The first time I saw Ed Miliband live was at Latitude Festival, where he and 10:10 founder Franny Armstrong were doing a Q&A on the response to the threat of climate change. At that time, I had only been a member of the party for a few months, and I don’t think I really appreciated how well he did, assuming this sort of event to be more popular among politicians than it is in reality. The questions came from dedicated environmental activists, and got right to the heart of areas where government policy just hadn’t quite reached yet. “Would you support a ban on domestic flight?” “How do we stop state-owned banks investing into companies that are devastating the Canadian oil sands?” “Must we go nuclear?”
Franny naturally encouraged people to challenge him, but at the end of the session, she made a couple of important points. Firstly, she highlighted the Britain’s Low Carbon Transition Plan, which detailed exactly how Britain would meet its legislated commitments to reduce emissions by 34% by 2020, and by 80% by 2050. She said that the assembled crowd should not underestimate how much of a step the Department of Energy and Climate Change, with Ed at the helm, had taken with these moves. She then remarked that Labour were clearly going to lose the next election (prescient). But she also remarked that in the next few years, climate change and sustainable living were going to creep up the agenda, as it would become harder and harder to ignore the effects of unpredictable weather and dwindling resources.
Turning to look at Ed, she said “in five years time, those factors could be what make you the next Prime Minister.”
From this vantage point, a Labour Prime Minister, Ed or anyone else, feels a long way off. Labour is at an interesting point, where the party needs to find a balance between embracing and enhancing the positive changes made under the New Labour project – while also acknowledging its failures, and in so doing, re-entrenching the progressive values that we all care about into the heart of our vision for the UK. I don’t think any of us are naive enough to think that we have nothing left to do with regards to eradicating inequalities in health, wealth and social capital (far from it) – or that we haven’t done things which have alienated people who we used to count on to support us.
We need a leader who not only understands that, but who won’t be afraid to make that argument, to hold people to account, and to do it with fire and passion. We also need someone who will draw us all together on the progressive left – someone who understands that a healthy exchange of different views that spring from the same values is a good thing, and not something that should tear us apart. I’m not saying that the other candidates don’t have some of these qualities, and others besides – but Ed has them all in abundance.
In the months since that Latitude Q&A, we have all seen the qualities in Ed that will make him an inspiring, capable leader. He listened to eco activists who told him to consult with the wonderful Professor David Mackay (author of ‘Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air’) on climate change policy, and ultimately hired him as an advisor. At Copenhagen, we saw him stay awake for days, and yet, he was sharp enough to act when he did to take control, halt proceedings, reassess the situation, and ultimately ensured that even though we didn’t get the deal we needed, we didn’t walk away with nothing, rather, we had something recognised and substantive to build on – plans for which were laid out in the ‘Beyond Copenhagen’ plan. When Gordon Brown was at his lowest ebb, Ed Miliband was among the first to leap to his defence, telling the circling sharks that people had underestimated Gordon his whole life, and that they shouldn’t make this mistake of doing it again.
And in the run-up to the election, the manifesto that he took a lead in authoring had real focus and ambition. This was notable in the area of welfare: “Are you for a residual welfare state that is just for the poor, which is the Tory position, or are you for a more inclusive welfare state? What the Tories are saying about child trust funds, child tax credits and Sure Start – they’re saying, ‘let’s residualise, let’s make the welfare state just for the poor’ but [this goes against] all the evidence in terms of maintaining public support [for the welfare state]. Why does Sure Start work as an institution? Because it brings people together.”
We have had some difficult weeks since we lost the election. But when Ed launched his leadership campaign, I was instantly assured of what I had known for some time – that Ed’s stall for Labour leader is already prepared: his brilliant track record – his willingness to listen, to evaluate and to act. And the early stages of his campaign – notably the launch of the Living Wage campaign – have assured me that he will practice what he preaches, and will take the entire movement with him.
I trust him absolutely with our future, and will support his campaign every step of the way.
Categories: Labour Regeneration
Tags: 10:10, climate change, copenhagen, ed miliband, franny armstrong, gordon brown, latitude festival, living wage, nuclear power, oil, sure start, transport, welfare
Food waste: don’t let the supermarkets waste on our behalf
December 21st, 2009
Summits like Copenhagen can be frustrating because, by necessity, they place all the cards for positive (and negative) change in the hands of world leaders and delegates. The rest of us can only watch as our path to the future is pulled apart, rearranged and stuck back together. And when it all goes wrong, we feel more disenfranchised and powerless than ever.
But we do have power – and furthermore, we have the capacity to make meaningful change on an international level. Recently, I was inspired to act by Tristram Stuart’s Waste, an amazing narrative that uses reams of data to put our food wastage in a global context. In the West, 10 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions come from producing food that is never eaten. In the UK, 18 million tonnes of carbon dioxide is used to produce our waste food – which is, according to WRAP the equivalent of one in five cars on the road.
Personal profligacy is obviously a factor, and it clearly never hurts to keep an eye on how we all purchase, store and consume food. But it is a drop in the ocean compared to the waste generated by our major supermarkets. Currently, supermarkets submit their suppliers (farmers and manufacturers) to restrictions that encourage waste on a large scale, including last-minute orders, take-back clauses, exclusivity clauses and in a final insult, leaving those suppliers with the responsibility and cost of disposing of the surplus. And this surplus is gargantuan and, to consumers and the media, essentially invisible, so the supermarkets can carry on as they please – without ever revealing the true extent of their wastage.
Part of the battle is just telling the supermarkets what we want – for example, as a consumer, I don’t care if the shelves are empty at the end of the day, and I am happy to write to the supermarket chains I frequent to tell them as much. But it’s also about transparency and oversight of their waste practices, and that is where a supermarket ombudsman would come in. Stuart makes the very valid point that we are in a unique position to demand this from the supermarkets – unlike many other companies, they cannot relocate to a more ‘favourable’ regulatory climate – they have to be where their consumers are, and their consumers are right here.
Today, Ed Miliband said “the most important thing is that we don’t lose heart and we don’t lose momentum.” The momentum may not be as we had hoped, but it is here. Let’s use it. Sign my petition for a supermarket ombudsman, and stop the supermarkets from using energy that could be used more productively elsewhere.
This blog was originally posted on House of Twits, with photo from Walter Parenteau.
Categories: Sustainable Lives
Tags: anthropogenic global warming, copenhagen, economics, ed miliband, supermarkets, tristram stuart, waste
Vote blue get blue – Tories and climate change
December 4th, 2009
With Copenhagen looming, I took a trip to London on Tuesday to celebrate the launch of a new pamphlet (party!) from SERA – a Labour-affiliated group that seeks to find solutions that bridge the social and environmental movements. ‘The Road to Copenhagen – The Progressive Case for Climate Action’ is a set of essays that emphasise how the progressive left is leading the debate on the response to climate change. The launch, which was a joint effort between SERA and Progress, had David Miliband (eventually – he’s a busy man) as the main speaker, and he raised several interesting points. He emphasised what experience has shown – that market mechanisms, left to their own devices, contain built-in incentives for environmental degradation. Much to my delight, he emphasised the importance of the EU, its political weight and its ambitious targets for Copenhagen, and drew up some valuable distinctions between environmentalism and climate change.
But what interested me the most was the remarks he made about the Conservative Party. He said that we had to be grown-up about their stance – if they say that they accept the scientific evidence available as proof of the reality of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), then we should welcome that stance. As progressives, our stance is not that we think those on the right do not believe in AGW – but rather that the left just has better policies.
I agree with all these things (natch) – but it’s hard to welcome a stance that doesn’t seem to exist on any meaningful scale. Take David Davis – on one hand he says that climate change is “probably” caused by human activity. And to give him his dues, this is all anyone can say with any confidence. Of course, then he ruins all his good work by saying that “the ferocious determination to impose hair-shirt policies on the public – taxes on holiday flights, or covering our beautiful countryside with wind turbines that look like props from War of the Worlds – is bound to cause a reaction in any democratic country.”
Such messages are very damaging. He is saying “I am a man who understands that there are human causes of climate change, and we should be able to carry on behaving exactly as we have been.” That message has no basis in reality. You cannot believe in AGW and also believe that we, as humans, don’t have to change anything. I would have a lot more respect for a person who showed their cards and said “I do not believe in AGW, for these reasons”, or who had proposed viable alternatives to onshore wind, flight taxes, etc. But he hasn’t. He doesn’t. He expresses distaste for the measures proposed, makes one example about how micro-generation is often overlooked, and goes on his merry way.
I have no problem with working with and listening to Conservatives who do not echo my exact views on how we should solve the issues surrounding climate change – I have no authority to say my views on such things are superior, and I truly welcome more information – but if those same Conservatives are misrepresenting their expertise and their stance, with the effect that people are being fed false ideas and information, I can’t just nod along and go “oh well, at least you accept AGW”. Because words are cheap without actions that support them, and it takes a lot of action to undo harmful words from people of influence.
This blog was originally posted on House of Twits, with photo from Be…n.
Categories: Policy Review, Sustainable Lives
Tags: anthropogenic global warming, climate change, copenhagen, david davis, david miliband, eu, progress, renewables, sera
