Ann Pettifor says Labour needs to escape the ideology of financialisation if it is to successfully tackle climate breakdown and build a greener just economy
There’s much talk of the Labour government lacking vision with no agenda for the transformation or renaissance of British society, the economy and ecosystem. After years of austerity, privatisation, neglect and the degradation of this island’s land and water, there’s a yearning for a more uplifting politics and economics. In the absence of such a hopeful vision, Starmer would do well to heed that great rural sage and founder of the real farming movement, Colin Tudge. In “The Great Rethink”, Tudge argues for society to adopt the goal of a convivial society – based on personal fulfilment – within a flourishing biosphere.
The word “convivial”, Tudge explains, ultimately derives from the Latin “con”, meaning with, and “vivere”, meaning to live. Tudge wants humanity “to strive to live together in harmony with amity and mutual support, both to create true societies and also to ensure that each individual member of society feels fulfilled”.
A convivial society would require the erosion of economic inequality and a re-balancing between rich and poor based on greater social and economic justice.
A flourishing biosphere within a stable and more just economy was the ambition of the Green New Deal. Today that vision has been watered down and public discourse on the planetary crisis reduced to a series of technocratic terms: “A Green Industrial Revolution”; “Clean Power 2030’, and the obscure and misleading concept that is “Net Zero”. [As Professor Kevin Anderson argues, Net Zero “passes the buck of mitigating climate change to another government, several electoral cycles down the line. More importantly, it obliges our children to remove colossal quantities of (our) carbon directly from the atmosphere or attempt to live with the consequences of dangerous climate change”.]
None of those concepts has inspired public enthusiasm, although voters are acutely aware of the dangers of climate breakdown and biodiversity collapse. We should, therefore, take seriously Tudge’s more hopeful vision of a convivial society thriving within a flourishing biosphere.
The Labour government appears committed to the technocratic goals outlined. Starmer used a recent speech at the International Energy Summit to double down on his commitment to the cause, telling delegates that, “homegrown clean energy is the only way to take back control of our energy system”.
But that commitment jars with the government’s support for the expansion of Heathrow, Luton and Gatwick airports, and for continuing North Sea oil extraction
It also jars with Treasury ideology that insists “there is no money” to address the urgent and comprehensive retrofitting of the built environment, for example, a necessary task if we are to save energy, lower fuel emissions and their costs, and build decent, low-rent social housing. Such transformational measures would lower the cost of living, create jobs, end inequality of access to housing, increase Treasury tax revenues, help stabilise the climate and begin to create a future for generations that come after.
Yet this same Treasury found £11.5bn of state funding for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant. New official estimates reckon construction costs have risen to £38bn – a big increase from the £20bn figure given by EDF and the government in 2020. According to the Financial Times, the majority of Sizewell’s construction costs will be funded by loans underpinned by a levy on consumer bills. In other words, we will all be paying for this well into the future, a burden sure to be exploited by far-right populists. All the while, the City of London will grow rich on returns (interest) from the bounty of debt associated with Sizewell.
Backbench MPs, including Labour’s Clive Lewis, have urged greater ambition and responsiveness. They launched a Climate and Nature Bill, which now appears to have hit a parliamentary stalemate. In response, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, the Rt. Hon. Ed Miliband MP issued a video on X and promised to start work on the “spirit and substance” of the bill—” including for legislation”—in order to “make a meaningful difference” for climate and nature.
The Labour government’s response appears too little, too late, complacent, and unprepared for the long journey that lies ahead. What is needed is a change in the government’s mindset that accepts we need long term action to develop a more sustainable and socially just financial system; an enlightened agriculture and food culture; and more appropriate energy technology. We need the sound infrastructure of democratic, accountable government and regulation, not the repression of citizens’ rights. Above all, we need a Big Green State whose foundations are built on social and ecological justice, on a monetary and financial system designed to serve society as a whole – not just the 1%.
Such a vision is possible. Big state economics tackled the Great Depression of the 1930s. Big state economies have always financed and continue to finance wars. Big state economics bailed out Wall St and the City of London in 2008-9. Big state economics tackled the global crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated “shadow banking” crisis. A Big Green State, in which both monetary and fiscal policy are put to the service of society and the ecosystem, could tackle the global crisis of climate breakdown.
There is hope, there is a vision, and we have the means. A Big Green State could finance a flourishing biosphere and a convivial society. All that is required is for Labour to escape the ideology of financialisation, austerity and privatisation, and to exercise political courage.