When Gordon Brown launched the ‘Building Britain’s future’ document this week – a document that is being described as his vision for the country and the pre-manifesto manifesto, one important chapter was missing from the document – the traditionally obligatory chapter on the environment. But instead of this being a cause for concern for environmentalists in the Labour party, this should be a cause for celebration. Because the proposals to tackle climate change and help us move to a low carbon economy are there alright. And they’ve finally been allowed at the grown-ups’ table.
If you want to find out how Labour’s going to insulate every loft and cavity wall by 2015, don’t bother looking for a section on energy efficiency or reducing our carbon emissions. It’s in the section called ‘A more affordable housing market for the future’. Proposals for rail electrification and other plans to move people from road to rail, aren’t under ‘transport’ but in the chapter on our economic future, along with commitments to increasing the use of renewable energy and to develop carbon capture and storage technologies.
This maturing of Labour’s vision for the environment comes at a surprising time. In the face of the credit crunch, it could have been easy to abandon concerns about the environment in favour of more pressing matters around the economy. But in ‘Building Britain’s Future’ the government recognises that these are two faces of the same coin and that tackling climate change can help deliver Labour’s core programme: moving to a low carbon economy, insulating our homes and building more sustainable forms of transport will create jobs, make Britain more competitive and improve the quality of people’s lives. With words like ‘vibrant’ being used to describe green manufacturing and proposals such as ‘the great British refurb’, there’s even a sense of excitement and aspiration about these challenges – qualities that have been sadly lacking from most environmental policies until now.
Of course there’s more to do and we shouldn’t underestimate the difficulties of implementing these policies. The proposals might renew Labour’s commitment to ecotowns, but a huge amount of momentum and enthusiasm has been lost in the last year. And key delivery arm for many of these policies – local government – is now largely run by Conservatives. So how will we build more sustainable council homes when flagship Tory authorities are trying to sell off council estates wholesale? And how will we meet our renewables targets when conservative councillors are making it almost impossible to gain planning permission for onshore wind farms? We now need to shine the spotlight on those who are blocking our path to a more sustainable future.
‘Building Britain’s Future’ shows that Labour is at last finding its own voice on the environment. A voice that talks about promoting opportunity and creating jobs rather than restricting and protecting; on increasing fairness and improving people’s life chances than simply safeguarding what we have already; on empowering rather than worrying. It’s important that we now build the confidence to use that voice, to develop more and more ambitious progressive environmental policies. We need to explain why these policies won’t always comply with the vision owned by green groups and other political parties.
Finally, we should have the confidence to use our voice on the environment alongside our wider plans for public service reform and democratic renewal, to demonstrate fresh thinking and strong leadership and to give a further weight to the sense of change and renewal we need to engender.