Why Brown must be Green
emmaburnell Tue Oct 16, 2007 at 04:36:19 PM GMT 
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Much has been talked about since the News of the World’s polling of the Cameron effect in Labour’s marginal seats. However, there is another group of voters out there that Gordon Brown needs to woo, and which could make all the difference.
The next general election – whenever it comes – will be the defining election for green politics and policy for decades to come. This is why it is essential that Gordon Brown wins on a green manifesto. To do so, he will need to win voters who have both voted Green in the past, and the increasing numbers of floating voters who list climate change and other green issues higher and higher on their list of priorities. To ignore this necessity would be both catastrophic for Labour electorally, and catastrophic in terms of the UK’s climate change policies.
The last general election demonstrated a clear group of voters who were dissatisfied with aspects of Labour’s policies who had turned to third or fringe parties to express that dissatisfaction. While there is no denying that the vast majority of those who switched from Labour to smaller parties were “anti war Labour” voters, there should be no assumption that these voters will return to the Labour fold after a change of leadership, without a strong incentive to do so.
While media attention has tended to focus on the more shocking elements of this abandonment of Labour – areas where the BNP or UKIP had an unfortunate strong standing in a traditional Labour area - this is denying or downplaying the significance of the protest votes that went to the Greens or the Liberal Democrats. In fact if you look at the Green vote in a number of the so called “super marginals” it has the ability to make a significant difference to the outcome. In which case people must be both persuaded that by voting green you instead get blue, and that voting red means voting red/green.
As many of those who vote in protest chose to vote for either the Green Party or the party which consistently (though in our opinion wrongly) polls as “best on the environment”, Labour could woo these voters back by putting front and centre the Green agenda it has been working on quietly for years, and bolding making this agenda the heart of it’s election campaign.
Labour has a good record on the environment. From signing and promoting the Kyoto Agreement (and being one of the few governments internationally to be set to meet their Kyoto targets) to the Climate Change bill, Labour has seen the necessity of action to stem the tide of climate change, and defend ourselves against it’s worst effects.
However, too often such measures have not been seen as part of a consistent strategy, or as pertaining to an overarching ethos, but as piecemeal measures, reacting to events and headlines. While this is an unfair assessment of the Government’s attitude to the environment, it is a damning indictment of their ability to speak to this agenda. Too often – as with other more traditional Labour measures - good has been done by stealth, allowing others to accuse us of either incoherence or inaction.
This is a perfect moment to reclaim this agenda in a bold way, and show that the environment is not only the natural territory of the Labour Party, but that only the Labour Party is able to deal with the challenges of climate change in such a way that is true to our egalitarian principles.
In his foreword to SERA's recent pamphlet “Red Green Socialism”, Rt Hon David Miliband wrote “The renewal of Labour needs the challenge, energy and idealism of the environmental movement”. The environment is an issue of strong import both to Labour traditionalists, and to those Labour must reach to renew itself in office. A campaign with both the dynamism of those already facing up to the challenges of climate change, and the strength that social justice issues brings out in the Labour movement and wider progressive world could bring together the many diverse parts of the Labour movement to work together towards one goal. This could be a uniting movement, healing some of the divisions of the past, but only if done well, done boldly and done right (for example, nuclear power would not be an acceptable solution to most of either the traditional Labour movement or the environmentalists, and should be seen as an unnecessary diversion from the real and long term solutions of energy efficiency and renewable energy sources).
Under a new leader, and with a new feeling of renewal, Labour are steering several key pieces of legislation through Parliament. The Climate Change Bill is vital, and strengthening this in committee stage to make it more realistic both about the challenges of climate change and the measures needed to protect our country and planet from it’s worst effects, will be central to shaping politics of the next decade. This is our last best chance to make this change in a gradual and organised fashion. If we fail to start to make the difficult changes and choices now, we may well be forced to take far more drastic and draconian measures later on. The choice is clear. Make sensible and fair changes now, under a Labour government, or risk a Conservative government pricing the poor out of the best the 21<sup>st</sup> century could have to offer.
If we put social justice at the heart of climate change policies now, maintaining the strength of the measures needed but ensuring the effects are felt in a fair way across society, Labour can bring the public with them on making the painful choices. If we continue to put off difficult decisions, we risk leaving them to those we would least trust to make them.
There is no doubt that whoever wins the next election will be forced to take drastic action on climate change or face increasingly severe consequences. David Cameron has been positioning his Tories to paint them as Green as possible. But Labour must continue to show up this rhetoric for what it really is. Cameron does not believe in the state as a force for good, but it is only through the state that real and decisive changes can be made. Cameron and his Tories want to get Britain out of the EU, but it is only though progressive international bodies like the EU, those with the teeth and the will to act decisively on climate change, that international leadership can be forged and action taken.
Labour accepts that climate change is the biggest market failure that the world has ever seen. We understand that the market must be shaped, by the state and other actors, to correct this imbalance. If you cannot accept the market as the cause of the problem, you cannot adequately see the changes that will be necessary to correct it. If you believe we will solve climate change by market mechanisms alone, you are tacitly accepting that in that solution will be winner and losers. You are accepting that the market must be allowed to run roughshod over those who cannot afford to keep up with it, and who cannot afford even to run to stand still. An unregulated market adjusted to the true cost of carbon will still have the problems inherent in an unregulated market, and so will have no safety net for those left behind by the reality of the costs of daily life.
These costs must be taken on by the state and other non-market actors, to ensure they are absorbed by all in society in the fairest way possible. Taxes must reflect not just our behaviours, but the impact those behaviours have on others, and our ability to behave in other, better ways. Government must be a driver of good behaviour not only through punitive measures on the bad, but also incentives and encouragement for the good. This can only be done through an active, and proactive state.
Mass insulation projects, grants for other energy efficiency measures, microgeneration schemes and community based energy projects are just a few ways that the Government could show the state acting in a radical and popular way to ensure a low carbon future for Britain. None of these are ideas David Cameron, in his current incarnation, could openly speak out against, and so the consensus becomes our consensus. The action, our action and the solution our fair and just solution.
The next election is where the decisions about how the UK responds to the climate change crisis will be made. Labour has done a great deal over the last decade to help those in the worst poverty. This work could be wiped out if we are unable either to make our case effectively on our vision for the future, or to enact it.
Why Brown must be Green | 7 comments (7 topical)
Why Brown must be Green | 7 comments (7 topical)
