This government is bad at proclaiming what it’s for. But to find out, follow the money. Its boldest investment is in green energy, designed to create prodigious returns in economic growth, employment, training, climate action and more. So far it has been hard to sell. Wafty talk of greenness passes most people by, and “whose growth is it, anyway?” is a realistic question in a country of stagnant pay and public decay. But, this week, Ed Miliband put flesh on the green words, making jobs and projects concrete. A very big number of green jobs – 400,000 by 2030 – are set to be created in 31 “priority occupations”, from welders to production managers, plumbers and joiners, everywhere from Centrica’s £35m state-of-the-art training academy in Lutterworth to Teesside’s net-zero decarbonisation cluster.
This is what a Labour industrial strategy should look like. Nigel Farage’s retro campaign for this week’s Caerphilly byelection promises to reopen Welsh coalmines. But well-paid, clean, green-energy jobs within their home districts are what Miliband’s Doncaster North constituents want, the minister tells me, not sending young people down reopened mines. Government figures show wind, nuclear and electricity jobs pay more than most – the average advertised salary in the wind sector is £51,000 a year, against an average £37,000. Unions, once sceptical and fearful of losing jobs in unionised industries, now sign up with guarantees that any new plant getting grants must “support greater trade union recognition” and a fair work charter.
Against the prospect of a tough budget, Miliband is good at providing hope. Big green investment is Labour’s best hope for growth, and the best way to repair the great skills deficit, getting those near million lost young people back into work.
Political hope should be an easy win against the right’s misbegotten culture wars. It’s a fists-up challenge to Reform UK and Tory bluster on abolishing net-zero aims. Those 400,000 jobs will be facts on the ground in places Farage expects to win. Will he and Kemi Badenoch tell a thousand Siemens workers in Hull to stop building wind turbines, or Teesside workers to down tools on decarbonisation, or close the new cable factory in Scotland? Miliband met a young woman who left her Pizza Hut job when she won an apprenticeship in clean energy at Sheffield Forgemasters. Who would pull the plug on her?
Rightwing politicians’ net-zero culture war is wildly out of kilter with public opinion. Perhaps they think they are doing battle with the ideas of Greta Thunberg; instead they will find themselves explaining to families why jobs for them and friends will be taken away. Voters are staunchly pro-renewable energy and anti-fracking (which Farage wants to restart). Miliband’s promise to cut energy bills by £300 by the next election stands: he doesn’t rule out a possible VAT cut on energy bills in the budget. Meanwhile, this is a firm challenge to the Green party threat coming up fast on Labour’s left.
Where are the people for these new green jobs? The usually depressed and undervalued further education (FE) sector is suddenly jubilant, as Miliband spells out exactly what new skills are needed, from super-battery making to fitting solar panels. He pledges that five new technical excellence colleges will focus on boosting clean energy skills. Over the years I’ve had glum conversations with David Hughes, CEO of the Association of Colleges, about “15 years of absolute devastation when adult training and retraining was cut by half”. The pay gap between school teachers and his college staff is huge, he says. We often talked about UK employers investing only half the EU average in workforce skills: employer organisations griping about Labour should ask themselves why they are still cutting apprenticeships.
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But this week, “It’s great news,” Hughes says of Miliband’s green plans, alongside the government’s white paper reforming post-16 education with new vocational courses called “V-levels”. “I have never felt this optimistic,” he tells me. He celebrated the prime minister announcing that instead of 50% of students going to university, the target is two-thirds gaining either a degree or a technical qualification, a great step towards equalising the value of skills. He is delighted that employers will get no migrant visas without investing in training young people. He thinks Keir Starmer’s background, that famous tool-maker dad, nurse sister and mother, roots him in knowing the worth of technical skills.
The enthusiasm is catching. I visited Crawley College, with its specialist “green village”, already training up thousands for green jobs. A house sliced in half teaches them about insulation techniques, heat pump installation, retrofitting and energy savers of all kinds. Walking around an FE college is always a reminder that these are places of hope. Teachers here talk emotionally of second chances for those who have been failed, of lives turned around and eyes opened by the extraordinarily wide range of courses. Colleges can expect a new burst of life from now on.
As for culture wars – a Reform or Tory government would presumably cut teaching this “green crap”, in David Cameron’s timeless phrase. Goodbye to Crawley College’s green village and new clean-energy technical excellence colleges? As an election pitch, Miliband is turning the right’s culture war into “waging a war on jobs”. Here’s another good answer to the question, “What is Labour for?”
