Keir Starmer has said Labour’s policy pledge to spend £28bn a year on green investment is “desperately needed,” as he re-opened an issue that has become a source of tension in the party.
The Labour leader said in an interview with Times Radio that he had been “unwavering” in relation to the party’s green energy plans and denied he was “scaling back” policies as this year’s general election looms.
Zoë Billingham, the director of the IPPR North thinktank, said on X after Starmer’s comments emerged: “It’s reassuring that @UKLabour have recommitted to their £28bn green investment pledge.
Opposition to watering down the £28bn commitment has come from across the spectrum, uniting Labour MPs from the party’s left with others in the centre, while business leaders have also thrown their weight behind it.
They included Jürgen Maier, the former UK head of Siemens, the German industrial giant and major investor, who said last week that the proposed investment of £28bn a year in the low-carbon economy was an “absolute minimum”.
But they added that the party would in effect cut its green ambitions by about two-thirds, given that the previously announced schemes are set to cost just under £10bn a year by the end of the parliament.
The original article contains 529 words, the summary contains 206 words. Saved 61%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
And now after the leaking of dropping the pledge has bombed… it’s back! 😁
I’m glad he’s rethinking it, it would have been desperately sad to have dropped it. But this is how politics work these days in the UK. Leak a policy, deny it, quietly gauge public opinion, revise policy. It’s the only way you can test the waters it seems.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Keir Starmer has said Labour’s policy pledge to spend £28bn a year on green investment is “desperately needed,” as he re-opened an issue that has become a source of tension in the party.
The Labour leader said in an interview with Times Radio that he had been “unwavering” in relation to the party’s green energy plans and denied he was “scaling back” policies as this year’s general election looms.
Zoë Billingham, the director of the IPPR North thinktank, said on X after Starmer’s comments emerged: “It’s reassuring that @UKLabour have recommitted to their £28bn green investment pledge.
Opposition to watering down the £28bn commitment has come from across the spectrum, uniting Labour MPs from the party’s left with others in the centre, while business leaders have also thrown their weight behind it.
They included Jürgen Maier, the former UK head of Siemens, the German industrial giant and major investor, who said last week that the proposed investment of £28bn a year in the low-carbon economy was an “absolute minimum”.
But they added that the party would in effect cut its green ambitions by about two-thirds, given that the previously announced schemes are set to cost just under £10bn a year by the end of the parliament.
The original article contains 529 words, the summary contains 206 words. Saved 61%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
And now after the leaking of dropping the pledge has bombed… it’s back! 😁
I’m glad he’s rethinking it, it would have been desperately sad to have dropped it. But this is how politics work these days in the UK. Leak a policy, deny it, quietly gauge public opinion, revise policy. It’s the only way you can test the waters it seems.