Fury over Reeves’ climate climbdown – Politics Weekly UK
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January 30, 2025
TLDR: Chancellor Rachel Reeves prioritizes economic growth over other concerns, leading to climate action taking a back seat, according to Labor MP Clive Lewis. Columnist Gaby Hinsliff discusses the feasibility of this approach.

In the latest episode of Politics Weekly UK, John Harris leads a critical discussion on Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ recent speech focused on economic growth, raising alarm about implications for climate action. Joining him is Labour MP Clive Lewis, who offers insights into the party's direction regarding climate policy. The episode highlights a growing concern: as the government prioritizes economic revival, critical climate action may be sidelined.
Economic Growth vs. Climate Action
- Central Theme: Rachel Reeves emphasizes boosting economic growth as her primary mission.
- Shift in Position: Support for the Heathrow Airport third runway has stirred controversy, leading to fears that climate policies may be compromised for short-term economic gains.
- Clive Lewis's Alarm: Lewis expresses his disappointment, stating that this move undermines serious efforts to tackle the climate crisis.
The Chancellorship and the Climate Crisis
- Conflicting Goals: Reeves' earlier environmental reputation as the potential "first green Chancellor" contrasts sharply with her current pro-growth stance.
- Existential Threat: The episode references the increasing urgency of addressing climate change, indicating that prioritizing growth could exacerbate existing environmental crises.
- Carbon Budgets: The expansion of Heathrow presents potential violations of the UK’s carbon budgets, raising questions about the government's commitment to net-zero emissions.
Questions Around Job Creation and Economic Benefit
- Nature of Growth: Lewis critiques the nature of the jobs expected from such growth, deeming many as precarious—a reflection of broader public skepticism about economic decisions and their benefits to local communities.
- Public Sentiment: There’s a palpable disconnection between growth initiatives and the concerns of ordinary citizens, many of whom prioritize stable employment and community well-being over abstract economic growth figures.
Recent Labour Party Developments
- Internal Party Dynamics: Inside the Labour Party, fears are rising about a shift away from climate consciousness towards more traditional economic policies.
- A Sense of Betrayal: Reflecting on past commitments, Lewis feels disillusioned with the party's current trajectory, comparing it unfavorably with previous declarations about significant green investment.
The Public Discourse on Net Zero
- Perception of Net Zero: The episode explores how some see commitments to net zero as a burden rather than an opportunity for improved living standards.
- Socio-Economic Considerations: It touches on the challenges of achieving public support for ambitious climate action when many citizens feel that their immediate economic needs are not being met.
The Broader Political Implications
- Conflicting Public Interests: Reeves’ speech indicates a pivot towards deregulation and growth, raising concerns about the socio-environmental impacts of such policies.
- Potential Electoral Impact: Clive acknowledges the risk of constituents turning to alternative parties, like the Green Party, due to perceived neglect of environmental issues.
Conclusion: A Pivotal Moment for Labour and Climate Policy
As the UK navigates its economic future, the episode underscores a critical juncture for the Labour Party and its commitment to tackling the climate crisis. With the government seemingly prioritizing economic growth over environmental sustainability, the conversation around net zero and community impact will be essential as voters become increasingly aware of the potential long-term repercussions of these decisions.
Key Questions for Future Discussion:
- Whose interests are being prioritized in the pursuit of growth?
- How can the Labour Party reconcile its economic objectives with its climate commitments?
- What strategies can be employed to ensure that communities feel the benefits of economic developments?
This episode serves as a stark reminder of the delicate balance between economic growth and sustainable practices, prompting listeners to consider the long-term consequences of today's political choices.
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Rachel Reeves' big speech this week was all about frantically chasing economic growth. We can do this so much better. Low growth is not our destiny.
The government's big theme is deregulation. Isn't that a Tory opinion? And this is a very big question. What about Labour's climate creation? I just don't think that this is conducive with being serious about tackling the climate and nature crisis and it is a crisis. I'm John Harris and you'll listen to politics with UK for the dark.
We're recording this on Wednesday, and Rachel Reeves has yet again laid out her plans for chasing economic growth. In the age of social media, it does feel a bit odd that politics still tends to revolve around these set-piece speeches, often held in factories on ring roads, but there we are. Up she stood.
at the Siemens plant near Oxford to deliver her plan for growing the British economy, restoring labour's political fortunes along the way. Well, come on to what she said later with our columnist Gabby Hinsliffe, but obviously one of the biggest headlines coming out of what Rachel Reeves said is the fact that she now supports a third runway at Heathrow Airport, an issue which has been kicking around politics and government for years. To discuss that and what it might signify, I'm now joined by the labour MP for Norwich South Clive Lewis. Hello, Clive.
Hi there. A lot of your politics and your workers and MP centers on the climate emergency. We now know that after years and years of uncertainty, Rachel Reeves says she's back in a third Heathrow runway. Now, that isn't the whole of the story there. There's lots more to come if that's going to happen. But this is obviously a big moment. It looks like that's the government's position too. How do you feel about that?
I can't say I'm shocked because it's been probably the worst kept secret and trailed for the last two weeks. I think we mustn't forget the context that there was, there have been weeks and weeks of talks about Segere Starman, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor under pressure, that things aren't going well, that we're tanking in the polls.
the chance that has made a series of very bad political and economic mistakes that have been reverberated in the first six months and she's under pressure. And so there is a sense that this is such a switch from I want to be the first green chance. This is one of our key missions, one of their key missions,
Growth wasn't their only mission. They had that five or six and no one remembers what they are really, but we told the growth and being a green chance that and the environment climate and net zero are all going to be part of that. I have to say, there was a sense of desperation to this. You can't get away from that. It does feel like I listened to the speech today. It felt like a reset.
A lot of the stuff we already knew had been mentioned before, but it felt that it was leading up to this issue of Heathrow. Heathrow blows our carbon budgets out of the sky. I find it incredulous that this is now a serious proposal. Here's the other thing, John. Rachel Reeves made her name by writing quite extensively about the foundational economy.
investing in further education, health care, public transport, which I would say this is vaguely connected to education, local infrastructure. This isn't that. And I think the question that people like myself and many other are asking is, whose growth are we creating? Who is this growth for?
I can't hand on heart tell my constituents that many of these jobs precarious, temporary, catering, baggage handling, once you've built the airport and much of that will be mechanised and automated. I'm struggling to see how this is going to be
GDP growth for my constituents. Now, there's an even bigger set of questions around all this. We both know that this speech has been framed in terms of growth taking precedence over net zero. You hinted at that in what you've just said.
Rachel reads rather tortuously acknowledged that point when she was at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Let's have a quick listen to what she said.
sort of anything else, anything else, always one. Now, of course, there are other things that matter, but when we say that growth is the number one mission of this government, we mean it.
Yeah, it's the fact that we're facing an existential threat. We know that the climate crisis is here. We know that we're now probably approaching a series of tipping points and that every single zero point degrees of warming could be the point zero one or zero zero one that tips us over into one of those tipping points.
And I just feel now at this moment in time, it looks like they're going further and faster away from decarbonisation. If we're serious about it, then even the Conservatives were. And that's a tall order. That's something I did not expect to hear myself saying. That's quite a thing to say. That's where they're at now. Look, it's not just climate, it's also nature. You know, this is going to have a massive impact.
on the natural areas. It's going to have a massive socioeconomic impact as to where he throws. And then the pollution. I'm talking about this bigger sort of tonal shift to say, well, everything has to be subjected to this metric of growth, and that zero necessarily then takes a back seat to it. Along with, as you say, presumably, the health of natural environments are all the rest of it, right? And so you end up feeling very bleak.
It does, because I think if all you see is net zero as a business opportunity. I think everyone can acknowledge that there are many business opportunities, economic opportunities, to shift your economy, to make it fairer, to make better public transport, better infrastructure. That is an economic opportunity, but you want to make sure that the state investment is going in and the direction of travel it's going in,
is pushing this into areas which are sustainable, which are going to have a visible impact on most people's lives. I just don't think that where we're heading now, blowing our carbon budgets out of the water with an expanded airport at Heathrow, I just don't think that this is conducive with being serious about tackling the climate and nature crisis, and it is a crisis. It's existential, and I just don't think we are.
Let's have a bit of recent history. Here's something that Rachel Reeves said at the Labour Conference back in 2021. An additional £28 billion of capital investment in our country's green transition. But each and every year of this decade. I will be a responsible Chancellor. I will be Britain's first green Chancellor. Conference, that is what a Labour government will do.
The team from politics with the UK was at the Labour Conference in 2023. I'm sure you were too, where the party still was going gangbusters for the Green Revolution. I mean, that was supposedly the big story that year. Give me a sense of the contrast between how you felt as a Labour politician at that point compared to how you're feeling now.
I was probably always a little bit scared to draw. If I'm honest, I think that... Yeah, you must have thought, oh, this is interesting. Give them a go. It was better, you know. It was better. You know, 100%. 28 billion. I didn't think it was enough, but I thought it was a good start. And it was a heading in the right direction. And it made me feel that a broader spectrum of colleagues were getting this concept about the climate crisis and the scale of the challenge and what it was going to require. But it didn't even last until the general election, did it? The 28 billion was dropped.
Look, we have had an increase in investment in renewables. We have had an increase in investment in other clean technology. But it hasn't been at the scale and speed that we need. And if you're going to give me one hand and then take with five others in terms of the other infrastructure projects that you then put on rocket boosters, then I'm afraid to say it does call into question and it does make you feel that the
the government now, both the Conservatives and the Labour Party, have very quickly fought them out of love with the whole concept of net zero and rewilding and nature. It just feels that it was a phase that they went through. They know the public are concerned about this, but they've obviously made the calculation. Taking on the vested interest that don't want this, it's easy to appease them to actually move in the right direction. That's what it feels like.
I'll ask you about the public in a moment. There's one sort of sliver of light here. If previous attempts to greenlight a third runway are anything to go by, this expansion of Heathrow might never actually happen. Do you think it will?
I think it's going to be really hard. I think they're going to have to change the law quite substantially. That was discussed today in her speech about stopping the blockers. Let's forget what the blockers are. This is a tried and tested judicial system integrated with a quasi-judicial planning system, which is meant to ensure that we get the best and most sustainable planning in Western Europe in the world.
I don't think that's something you throw out just like that because you're desperate to get this growth, which I think, you know, the jury's out. Is it going to deliver the kind of growth you want in the time skills you want? Is this going to mean, are we even going to have shovels in the ground in four years? And let's be honest, where we are at the moment as a as a government, my constituents need to be able to go to the battle box knowing that they're feeling better off. But there's that there's light at the end of the tunnel and it isn't the 1026, the Brighton, they need to know that something has changed in their life. So it's going to change very soon. I'm not sure this project is going to deliver that.
And actually, it's entirely plausible that whoever, if there's another government that comes in in four or five years time, and we can't say that's impossible, they'll benefit from these changes, not us. Let's talk about Sadie Carr the matter of London. He put out a statement after Rachel Reeves' speech in which he reiterated his opposition to a third runway Heathrow. We both know that Ed Miliband holds the relevant post in Cabinet and he's opposed to this. Do you think those people's hostility will count for much looking ahead?
It has to. I mean, they'll be making a calculation. Is it better to get on board at some point and to make this as ecologically and climate friendly as possible? Or do they fall on their sword? So they kind of oppose it and turn their faces against the government. Obviously, if you're on the cabinet, in Ed's case, that's a lot more difficult. He might make the calculation that he can do more good still being in the tent rather than being outside of it. For Sadiq, though, this is his backyard. And there will be a lot of the people that
he represents, who simply don't want this, that whatever fuel you're using, whether it's the sustainable aviation fuel or not, it's still poison. These are still synthetic compounds, ultra-fine particles going into your children's lungs. It's going to be very difficult for the Mayor of London to support this. How would you score this government out of 10 when it comes to its green policies? I think three weeks ago, I would have given it seven.
I think this week is heading for a three. Wow. Quite a change.
Yes, but this is a pivotal moment, John. This is the crossing of the Rubicon. The dying is passed. If you go down this path, I don't overdo it on the set on the Shakespearean Caesar stuff, but I mean, if this doesn't turn around our fortunes, and I suppose we'll all be talking about the eyes of March, but I just don't see this as being compatible. I don't think anyone can. To say the least, evidently, from a seven, two or three,
and they've crossed the proverbial Rubicon. It is a question for you. You have the likes of you, politicians who take the climate emergency seriously. You have to bring people voters along with you, right? I'll be honest, when I'm out in the field reporting, I meet plenty of people who feel quite unsettled by the idea of net zero and think it's somehow an aim or a process that's tilted against them and will make everyday life more difficult. You can see that, can you? Why people feel they can't afford net zero right now?
I can because it just looks like another wheeze of politicians to get their vote. And then when we don't think it's working, we'll throw it out and go down a different route. Those of us that kind of got behind the so-called Green New Deal, we always said this was an opportunity to protect the environment, something we all care for, those green spaces.
do our bit for the climate crisis and pivot the economy into areas where it was going to have a real impact on people's lives, their jobs, their environment, their community, their education, their access to education. All of those things, that was the kind of the silver lining of this pivot for the economy to make sure it worked for people. But what we're increasingly seeing is that the people that are going to profit from this, that are going to make the money, are the big corporations, the blackrocks,
Whoa, whoa, that's really interesting. That's really interesting. So as you see it, the potential for a kind of green new deal was ruined by the fact that as this government saw it, it just was an excuse for economic business as usual, really. It was just something else to give big business to get on with. And therefore, inevitably, it wouldn't root itself in people's everyday lives in their communities. Completely. And I think that's where the foundational economy that Rachel Champion was so interesting, the towns and cities and
Small places that you went to John and have gone to and spoken to people where people feel disillusioned. They feel that politicians do nothing for them. Politics does nothing for them. That was what the foundational economy was about. And if you kind of then interconnect that with net zero, you begin then to see a pivot and a change which is really going to affect people's lives. Here's another question. Perhaps the government would say,
That before you're going to get to taking meaningful action on net zero, you have to see off climate skeptic populists on the right of politics who just pour coal water on net zero all the time. And the only way you do that is by growing the economy, putting more money in people's pockets and delivering. And therefore, rates of reason say, I have to get this bit right first. So I then have the political space to pursue net zero. It's trickled down, isn't it?
Is it? If you're allowing BlackRock and private water equity companies and the people behind who want to invest in Heathrow, this is money that you're expecting to create jobs and wealth that will then eventually trickle down to the rest of the country and to be constituents. This is really important. So your point is contrary to what Rachel Reeves says, this growth plan is highly unlikely to put significant amounts of money in everyday people's problems. It's trickle down.
And to quote my Prime Minister, it's a piss take. He said that in 2023. So look, it doesn't work. It's been proven not to what we spent the last 60 years waiting for trickle down. We're still waiting. I don't see because it's a Labour government and it's now going to happen. I'm afraid that's the problem. OK, here's a final question.
If a lot of your constituents in Norwich South next time decide to cast their vote for the Green Party because they may so have recoiled from things like this speech, would you forgive them? Do you understand them doing that? Look, I understand why people who have concerns for the climate and environment may not believe that my government is serious about that. Heathrow hasn't been built. There is still a big fight to have had both inside Westminster and beyond before this happens.
You know, there will be lots of MPs inside the Labour Party who will not be happy with this. However, what I will say is it's not the Green Party I'm so concerned about. It's actually my seat is a mixie. I'm as concerned about reform as I am about the Green Party, about being eaten at both ends of the spectrum. I don't know if you know this, but about 20% of the people who are now switching to reform are people who are very liberal, socially progressive,
have no issue with Islam, no issue with immigration particularly, overwhelming women who are switching because they are tired of the same old, same old, irrelevant and who's in power. We saw that in the US and my fear is we'll see it here. So it's not just the Green Party that I think benefit when my political party in particular, my government, begins to make these U-turns, begins to kind of contradict itself. It's bad for democracy, it's bad for our party and I think it opens the door to lots of other things that I'm not sure I want to see.
Thank you for joining us, Clive. Thank you, John. Lovely to be here. Right, let's pause here for a minute when we come back. We'll be looking at who this speech is for with the Guardian columnist, Gabby Hensliff.
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Welcome back. I'm now joined by the Guardian columnist Gabby Hinsliff. Hello, Gabby. Hello.
Right, let's talk some more about rates or easy speech and most of what was in it. First question, why is she doing this now? Is this more about the financial markets than it's about voters? The idea that you come out with a lot of boosterism to steady their nerves, do you think? Also, I've lost count now of the number of things that look like relaunches since it seems to be on every week.
I think this is primarily about confidence and that's partly market confidence but also labour parties confidence, business confidence, general publics confidence, telling them I think reassuring people that yeah we might have sluggish growth at the moment and it doesn't all look great and they're starting to hear about job losses but you know there is a plan, there is a strategy it will work. I think that's what it's about and I think you've seen some quite
rattled MPs possibly and also since the budget ever since the budget a lot of employers starting to say well you know they came and said they were going to be pro business then they worked as with a load of tax rises and now I'm not sure what the theory of growth is I'm not sure what the strategy is I don't know what these guys are doing.
So that is why I think she's making a speech today. And that's also why what we got is essentially a restating of the existing strategy. It's not some vastly new concept in there. They didn't go into election with, but a different tone, a different sense of urgency and emphasis on different things, things that they could do in the short term to kind of ungum the works, as it were.
Yeah, she's attempting to reassert her authority, take back the narrative and really try and stifle an air of panic, which has arguably swirled around the government or appeared to, of late. Let's go through a few of the key points. You say that none of this was that new, but support for a third runway at Heathrow, which we talked about in part one with Clive Lewis, that is not quite a change in the government's position, but it's a new thing on the political agenda as far as this government's concerned.
I mean, it's always been her position. I think she's using Heathrow as a kind of symbol of paralysis because that's what it's become. You know, this decision that we've spent 30, 40 years trying to take and not taking and what she was saying. I mean, the decision is not actually her to take, but I think what she was arguing primarily was, this is the kind of nettle that you have to grasp. And if we do it, we're sending a signal that we're serious about growth. And if we don't do it, we don't even take the decision. We're sending a signal that we're kind of not serious.
Another big item in this speech, which like a third Heathrow runway, it's been kicking around politics and government for a long, long time, is what the government now is rather clunkly calling Oxcam, this idea of a sort of corridor of technological innovation and lots of new houses between Oxford and Cambridge. So she went big on that, Gabby as well.
Yeah, I mean, I live in Oxfordshire for the entire 15 years. I've lived in Oxfordshire. People have been talking about this and it kind of was always going to happen and never does. But it makes sense. The idea of linking up the two, you've got two centres of high productivity, you know, both with sort of lots of science spin-offs because of the universities. And you join them up and make a sort of corridor to be better. You make it easier to go for east to west, basically, because at the moment, you know, motorways run north to south. So to train lines, mostly it's kind of hard across the country. All of that makes sense. And you can
Lots of new housing the government wants kind of around and along that corridor to the no doubt great irritation of people who live in it.
Yeah, I've got joyous memories from the early 90s. The only means of transport from Oxford to Cambridge has been a National Express coach. So I think that's still the case. You can't get a direct train. Let's rattle through a few of the other things. She said she's going to free up pension fund assets for investment. Again, that's quite old. The financial conduct authority, we are told, is looking at relaxing mortgage rules to allow people to buy with smaller deposits. So prime mortgages are back. Went so well last time.
That brought me a frisson of fear. But anyway, as you say, the framing of all this has also come from Keir Starmer. He's using some very striking language, talking about thickets of red tape and a morass of regulation that effectively bans billions of pounds more investment from flowing into Britain. There are analogies with Japanese knotweed as well. He's invoked Margaret Thatcher.
Arguably, this is the opposite of the kind of economic thinking. You might expect from the Labour Party. It sounds a bit like a sort of less bonkers version of Liz Truss. The idea that deregulation is the key to unlocking the potential of the economy. It's essentially a right-wing idea, which is why Cami Vaidnock in this week's PMQ said to Starmer that he's nicked conservative policy.
He says very specifically in the piece that deregulation isn't necessarily something that you'd expect a Labour government to be talking about. It's not something you normally expect to hear Labour talking about. We're used to hearing Tories talking about a bomb fire of red tape. And it's always the idea that you reach for when you've kind of run out of everything else. There's a bomb fire of red tape that will release everything.
But I think in this case, you've got very conservative language or sort of radically worrying language surrounding what's essentially the same old labor policy that has been familiar from the election. You've got the same growth strategy that they've always had, which is basically build a load of houses, use planning reform to do that. That has always been the centerpiece of the growth strategy. The theme of the speech was very much notice of a growth strategy. Now we have a preference for growth is what the treasury calls it. So if something's going to boost GDP and it comes up against something unpopular, like,
carbon emissions or whether that's people don't want houses in their backyard or don't want, you know, what about the rare bats living alongside the NHS2 that you choose growth. When you have a choice to make, you choose growth because otherwise growth is meaningless. It's like me saying that I want to do dry January and if someone's a drink, I say yes, you know, and then wonder why I get hammered. That is the sort of basic thesis behind it. But just because she's saying, you know, the answer can't always be no, that doesn't mean the answer always has to be yes.
What does worry me is I think that, you know, time and time again, when there's a sort of major disaster of some kind, you end up, you know, a sort of subprime lending crisis or a Grenfell fire or, you know, a novel pandemic or a killer AI or whatever it is in 15 years, you end up tracing it back to some kind of boring sounding little bit of arcane regulation that business was lobbying really hard to get rid of. And some minister thought, well, I was going to miss it. And then you only see the consequences of that a long way down the line when it's too late. That's the thing that worries me about
Yes, it is quite a big worry. It is quite a big worry. Inevitably, when you're saying to regulators, you've got to be less risk-averse. You've got to be less good. Well, you take risks, things happen. Risks have consequences. Let's talk about one of my worries, a bit more starmer here. He said, we're removing tools used by time-wasting nimbies.
Ungumming the system to deliver our plan for chains. We're clamping down on court cloggers. I assume court cloggers are the same as time wasting nimbies to get Britain building again. So here we go. This is the war on nimbies. I lean a bit nimby myself, right? I live in a 25,000 population town in Somerset, which is ringed by new housing developments. And of course, we need housing. Whether that's the right kind of housing is another question.
standard issue generic three and four bedroom homes when there's such housing need among young people, huge need for social housing. That's one question. But the other thing is when people kick off about proposals for new housing developments, very often a large part of what they're kicking off against.
is the fact that we build those new housing developments, we hugely increase the populations of lots and lots of places. Because we're still stuck in an atmosphere of austerity, we don't build new doctor surgeries and schools, we don't increase levels of public transport. And as a consequence, those places fall into a sort of social gridlock and
I, that's why it sticks in my craw. When I hear Westminster politicians and think Tanki people and newspaper columnists going on and on about nimbies, as if this is very simple, it isn't. You live in a sort of a...
probably a comparable town in Oxfordshire, right? Do you see where I'm coming from when I say that? Yeah, I do. But the risk of being a newspaper economist, I see the tensions here definitely. You know, I live in rural Oxfordshire housing. It's really controversial here. It's not popular. But at the same time, you know, I've got a 17 year old who's never ever going to be able to afford to live anywhere.
if some of us don't suck it up a bit. I think that's one reason they switched this emphasis on building, instead of trying to build little bits of housing all over everywhere that doesn't want it, have five big new settlements essentially is what they're talking about, relaxing green belts, so those get built on the edge of cities.
and developments in plans that make sense. I mean, the single bit of this speech that I found most cheering, which is like a bit that most people won't even care about, is she said she was going to relax planning rules around stations. So the presumption is in favour of development around stations. And that was like a little light switching on because she was talking about something that's happened to Manchester, the anti-burner has been really pushing. It meant the redevelopment of Stockport station,
So you put basically loads of first time buyer flats and loads of things that first time buyers like to do bars, restaurants, entertainment around the station. And what have you got there? Housing built right on top of public transport. So people don't need cars right on top of services that are already there. All those people who want to live in Manchester really but can't afford it. So this is 10 minutes in the centre of Manchester, you've bought your town. All of that seems like the kind of housing that's really very uncontroversial and really well planned and needed.
Can we come back to this nimby point? Because they also make out that the planning system is this huge sort of national blight that gets in the way of everything. Isn't that planning system an essential part of the rule of law? I mean, these things need scrutiny and oversight, thorough scrutiny of an oversight, right? And again, it worries me that the government's using this language. You talk to most local councillors and they'll tell you that planning is there for a reason.
I think the moment the planning system makes people on both ends of it feel like it doesn't work. No one has a good word to say about the planning process. And I don't know that you're ever going to get to a situation where everybody loves it. But I think we are probably going to have to agree to disagree on this. I just can't see how we get out of the housing crisis that we're in without building houses.
is a political question. How much do you think people will be interested and will feel their sort of political passion stirred by all this talk about growth? I have to say, in the course of talking to members of the general public, wondering up and down the country, unprompted, no one ever mentions it, right? Clearly, it's an abstract concept, and yet this is where the government at the moment is putting all its political emphasis.
But people talk about having out of pay rise, people talk about having got enough money to get by, people talk about their feels like this country's going downhill, people talk about my hospital's falling apart, my school's falling apart. She was very clear up front, at the beginning of the speech she used line, she's not used before, growth can't just be lines on a graph, it has to be something you can feel in real life. Without economic growth, we cannot improve the living standards of ordinary working people.
Because growth isn't simply about lines on a graph. It's about the pounds in people's pockets, the vibrancy of our high streets and the thriving businesses that create wealth, jobs and new opportunities for us, for our children and grandchildren.
Not just boosting GDP for the sake of it. That's where the money comes from to improve public services. Raised productivity is what translates to raised living standards, what translates to pay rises and what translates to feeling like the world is getting better not worse, like you're moving up a knife. It goes to the fabric of all of our lives.
should have heard more of that kind of talk, Gabby. In that speech, do you not think you've said that she sort of paid a bit of lip service to that Lano argument, but we didn't hear that much about it. It's still unessentially, it feels like quite a cold technocratic argument in the hands of Erwin Gierstein.
I think it was, and I think in some ways that's who the audience for this speech was. I think primarily this wasn't a sort of speech to the general public as much as it was a speech to a business audience because that's the people whose confidence in this case unlocks investment. That's the people whose minds she's trying to change. Don't get me wrong, I feel that both stammer and Reeves have a tendency to do speeches that sail over people's heads. But I think in this case, that might have been slightly more by design than accident.
And last point, the big project she's talking about, Heathrow Third Runway, Ox Camp. I mean, even this general sense of, you know, a great mushroom of infrastructure development and all that, we both know that even if some of it, most of it actually happens, we won't see the results for years. So in terms of the next election and the government, it has said historically low popularity levels, this might not change much at all.
No, and I think, I mean, for example, Heathrow, the best business case for Heathrow is it adds 0.43% GDP by 2050. I mean, we are not working a quick fix for everyone's problems, but which is why you get government talking about, you know, the sort of psychological impact of seeing cranes going up and things happening and it looking like
something's changing. That having an impact before you sort of feel, if you don't want to mean the direct economic bridge, of course, cranes going up is also something that people complain about and don't like. So, you know, you have both sides of that argument. But I think it is, in this case, more about getting people to feel that there is a plan, there is a strategy is in hand, somebody is actually doing something. We're not just kind of like rattling along the road to doom, panicking and flapping about not knowing what to do.
It's always good not to rattle along the road to doom. I feel like I want to do that. On that we can definitely agree. We will be back on possibly the rattling road to doom next week. Thank you for joining us, Gary. We're always rattle along the road to doom.
Thanks to all of you for listening and thank you to the people who've been writing to us at our new email address, politicsweeklyukatheguardian.com. Please keep your thoughts and questions coming about today's episode or anything else you'd like us to discuss on the podcast. Plus, check out our sister podcast, Politics Weekly America. This week, they're looking at Donald Trump's changes to LGBTQ plus rights and what the fallout from all that could be.
This episode of Pollux with the UK was produced by Frankie Toby and Mimi Ibrahim. The music is by Axel Kukute and the executive producers of Zoe Hitch and Nicole Jaz. This is The Guardian.
The reason why we are here today is that we are going to be in the right direction. We are going to be in the right direction. We are going to be in the right direction. We are going to be in the right direction. We are going to be in the right direction. We are going to be in the right direction. We are going to be in the right direction. We are going to be in the right direction. We are going to be in the right direction. We are going to be in the right direction. We are going to be in the right direction. We are going to be in the right direction.
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