Next week at the Labour Party’s annual conference in Brighton, delegates from around the country will have the chance to call on the party to undertake an unprecedented programme of investment in technology, infrastructure and people, in the form of a Green New Deal for the UK.
If delegates elect to advance the motion – the first step to a Green New Deal becoming official Labour Party policy – they will be voting for far more than a set of policies aimed at reducing the UK’s carbon footprint. They will be voting for one of the most ambitious and far reaching economic transformations this country has ever seen.
The innovation of the Green New Deal platform is its recognition that the crises we face – of climate change, economic inequality, housing, biodiversity, and international and intergenerational inequity – are not isolated issues. They are in fact the product of a broken economic system that invariably and necessarily prioritises profit over people and planet. And as the range of participants at our rally – which includes activists, trade unionists, school strikers, party membership and parliamentary candidates – demonstrates, what is needed is not a ‘readjustment’, but a wholesale transformation of the structure and principles of our economy that serves the interests of the many, including workers and future generations.
