As the Guardian has noted:
UK fruit and vegetable production has plummeted as farms have been hit by extreme weather.
They have added:
The country suffered the wettest 18 months since records began across the 2023-24 growing year, leaving soil waterlogged and some farms totally underwater.
The impact on harvests has been disastrous. Data from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs shows that year-on-year vegetable yields decreased by 4.9% to 2.2m tonnes in 2023, and the production volumes of fruit decreased by 12% to 585,000 tonnes.
Scientists say that climate breakdown caused by the burning of fossil fuels is likely to bring more extreme weather to the UK, including more frequent floods and droughts.
And what are the goals of Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves? They are growth and wealth creation. Given that the latter is measured financially, these are the antithesis of the policies required for a sustainable Britain.
But what does he care? He'll be in the history books. The rest of us can suffer the consequences of the folly he's pursuing to put himself there as far as he's concerned. That is the one thing I am sure about, having watched his campaign.
And yes, I am angry.
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Starmer’s Labour really has little monetary tools understanding. He should be concentrating on achieving Green growth using a mixture of methods that encourage both government and private sector investment whilst maintaining interest rates as low as possible. Instead he capitulates to private sector scams. It’s going to be a dreary five years ending in scandals just like the outgoing Tory government. Change but little hope! What’s not to despair about yet again?
Yes, that change of mindset is crucial… And of course green growth can only be a brief interregnum before a steady state or degrowth, for long term sustainability.
A problem with low interest rates is that it can lead to higher house prices as asset values rise.
But regulating mortgage ratio requirements can help there
And if they rise too fast, charge CGT
It’s not as if the Labour Party wasn’t warned well in advance of the dangers of watering-down socialism. Here’s what Tony Benn said in 1982, long before Blair and his cohort had wormed their way into the Labour Party (this was quoted by Wee Ginger Dug in his 1st July blog):
“In 1982, the left wing Labour politician Tony Benn, who would be deeply unwelcome in Starmer’s party said: “If the Labour party could be persuaded to denounce all its marxists, the media – having tasted blood – would demand next that it expelled all its socialists and reunited the remaining Labour party with the SDP to form a harmless alternative to the Conservatives, which could be allowed to take office now and then when the Conservatives fell out of favour with the public. Thus British capitalism would be made safe and forever and socialism squeezed off the national agenda. But if such a strategy were to succeed it would in fact profoundly endanger British society, for it would open up the danger of a swing to the far-right, as we have seen in Europe over the past 50 years.”
Prescient words indeed
Agreed
This ‘quote by Tony Benn’ has been going the rounds on social media and I would love to believe it but it sounds suspiciously too good to be true. I am a huge fan of Tony Benn having heard him speak a couple of times to packed audiences but he generally spoke without notes and probably unrecorded. There was no social media in 1982 and I wonder whether anyone can give chapter and verse as to where Tony Benn actually said this.
A quick search does not provide a link to a source, but it sounds like him.
But the analysis is shared by many, here is one contemporary example
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/keir-starmer-left-wing-case-paul-mason-labour-party-general-election/
I know some think he’s moving to the right, but I hope he wins in Sheffield.
“The left” needs to think carefully about how it acts when there is a LINO super majority (assuming it happens) else it could just end up throwing petrol on the flames of increasing polarisation.
The shape of the attack narrative has become clear in the last two days. Despite the rank hypocrisy (having ruled from a right minority position with a big majority) anything not in the manifesto will be touted as having no mandate. It will be difficult to argue against without ending up supporting a rotten system because it has some truth. The combination of LINO caution (the kindest way to put it), the sheer amount of raw power resisting change and what those who hold it will do to preserve it must not be underestimated, we are, indeed in a very parlous state.
Democracy requires polarisation
The quote sounds awfully familiar and I have a feeling Benn said something like that on several occasions although he may not have used those precise words.
Social media did not exist in 1982, but Usenet, one of its predecessors did. Accessing it directly from the UK at the time would have been prohibitably expensive for an individual but there was a small company, based in Norwich, that would send you a weekly print out of forums you were interested in and would post things to them on your behalf. Looking back it was all rather weird as I was using snail mail to communicate by email.
The quote comes from a Marx Memorial Lecture given by Benn, printed in full in Marxism Today in May 1982 and available here on Labour Heartlands:
https://labourheartlands.com/tony-benn-democracy-and-marxism/
Thanks
I can’t, and probably nobody can. However I can anecdotally confirm, from a group conversation with him on a train after a NUPE conference, that he saw the right wing of Labour – that went on to form the SDP – as wanting to move the centre of UK politics to the right, thus creating room for those who would occupy the ‘even further right’ than the Tories. He certainly saw them as wishing to remove the party from the trade union influence.
I think a lot of us are angry. He has no idea about climate breakdown and what to do about. I think if he did come up with some policies there would be a lot angry voters out there who have got used to flying a lot, using their cars a lot etc. I think though that hes not dodging the issue, he just does not realise that its a problem to solve and just bangs on about growth. Some of us have moved on since the 1950s and 1960s, he has not. The cost of living crisis will not go away if there are food shortages. There will be trouble ahead.
“There may be trouble ahead”… is why Starmerism will prove to be as authoritarian as Braverman et al; and the legislation on pre-emptive detention of potential (!) protesters will not be rescinded. Just Stop Oil is a few mosquitoes buzzing around the ceiling light. Food and related cost-of-living protesters (think Poll Tax protests…) will be a swarm of locusts needing a super-strong insecticide.
And now, he’s saying that there is no chance in the UK rejoining the EU, ‘In his lifetime’.
Utter stupidity, given that we’ll probably have two thirds of the electorate in favour of it within a decade or so. Hopefully, he’s just being as disingenuous as usual and there are actually quiet plans to try and negotiate our way back into the single market in a few years, or at least get better access to it.
Just plain stupid, in my opinion
I was about to say much the same. Give their respective backgrounds neither Starmer nor Reeves have the faintest idea how real business and the economy work, and the massive negative impact of Brexit. They can kiss goodbye to their economic growth dreams.
Epically stupid and unnecessary.
Agreed
Keir Starmer the new leader of Great Britain? No Great Backward!
Starmer will be forgotten by those who don’t read footnotes.