Our Planet Climate and Geopolitics
The UK’s Labour party is ditching its pledge to borrow £28 billion to invest in the green energy transition, and Metternich would have approved. The decision is nakedly political and environmentally short-sighted but if Labour is serious about burying the Conservatives at the forthcoming election it has little choice. Brexit has driven a steamroller through British productivity and growth. High interest rates make the cost of extra borrowing prohibitive. Unlike the US, the UK economy is too small to sustain big debt-funded investment schemes at the best of times, the lingering fallout of the Truss fiasco makes this the worst of times. The Tories know this, and they know that despite this attacking Labour as an untrustworthy steward of the public finances still resonates with voters. Meanwhile Labour has set itself a debt reduction rule which borrowing £28 billion would violate. It’s true the planet hasn’t been this hot in at least 120,000 years and is about to blow through the 1.5-degree warming limit set in Paris, but as the enabler of Brexit once put it, them’s the breaks.