Inside Labour’s battle with its own green agenda

By-election nights for the Conservatives, trailing behind Labour in the polls, have become a moment of dread at Tory HQ. As one veteran campaigns official put it: “Whenever you get pinged that an MP is standing down, or something worse happens to them, the first thought is ‘Oh no, another by-election’ — often with a horror emoji sign attached.”

Yet Uxbridge and South Ruislip, the west London seat abruptly vacated by Boris Johnson in umbrage at a parliamentary suspension over partygate infractions, roundly bucked the trend with a squeaky 495 majority for the Tories, even as Labour surged in Yorkshire and the Liberal Democrats trounced the Tories in Somerset.

The following week exposed tensions in Labour’s high command over how to handle voter pushback in the areas of London affected by the extension of the £12.50-a-day Ulez charge, imposed by the mayor Sadiq Khan to dissuade drivers using older vehicles which pump out dangerous levels of pollutants.

It has brought to a boil tensions between a mayor who is unchallenged by a lacklustre Conservative showing in London politics and has his eyes set firmly on a third term — and Sir Keir Starmer, focused on a general election victory and anxious to remove any impediments to voters placing a cross next to Labour candidates.

Starmer quickly acknowledged that Labour “must be doing something very wrong” if a key policy “ended up on Tory leaflets”, and he promised a rethink. His own aides, including battle-hardened strategy chief Deborah Mattinson, have long raised concerns about the electoral implications of the wholesale expansion of Ulez. They were proved right. Even the man dubbed “sleek Sadiq” by colleagues for his ability to sail through controversies agreed to a period of “reflection” on how to soften the financial impact of a policy which has just proven its vote-losing credentials — without letting go of a commitment to bring London healthier air. The Labour church is split. Max Sullivan, a councillor for Bayswater, this week sent a storming letter to Starmer saying that a “necessary policy to clean up the air in outer London and save lives should not be put at risk by a flawed and simplistic interpretation of the election result”.

Danny Beales, the defeated Labour candidate, however, is insistent that the expansion of the scheme was “not at the right time” on top of cost-of-living pressures and that it was clearly the reason Labour failed to land a key target seat. Of course, Ulez rows are not just about policies and their costs.

It has resurfaced power plays in the Opposition, and Starmer’s paradoxical relationship with the Green movement and its prominent protagonist in the Labour ranks, Ed Miliband. The figure who lost Labour the 2015 election after a bitter battle for the leadership with his brother David has been seen as the “power behind Keir’s throne,” working up policy proposals like a state-backed energy company and pushing for a more assertive stance on climate change. For some — including the stern shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves — the risk of “Milibandism” is a belief that the public is more aligned with progressive zeal than turns out to be the case on election day. One shadow cabinet member notes there is a “frisson” when Miliband, who is shadow spokesman on climate change, tweets about “Keir, Rachel and me” and adds: “I think he hasn’t got used to not being leader, or at least up there on the top team.”

Moves like the proposed ban on new oil and gas extraction in the North Sea are strongly favoured by Miliband but cause worries among some about how far and fast a Labour government would go to rule out businesses which have oil and gas underpinning their model.

A lot of work has gone into formulating tweets which emphasise that the three are “on the same page”. Reeves, however, calls the shots in determining how fast expensive commitments like the £28 billion-a-year green transition and jobs push can be rolled out — and her tone is markedly more cautious.

A summer of Just Stop Oil disruption has complicated matters still more for Starmer. Labour accepted hefty donations from Just Stop Oil backer Dale Vince. That opened up Starmer to attacks of hypocrisy from Grant Shapps, the Energy Secretary, who identified Labour and Starmer personally with more extreme climate-change activism.

Starmer is reported to have made testy remarks about activists at Labour meetings and said of Just Stop Oil: “I absolutely condemn the way they go about things and their tactics.”

Still, a senior figure in Starmer’s close-knit inner team complains that it is “mischievous [of the Tories] to conflate Ulez with wider measures to combat climate change. They are really two separate things because Ulez is primarily about public health — and that is why the policy was formulated by Boris with cross-party support”. Yet it was Khan himself who has doubled down on a looming “Green divide” as Labour seeks to explain how an ambitious transition in climate-friendly jobs can be paid for.

The £28 billion-a-year capital spending commitment has been pushed to the second half of a Labour first term, with growing unease among Starmer’s more fiscally-restrained colleagues about affordability and inflationary pressures. And while the Labour leader is clear in shadow cabinet meetings that he believes green growth is the only credible way forward, he distrusts the more messianic tone of campaigning messages on climate change.

Satirizing David Cameron, one loyal friend to many Labour leaders, a leading author, wryly coined the phrase “the green crap” to describe Miliband’s focus on the environment. That has produced a furious backlash — not least from Khan, whose first response to a scolding from Starmer over the Uxbridge result was to send out a tweet (now deleted) which highlighted the climate crisis in the context of the Ulez charge. That landed poorly in Labour’s Southwark HQ — and irked campaigns chief Morgan McSweeney, who saw it as a nose-thumbing response. Khan has had to concede that the expansion of the charge cannot stay on the present terms. But the mayor also feels the backlash against a measure which has a sound record in mitigating damage from polluting vehicles has turned into a weapon against him.

In the past few days, Starmer has taken personal charge of “fixing this” and called for a range of proposals. The pre-Uxbridge position that this is “essentially a matter for the mayor,” has been unceremoniously dumped. Notes one veteran Labour MP, Khan “will be left to serve up whatever Keir thinks is the most palatable way out of this”.

“He (Keir) is not a seat of the pants person,” says one aide. “He abhors sticking-plaster politics, so is not going to have an answer on this tomorrow. But there will be an answer and we will consider different funding mechanisms.”

The irony is that Ulez is a move intended to pave the way to a cleaner, healthier London as a model to cities beyond. But the Uxbridge experience has left an uneasy question in the minds of politicians — who pays for progress and at what pace to keep public opinion intact?

Anne McElvoy is executive editor at POLITICO