our plan for labour’s first year
Our new Government has been elected on a promise of change - and this country is desperately crying out for it. Austerity has left millions in poverty. Our public services have been neglected and are failing. And we're running out of time to take real action on the climate crisis.
These are deep crises. To address them, this Government must be bold.
They have a huge opportunity in front of them: to tackle the climate and cost of living crises at the same time. To make our hospitals and schools thrive, to create good green jobs for all and to protect and restore nature. But we need solutions big enough to actually improve people’s lives.
That’s where we come in.
The Green New Deal is the solution to the crises we face. It’s a bold, transformative plan to kickstart our economy by investing in the green infrastructure we need to tackle the climate crisis. It’s a plan to address the climate emergency by building a stronger, fairer, greener economy that puts ordinary people’s needs first. It puts power back into the hands of communities, from publicly owned transport networks to worker-led transitions away from fossil fuels to the green industries of the future. It’s a plan to stop huge parts of the world going underwater. A plan to redistribute hoarded wealth to the places and people that need it most.
Are you with us?
To get there, the Labour Government must spend their first months in power unlocking the path to a Green New Deal. This means taxing the super-rich, restoring plans to deliver a historic programme of mass investment in our public services and turbocharging green industries, bringing rail, water and energy back into public hands, delivering a green jobs guarantee and a living income, and making global polluters pay for the damage they’ve caused. If these plans sound big and ambitious, it’s because we need big, ambitious solutions to the crises we face. To get the decade of the Green New Deal underway, these are our demands of the new government:
1. tax extreme wealth now
8 in 10 people want to see a tax on the record fortunes of the super-rich to help rebuild our crumbling public services. As we reach record numbers of billionaires, whilst ordinary people are unable to pay for basic essentials, committing to a fairer taxation system that asks the super-rich to contribute as much as working people do should be one of the new government's first priorities.
2. mass public investment in climate
Just like when previous crises have hit us, we need the state to coordinate our collective response. We can’t leave it to private companies who will always prioritise their bottom lines over people’s lives. We won’t truly fix our economy and move at the speed and scale needed to address the climate emergency without mass public investment - on a historic scale - to build an economy that puts people and planet before profit. Doing so will create millions of well-paying jobs in the industries of the future.
3. expand public ownership
We’re sick of watching water and energy bosses take home huge bonuses while our infrastructure falls apart, we can’t afford to heat our homes and our rivers and seas are poisoned. If we want sustainable public services that work, deliver for our communities and are run for public good, not private profit, Labour must bring all core utilities back into public hands & keep their promise to renationalise rail.
4. a green jobs guarantee and security for all
From retrofitting to caring to working on our buses and trains - everyone who wants a job in the green economy should be able to get, or be trained for, one. Crucially, the workers who have powered our economy in carbon-intensive industries must receive iron-clad assurances they will have a good, well-paying job in new, green industries. And our social security system must provide a living income for anyone who needs it.
5. global polluters must pay
The UK must do its global fair share to tackle the climate crisis, and build its capacity to do so through a permanent and progressive windfall tax on fossil fuel companies and other super-rich corporations profiting from the climate crisis. It should lead the charge in setting up an international windfall tax that’s redistributed as reparations to those on the frontlines of climate change and global inequality.
the path to a green new deal
The Green New Deal can only be delivered by government. If we do not act decisively before the end of this decade, we are facing catastrophic, irreversible climate outcomes. So this Government has to be the one to do it.
Labour’s current politics-as-usual, paper-over-the-cracks solutions will not solve the gaping crises our country, and world, face. As this Government falters, and scrambles for ideas to deliver their promised change, we have a solution waiting for them, and we won’t stop until we win a Green New Deal.
And it must start with finally taxing the record fortunes of the super-rich. Most people want to see the ultra-wealthy finally taxed fairly, so that we all get the care we need, kids get a proper education, and we can build clean, green energy systems. Right now our system allows billionaires to fly their hyper-polluting private jets and leave luxury apartments empty while working people wonder if they’ll ever be able to buy a home and agonise about paying their bills. But we know there is an alternative. Fair taxes on extreme wealth are popular, effective, and unlock the kind of mass public investment that is central to delivering a Green New Deal.
how we win
To win, we are building power inside and outside Parliament. Our movement is strong in the streets, and strong in the halls of power. Our bloc of Green New Deal Champions work to champion social and climate justice and stand up for our generation. Meanwhile, we make sure our political leaders cannot ignore us, taking action on the ground, in the media, and online until we win a Green New Deal.
And we continue to grow our movement, building strength across the country to organise locally for change, from Brighton to Bristol, Cardiff to Aberdeen. We’ll create a force of youth power, demanding our leaders deliver for us, for our communities and for our future.
We are serious about winning because the stakes for us are so high. We need to make sure that the new government is working for us. Not the super rich, not the fossil fuel lobby, not the rightwing press. We will use our voices and our numbers to win real change.
Social movements have always changed the world — not one person, not one organisation, and certainly not one politician.
Join us.
