Enemies within

A rather plaintive little tweet from Ed Miliband complaining about the hostile reaction among populists on social and national media to his announcement about new offshore wind licences.

“In the past 18 months, a well-funded right-wing network has waged a relentless war against clean power,” he writes. “When we set out our mission, they said it couldn’t be done, or even if it could, it was the wrong choice. Today’s historic auction has proved them wrong.”

Not sure where Mr Miliband has been for the past few years, during which time the networks he complains of have multiplied and widened their targets. Where once it was just attacking climate action and demanding the planning system be abolished to enrich house builders, today we have crafty liars demanding “infrastructure” or “growth”.

Or even that the country is now shit and only they can save it, oblivious to the fact that many of our problems were created by their extremist ideology.

The networks have their roots firmly in the soil of neoliberal think-tanks and influencers. Presumably there’s some big funding from oil industry sources and probably from developers, contractors and the roads lobby. We can’t say exactly who because both the think-tanks and the influencing bodies like to keep their funding private.

Which should tell you all you need to know.

Sympathy for Mr Miliband was wearing thin with his belief that onshore wind and solar are the answer to our energy needs, whatever other needs get damaged in the process. Where it runs out altogether is the shocking degree of influence these bodies have obtained over the Government of which he’s a member.

With the help of Labour-right bodies including “Labour Together” and “Labour Growth Group”, the prime minister, chancellor and their colleagues have been dragged down the bleak sado-capitalist highway that so many governments have edged their way along over the past 45 years.

Neoliberalism should have died after the 2008 Crash which it caused. It’s lingered thanks to media moguls enriched by it and the influencing bodies that now control blue and red governments.

But it will never solve the big challenges of the years to come. We urgently need government, of whatever stripe, that faces up to these challenges and finds an economic basis which both provides for national needs, and allows us to develop the resilience to face several growing emergencies.

Jon Reeds