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Thursday 8 February 2024

That sphere of falsehood and strategy



However, can one ever be certain of anything in that sphere of falsehood and strategy? The surest things, the things prophesied with the most certainty, became, at the slightest breath, subjects of distressful doubt.

Emile Zola - L'Argent (1891)


How Labour ditched its flagship £28bn green investment pledge

Labour’s pledge to spend £28bn a year on green investment is to be ditched, two and a half years after it was announced to cheering party members as an eye-catching flagship policy.

It has been at the centre of a public and private struggle since it was announced, with factions inside Labour arguing against moves to water it down.

The decision on Thursday is to be defended on the basis of uncertainty about public finances as Labour moves to finalise its election manifesto. Nevertheless, voices from different sections of the party and from business are mourning a failure of ambition.

9 comments:

James Higham said...

🍿🍿🍿

Scrobs. said...

There aren't many votes in any public spending on such a wasteful issue.

28bn quid would go a long way to helping our poorer citizens (and us), to cope with an already overloaded bureaucracy, like heating our homes with normal natural resources, not extravagant virtue-signalling about a non-existant 'threat'!

Tammly said...

'Mourning a failure of ambition'! That stationery lemming over there lacks the 'ambition' to run with his fellows.

A K Haart said...

James - :)

Scrobs - it's even possible that they are beginning to see that our money could be flushed away more advantageously.

Tammly - ha ha, maybe he needs a nudge from the Nudge Unit.

decnine said...

So, it won't appear in the Manifesto. But that doesn't mean that it definitely won't happen.

Sam Vega said...

Take courage! It's but a small step from "We won't do it because the Tories crashed the economy", to "We won't do it because the Chinese won't, and it would make no discernible bloody difference".

A K Haart said...

decnine - I agree, unless it becomes unfashionable they'll probably just do it anyway until the failures are so obvious that even Labour MPs spot them.

Sam - yes, China may be the standby excuse. It has probably been quietly formulated and documented already.

dearieme said...

I did wonder why people were getting so excited by a modest sum such as £28bn. Eventually someone admitted that it was to have been £28bn per year.

It's like the dimbos who can't distinguish kilowatts from kilowatt-hours.

A K Haart said...

dearieme - I scratched my head over that to begin with. Ignoring units does seem to be a modern trend.