The Progressive

Benn: Green politics can renew Labour

In a recent speech to SERA Hilary Benn has argued that the Labour party must put the environment at the heart of its renewal.

Benn argued that all too often, environment campaigners have been on the sidelines of party debates and that green ideas have often failed to make it into the political mainstream. He told SERA that he agreed with David Miliband who has argued that the green movement has been seen, rightly or wrongly, as being anti-growth. Benn said that the idea that growth is bad is not only politically unpalatable but it is also immoral. Why? Because, argued Benn, it hurts the world's poor the most. During his stint at DfID Benn said he had seen first hand how economic growth is the surest way to lift people out of poverty, to provide them with jobs, with healthcare and with the chance to go to school.

He argued that environmental politics had to be fair politics and said that David Cameron's proposals on air taxed would do little to cut emissions but would do a lot to take money from the poor. Labour politics must be green politics said Benn and green politics must be Labour politics. He said that Labour should make being a member make more attractive, that historically we have recruited a lot of people, only for them to drift away from the party. Labour should host debates on local issues in venues away from constituency party meeting rooms and offices. It should be talking about the things that the people we hope to represent are talking about. We need to listen more. According to Benn if we make Labour the party that makes the difference on environmental issues, it will bring more people, and more active people, to the party than anything else.

For Benn green politics offers Labour a once in a generation opportunity for renewal.

Hilary Benn is right: we need to make poverty history in this country too.

People’s responses to the recent UNICEF report, and to the spate of shootings during the week just gone, indicate that there is a real desire on the part of the people of Britain to tackle poverty and inequality at their roots. Last week, in a speech at the University of London’s Institute of Education, Hilary Benn put forward the case for a campaign on poverty in Britain, what he described as a “campaign against poverty of circumstance, poverty of opportunity, poverty of aspiration.  Wasted lives, potential unfulfilled.”

In his speech Benn argued that the Make Poverty History campaign demonstrated that poverty and exclusion is fundamentally about injustice: about the lack of opportunities, the lack of resources and the lack of medicines. Yet, he argued, in Britain, all too often, too many people feel that they have to accept the lottery of birth without question. At the heart of the Make Poverty History campaign was the belief that politics can and does make a difference to the quality of ordinary peoples’ lives.

Benn suggests that the biggest lesson we have to learn in Britain from the developing world is that if we work together, and campaign, and push, and put our minds to it, and fight, politics can change things.

What Benn is really saying is that we must NOT give into the cynics, we must not give into those who will argue that the problems are so enormous, so vast, they are cannot be tackled.

Hilary Benn is reminding us all of the strength and virtue of collective endeavour, he is reminding each and everyone of us of the values and principles on which our movement was founded.