asked about ULEZ expansion by several angry callers to Nick Ferrari’s show on LBC, all Starmer could bring himself to say is that Khan has “no choice” but to extend ULEZ.
Really?
Who are the dark forces apparently holding a gun to the mayor’s head and forcing him to go ahead with his ill-thought-out policy?
Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves has slightly watered down her promise of spending £28billion a year on green initiatives in the first year of a Labour government.
She now says she wants to reach this figure by the end of the next Parliament.
But Labour still has a policy of closing every last coal and gas-fired power station by 2030 — without being able to tell us what we will do for power when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow.
Never mind that it will mean households either facing blackouts or paying through the nose for vast battery installations or other forms of energy storage — Starmer seems determined to press ahead.
He tells us that he “can’t wait” for Just Stop Oil to end their antics.
But has he returned the £1.5million donated to the Labour Party by green energy tycoon Dale Vince, who has also boasted of handing out money to Just Stop Oil? Has he heck.
It was Ed Miliband who, 15 years ago, gave us the Climate Change Act (although it was Theresa May, in her last days as PM, who changed the target from cutting carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 to eliminating them altogether).
Ever since, Labour — and Britain — has been painting itself into a corner with a legally binding target which it has no idea how to achieve, nor what it will cost if it can be achieved.
I am sure Miliband genuinely believed he was going to inspire the rest of the world to follow suit.
Yet the world’s biggest emitters, China and the US, have made it clear they are not going to tie themselves down with legally binding targets.
On the contrary, they are hoping to poach our jobs as UK industries, from oil to steelmaking, are forced abroad.
If Starmer is not prepared to revisit Miliband’s foolish promise and make it clear UK industry will not be sacrificed over an arbitrary target, then his reported comments about hating tree huggers won’t mean a thing.
Like David Cameron’s reported remarks about removing “green crap” from energy bills, it is just window dressing to make us think he has heard voices critical of his policies, when in reality he has little intention of taking any notice.