\n<\/p>\n
T<\/span>his government is bad at proclaiming what it\u2019s 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 \u201cwhose growth is it, anyway?\u201d 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 \u2013 400,000 by 2030 \u2013 are set to be created in 31 \u201cpriority occupations\u201d, from welders to production managers, plumbers and joiners, everywhere from Centrica\u2019s \u00a335m state-of-the-art training academy in Lutterworth to Teesside\u2019s net-zero decarbonisation cluster.<\/p>\n This is what a Labour industrial strategy should look like. Nigel Farage\u2019s retro campaign for this week\u2019s Caerphilly byelection promises to reopen Welsh coalmines. But well-paid, clean, green-energy jobs within their home districts are what Miliband\u2019s 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 \u2013 the average advertised salary in the wind sector is \u00a351,000 a year, against an average \u00a337,000. Unions, once sceptical and fearful of losing jobs in unionised industries, now sign up with guarantees that any new plant getting grants must \u201csupport greater trade union recognition\u201d and a fair work charter.<\/p>\n Against the prospect of a tough budget, Miliband is good at providing hope. Big green investment is Labour\u2019s best hope for growth, and the best way to repair the great skills deficit, getting those near million lost young people back into work.<\/p>\n Political hope should be an easy win against the right\u2019s misbegotten culture wars. It\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n Rightwing politicians\u2019 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\u2019s promise to cut energy bills by \u00a3300 by the next election stands: he doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s left.<\/p>\n 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\u2019ve had glum conversations with David Hughes, CEO of the Association of Colleges, about \u201c15 years of absolute devastation when adult training and retraining was cut by half\u201d. 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.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Matters of Opinion<\/span><\/p>\n Guardian columnists and writers on what they\u2019ve been debating, thinking about, reading, and more<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n But this week, \u201cIt\u2019s great news,\u201d Hughes says of Miliband\u2019s green plans, alongside the government\u2019s white paper reforming post-16 education with new vocational courses called \u201cV-levels\u201d. \u201cI have never felt this optimistic,\u201d 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\u2019s background, that famous tool-maker dad, nurse sister and mother, roots him in knowing the worth of technical skills.<\/p>\n The enthusiasm is catching. I visited Crawley College, with its specialist \u201cgreen village\u201d, 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.<\/p>\n As for culture wars \u2013 a Reform or Tory government would presumably cut teaching this \u201cgreen crap\u201d, in David Cameron\u2019s timeless phrase. Goodbye to Crawley College\u2019s green village and new clean-energy technical excellence colleges? As an election pitch, Miliband is turning the right\u2019s culture war into \u201cwaging a war on jobs\u201d. Here\u2019s another good answer to the question, \u201cWhat is Labour for?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This government is bad at proclaiming what it\u2019s 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 \u201cwhose<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[4448,1206,17185,728,1124,2622,11904,1127,838,1128],"class_list":{"0":"post-29466","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-bring","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-denounce","11":"tag-green","12":"tag-hope","13":"tag-jobs","14":"tag-milibands","15":"tag-polly","16":"tag-reform","17":"tag-toynbee"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}