Lefties against net zero!
Say it quietly, but hardline green ideology is meeting with growing resistance across the labour movement
You probably won't agree with all of Mr Embery's policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal
THERE IS A scene in the TV adaptation of that superb 1980s political novel, A Very British Coup, in which Labour prime minister Harry Perkins, determined to push through a new green energy policy, is rebuked by the leader of the United Power Workers’ Union, a character named Reg Smith. ‘My union see job losses ahead,’ argues the battle-hardened Smith, ‘and they won’t be bought off with promises of windmills’.
It was later revealed that Smith was something of a bad egg, but I am reminded of his slapdown every time I hear Labour leaders try to convince working people that the net zero crusade is in their interests.
You wouldn’t necessarily know it, but there are some in today’s trade union movement who have not succumbed to the militant environmentalism that has consumed much of the left (and a good deal of the right, too). They don’t always get much of a hearing, but they exist and, with the Iran war folly threatening both an economic and energy crisis, they are coming out swinging.
