Australian conservatives’ dismissal of the climate crisis was a huge error. Keir Starmer should make the most of this moment, says political strategist John McTernan
Whenever the Tories do something profoundly amoral or un-British – such as telling refugees to “fuck off”, as their vice-chair, Lee Anderson, recently did – Labour seems scared of going on the attack.
Despite Rishi Sunak’s earnest technocratic endeavours to focus on moving the needle on his five carefully chosen pledges, he is personally as unpopular as Liz Truss was as prime minister.
This is why Labour’s focus on “getting rid of the barnacles”, the Australian strategist Lynton Crosby’s term for ditching unpopular policies and positions, is becoming a drag on it.
The climate crisis is proximate and pressing and it is an appropriately big mission for the strategic, interventionist state Starmer and Rachel Reeves are modelling on Bidenomics.
The £28bn green prosperity fund is also Labour’s biggest investment bet, which is best understood as Ed Miliband explains it, as a 21st-century industrial strategy that cuts prices for cars, heating and energy and delivers jobs.
Scott Morrison, then the Liberal prime minister of Australia, declared a war on woke and created a clear dividing line between his government and the Australian Labor party (ALP) on fossil fuels, climate crisis and coalmining.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Whenever the Tories do something profoundly amoral or un-British – such as telling refugees to “fuck off”, as their vice-chair, Lee Anderson, recently did – Labour seems scared of going on the attack.
Despite Rishi Sunak’s earnest technocratic endeavours to focus on moving the needle on his five carefully chosen pledges, he is personally as unpopular as Liz Truss was as prime minister.
This is why Labour’s focus on “getting rid of the barnacles”, the Australian strategist Lynton Crosby’s term for ditching unpopular policies and positions, is becoming a drag on it.
The climate crisis is proximate and pressing and it is an appropriately big mission for the strategic, interventionist state Starmer and Rachel Reeves are modelling on Bidenomics.
The £28bn green prosperity fund is also Labour’s biggest investment bet, which is best understood as Ed Miliband explains it, as a 21st-century industrial strategy that cuts prices for cars, heating and energy and delivers jobs.
Scott Morrison, then the Liberal prime minister of Australia, declared a war on woke and created a clear dividing line between his government and the Australian Labor party (ALP) on fossil fuels, climate crisis and coalmining.
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