A week is a long time for politics. So you’ll be forgiven for forgetting Wednesday was Labour’s annual party conference. Since then, the Bank of England has begun buying bonds to prop up the British economy, the pound dropped to a low of $1.05, interest rates seem destined to rise further and faster, pension funds are teetering on the edge and the IMF is on the government’s case. It is no secret that Starmer’s “Labour moment” was overshadowed by a perfect economic storm.
A return to the optimistic and driven atmosphere of the Labour conference could provide some relief amid the gloomy predictions of mortgage deals being stopped. Even before the worst of the “mini-budget” fallout, Starmer left Liverpool on Wednesday with his electoral appeal and authority hugely enhanced.
The Labour leader’s strategy to date is well-known. It was to create a small target and offer few commitments. This strategy is well-known. This afforded Starmer a soft poll lead—the most he could expect without a robust agenda for government. Starmer, however, signalled a change of tack in Liverpool. Starmer will try to take advantage of his poll advantage as Truss is in multiple crises.
The party’s recent key policy pledge, ‘Great British Energy’, is a case in point.
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Starmer made the announcement at Tuesday’s Labour conference that he would create a new public-owned clean energy generation firm within his first year as prime Minister. Essentially a state-owned start-up, GB Energy would be funded through the £8bn national wealth fund announced earlier in the week by Rachel Reeves while operating completely independently. The economic reasoning behind the plan is that a state-backed company would be able to make riskier investments in clean energy solutions such as wind, tidal, solar or nuclear, in turn giving the public purse a stake in Britain’s green transition.
According to Starmer, the plan would help deliver clean power by 2030, save British households £93bn for the rest of the 2020s and create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
What is instantly noteworthy about ‘GB Energy’ is its potentially very wide political appeal. For one, the plan has a natural affinity with green, pro-environmentalist politics, underlining the party’s commitment to climate change solutions. Amounting to a full embrace of the ‘green growth’ agenda, Starmer told the conference floor: the “road to net zero is no longer one of stern, austere self-denial – it’s at the heart of modern, 21st-century aspiration”. Net zero does not need to be a zero sum game. Economic growth can be combined with climate protection.
This pitch is likely to come across as particularly persuasive at a time when the government appears to be neither prioritising climate protection nor ensuring Britain’s long-term financial stability. Sterling was being pushed to the floor as the government announced an end of the fracking moratorium. Hardly the best of both.
GB Energy also has a distinct patriotic edge – something the Labour party desperately needs to win back former red wall seats. Starmer continued in his speech: “[GB Energy will be] a new company that takes advantage of opportunities in clean British power because it’s right for jobs, right for growth, right for energy independence from tyrants like Putin”.
This is a really bad communication strategy.
With this, Starmer effectively steals the ‘pro-sovereigntist’ discourse which dominated the Brexit debate and re-parcels it as an economic, left-wing case for state control: public ownership with a patriotic twist.
Starmer went on: “The largest onshore wind farm in Wales: who owns it? Sweden. Swansea’s energy bills are used to pay for schools in Stockholm and hospitals in Stockholm. Our nuclear industry is owned by the Chinese Communist Party. And five million people in Britain pay their bills to an energy company owned by France”. This thread of patriotism ought to be alarming for the Tories.
GB Energy seems able to cover all bases at a time where the government is exposed on green and economic issues as well as national image. Starmer and his staff are pleased with the results.
Common Wealth conducted a poll and found that 72% of those who voted Conservative in 2019 favored a state-owned energy company to generate sustainable power.
Notwithstanding Labour’s astonishing 22-point poll lead, it remains risky for Labour to rely, as they have done so far, on the politics of default. Starmer must develop an ideology-coherent vision if he hopes to be prime minister in 2024.
The Labour Party has already come a long way since last year’s conference in Brighton, where left-wing dissent was so threatening that Starmer needed pre-prepared ripostes for Corbynite hecklers. Although the left is still strong within the party, policies like GB Energy or the new commitment to public ownership for the railways will at least project a sense of unity. Even rail union leader Mick Lynch hinted at the chance of reconciliation with the Labour leadership saying “we cannot have division. We’ve only got the one labour movement”.
Three weeks ago Liz Truss may have expected a coronation. But Liz Truss is now heading to Birmingham for the Conservative Party conference. She will be facing the most difficult backdrop in decades for any sitting prime minister. As she does so, policy energy is with KeirStarmer and the Labour Party.
