The current incumbent of the backstage bogeyman position is Morgan McSweeney, a Mandelson protegé, who keeps his master on a similarly short lead. Mandelson, of course, is now a senior diplomat, his role as a political Svengali cemented by successive election victories after nearly two decades of Labour opposition.
And this week we hear Reform’s leader Nigel Farage is planning to outflank Labour by scrapping the two-child benefit cap and fully reinstating the winter fuel payment, both of which Starmer has been considering. Action Man Nigel knows how much Starmer fears his supporters drifting off to Reform, and he wants to show Starmer up as irresolute and plain wrong.
Staunching this impression seems to be McSweeney’s chief preoccupation, which is why, for example, hard-hatted Keir is out there in Bob the Builder mode, rolling up his sleeves and defying what are presented as pettifogging protesters to try and get his Planning Bill through.
The Government’s own review into why so little gets built found little reason to blame local green protesters. “We have only rarely had instances suggested to us where development was stopped by environmental regulation alone,” said the report’s author Dan Corry, a former Gordon Brown aide, who stood firm against the builders’ demands for a bonfire of regulation.
So the bill’s supporters are selling a cartoon version of serious politics, presumably based on a belief that Reform voters, driven by dinner party and red-top prejudice, won’t be too worried about the facts. In any case, the chosen narrative is how the tyranny of bat tunnels is holding back Britannia’s surge to economic prosperity.
At a time when our impoverished natural world is under ever-greater threat from pollution and degradation, the planning bill promises yet more damage. It would weaken environmental controls, removing the “mitigation hierarchy”, another turn-off phrase but an important one, which codifies avoiding harm to nature as far as possible.
So what has changed? The Government’s message now seems to be: “We like nature, just not in our own backyard.” In thinking redolent of the 1970s, the assumption that builders have an obligation to the environment has gone out of the window, despite constructive offers from campaigners, as aware as anyone of the need to build houses, to meet legislators half way.
square ALISON PHILLIPS The winter fuel rollback is another win for the old in a grim generation game
Read More
If that is the game, it’s a dangerous one. For one thing, in a tight election, frittering away the green votes that Labour won in marginal seats last year looks foolish. Recent polls have suggested that 44 per cent of Labour voters say slowing action against climate change would stop them voting for the party. Among young voters, Greens come second – to Labour. And no longer can the “low-salience” argument hold sway – that even when people tell pollsters they care about the environment, they still vote on the economy, cost of living and so on. These days, an improving natural world – on the doorstep – is more than a “nice to have”. People really care.
So going toe-to-toe with Farage on child benefit and winter fuel makes perfect sense. But maybe McSweeney should look at his polls again – and get Starmer to rethink the planning bill.
Cameron: The Rise of the New Conservative by James Hanning and Francis Elliott was published in 2007
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Labour’s message: we love nature, just not in our back yard )
Also on site :