How both Labour and SNP are making same historic mistake as they cut spending

Yet at least he saw what anyone truly concerned about environmental issues has been able to see for some decades – that the aggressive industrial economy of the last 200 years, mainly powered by fossil fuels, has set us on a path towards environmental destruction and breakdown that cannot be sustained, and that a major rebalancing is therefore required.

It is becoming increasingly apparent, though, that if a revolution towards a more sustainable economic system is what you seek, then you may wait a long time – perhaps too long – for any of the UK’s mainstream political parties to deliver it. In theory, almost everyone except the hardline climate deniers of the conservative right now accepts that man-made climate change is real, and that certain actions, such as radically reducing carbon emissions by 2030, are essential to avoid catastrophe within a couple of decades.

‘Growth’ at any price

Yet in practice, as activists like Greta Thunberg have been observing for years, very few people in power seem able to act on this information; and now both the new Labour government in London, and the SNP government at Holyrood, are responding to the current squeeze on UK government finances by going for traditional economic “growth” at any price, and ditching green policies and spending with the same gleeful abandon as David Cameron back in the early years of coalition government, when some infant policy adviser told him to “cut the green crap”.

In the past week, we’ve seen the UK Government cut its £100 million budget for nature-friendly farming in England, and make no move to restore the massive cuts to England’s active travel budget applied by the Tories last year – this on top of Labour’s vastly depressing decision, before the election, to drop from its manifesto its bold job-creating and future-facing commitment to invest £28 billion a year in the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Living between pay cheques

Meanwhile in Scotland, the SNP has responded to budget pressures by slashing its always modest active travel budget, restoring painfully high peak-time rail fares on ScotRail, and simply removing its tiny but crucial £5 million budget for the restoration of Scotland’s drastically depleted natural environment. The presumption seems to be that so far as voters are concerned, immediate pressures in areas such as health and education will always matter more than policies with a slightly longer time-horizon; and that green policies are in general both unpopular and oppressive, aimed at making life miserable for ordinary citizens.

And of course, there are grains of electoral truth in all of these assumptions. In the UK of the 2020s, the majority of households are living from pay cheque to pay cheque, stressed half to death by the combination of stagnant real wages, soaring energy and housing costs, unaffordable childcare, and poor and unreliable public transport. To threaten people in this position with rising costs for the car which is often their lifeline is not only unpopular, but cruel; and in this as is many other areas, the UK now simply lacks the social and physical infrastructure that could make the transition to a low-carbon economy a positive experience, rather than a painful one.

Estranged twins of UK politics

Yet behind that urgent day-to-day truth there lies a more complicated reality. Every citizen now knows, at some level, that we are facing a systemic crisis that could threaten the very future of human life on Earth; and that our leaders – including Labour and the SNP, continuing their tragic-comic double act as the estranged twins of UK politics – seem too frightened, disorganised, or lacking in vision to take decisive action towards preventing it.

That growing dissonance between what we know must be done, and what our leaders seem willing or able to do, is – it seems to me – beginning to cause serious psychological distress, particularly among the young; a sense of despair and helplessness which the recent talk of further austerity from Westminster, and of matching swingeing cuts at Holyrood, can only intensify.

It’s easy, of course, to sympathise with politicians who simply get it in the neck from some sections of the public, and from the media, whenever they try to take any specific action on climate change – witness the hullaballoo that erupted just last week, when the new Labour government declined to challenge legal rulings against the vast new Rosebank oil development west of Shetland.

Lack of interest in revolution

Yet it should be clear that this impasse between understanding and action also creates opportunities for politicians willing to cut the Gordian knot, and to create a climate in which real progress towards a sustainable future is possible. Of course, what is being proposed here is not any kind of cautious managerialism, or even what currently passes for fiscal common sense, but a revolution in how we power and organise our society, and measure its success; and it’s perhaps not surprising that neither Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, nor John Swinney and Shona Robison, at the level of devolved government, show much interest in delivering that radical shift.

Out there among the voters, though, there is a growing impatience with politicians whose language, and frames of reference, so clearly fail to measure up to the challenge of the times, or to map a plausible way forward. And until and unless a new generation emerges with the vision to change the political game, and realign it more closely with the realities we face, disillusion with those old and stale political players can only increase; and is bound to spawn all kinds of radical or morbid reactions, around the ever-expanding margins of our mainstream politics.