Guest election blog – Labour by Sophie Pavelle

I’m a Devon-based author (Forget Me Not, Bloomsbury 2022) and science communicator. I have worked in the NGO conservation sector since leaving university, most recently for Beaver Trust. I’m an Ambassador for The Wildlife Trusts and sit on the RSPB England Advisory Committee. My writing appears in The Guardian, National Geographic Traveller, New Scientist, The Independent, and BBC magazines.

Having been born in the USA I have dual citizenship between the States and the UK, first voting in the 2013 US election, and later in the 2015 UK general election. I’ve often felt torn between viewing voting as both a privilege and a frustration. Voting increasingly feels like casting a line into a dark and dirty political lake, only for it never to be bitten. Come the 4th July 2024, I hope my vote may count towards fairness, honesty, deliverance of positive change, and tighten the government’s grip on the climate and biodiversity crisis with serious teeth.

This is my review of, and my thoughts about, the environmental implications of the Labour Party’s election manifesto.

Things I like:

• The commitment to change (because it must happen). In 2019, Labour’s manifesto told us ‘It’s Time For Real Change’. Come 2024, we are met with an onslaught of the same ideology. Change change change repeats in dizzying italics to open their 140+ page document, enough to deter any curious reader. If they say it enough, and light an intention candle while they chant, perhaps change will just happen and the ‘chaos’ will magically end in a puff of smoke?
• The revival of the UK’s EV transition. From an environmental perspective, I am disappointed by much of this manifesto. But having experienced life via an electric vehicle (EV) at home over the last year, I agree that the EV infrastructure needs investment and strategy if we are to catch up with that of other countries and make personal use of EV’s more affordable at the outset, and less of a logistical ballet. Labour state the ban of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030 as a flagship catalyst in this change, with that and a zero-carbon electricity system complimenting ambition for ‘clean energy by 2030’; led by a new publicly owned company called Great British Energy. We aren’t party to any detail of their methods of delivery as to quite how they will ‘double onshore wind’ and ‘triple solar power’ by this deadline – just a headshot of a brooding Keir Starmer with some wind turbines in the background and only five years to go.
• Increasing environmental resilience. The Labour Party make the link between the need to increase ‘resilience’ in preparing for the environmental challenges of flooding and erosion in coastal areas, and the impact of inaction on personal and societal wellbeing. Whose ‘inaction’ exactly remains unclear, especially as Labour appears to defer responsibility by referring to the dual climate and biodiversity crises as ‘the Conservative’s nature emergency’.
• Nature-friendly housing developments and in-built climate resilience to house designs is welcome, as is the commitment to maintaining environmental protections in housing developments affected by nutrient neutrality – including excess nutrient offsetting measures, like wetlands.
• 50 per cent of all food purchased across the public sector is to be locally produced or at least certified to environmental standards. Again, quite how they will achieve and sustain this, remains a mystery.
• The climate and nature crisis is the ‘greatest’ long-term global challenge that we face – an accurate statement summarising today’s state of green affairs. Impressively, Labour also tell us they can ‘end’ it as though it is but a fantasy – a movie dragging on and they’re able to play hero and hit the ‘off’ switch.

Things I don’t like:

• £24 billion for ‘green initiatives’ in their ‘Green Prosperity Plan’, a budget that reads more like an advert for a shiny new detergent in the green wash than a robust, strategic framework for nature’s recovery.
• Labour flaunts some words and phrases, and promise to end the sewage scandal of our waterways – but what specifically are they going to do to make good their promises? How ambitious are their deadlines? Sure, they rightly acknowledge that Britain is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world – but this statistic is old. In this context, its inclusion feels lazy, recycled and lacklustre. Isn’t it time to pay nature more than lip service?
• The UK as the world-leading ‘clean energy superpower’ is the grand, green headline. How foolish of me to hope for ‘biodiversity’, or ‘ecosystem restoration’. I can’t see any emphasis given to flood mitigation, or drought resilience. And certainly not species reintroductions, clean air or with any gumption, clean water.
• Any notion of ‘reconnection’ or connectivity is written in the context of Britain as a business, a powerful trading nation – not as an archipelago which needs the terrestrial and the marine and every living thing in-between to be joined as one living system as though by umbilical cord.

Things that appear to be missing:

Soon into the manifesto I find myself as participant in an unexpected game of hide and seek. I realise I have already been playing all week: I can’t hear anything of substance from Labour as to their environmental policies on the radio or TV, perhaps I’ll read of it instead?

I begin my search, shortcutting baggy sections with Ctrl+F hunting for words I’d expect to see from the party claiming to ‘end’ climate change. It becomes harder than I thought.

• ‘Biodiversity’ (the crucial measure of the variety of life on Earth), has one mention across all 140+ pages. The context? As something to merely ‘promote’ like free shots on a cheap night out. A flyer through the door.
• ‘Drought’, ‘wildfire’, and ‘air pollution’ – all present, significant threats to the UK as climate change strengthens its grip. A recent study by air quality organisation IQAir (2024) finds just seven out of a surveyed 134 countries meet the World Health Organisation’s air quality standard. The UK is not one of them. ‘Wildfire’ is named alongside transport and industry as the top three contributors to background air pollution. With these facts to hand, I felt sure drought, wildfire or air pollution would get a namedrop in this manifesto. Any luck? Zero mentions.
• ‘Keystone’, as in ‘keystone species’ which exert a top-down influence and stabilise food-chains and ecosystem resilience: zero.
• ‘Beavers’ – the keystone mammal which (in the right river catchments) can offer profound, economical and rapid ecosystem services in the way of flood and drought mitigation as ecosystem engineer: also, zero.
• The marine environment is blessed with barely a nod, a single reference, despite being integral to both the UK’s climate and energy security. Over 60 per cent of our seabird populations are plummeting, at the mercy of bird flu, fragile fish stocks, extreme weather, and more. Is our blue planet not worthy of specific policies?
• A ‘Right To Roam’ Act – um, what happened to this? Labour seems to have retracted its loud and ready pledge to revolutionise public access to nature in a policy similar to that in Scotland, despite this promise being widely publicised (and largely welcomed) in January 2023. Yes, we noticed. And still, in England, only one per cent of the population owns half the country.
• ‘Toxic’. I find one mention. Not, as I would expect, detailing the toxic chemicals polluting every single one of England’s rivers – but of a ‘toxic’ imbalance of economic growth Labour seek to remedy if elected into power.
• Farming comprises 71 per cent of UK land area, yet the section of Labour’s manifesto on their plans for farming is so small it’s easily missed, save for a pledge to make the Environment Land Management (ELM) ‘work for farmers and nature’. That is the least they can offer when farming is crucial to nature’s recovery. I’ll believe it when I can hear skylarks again.

Overall assessment:

The lack of clarity on Labour’s environmental policies leave me reeling in the choppy wake of assumption. All I can do is hope Labour’s sparsity of environmental speak belies their fundamental understanding of and robust plans to restore the state of UK nature, the threats facing local areas, and the diversity in which threats present themselves.

With all the information, the science, the solutions to hand this party had every chance of nailing their approach to the UK’s environmental future. Instead it feels skewed by a blinkered pro-business approach that, although fundamental, lacks strength by blindsiding the natural capital to be gained by working with and restoring nature.

This manifesto feels environmentally half-hearted, bogged down by political mood swings and dull rhetoric. Any hope of a clear path is lost under a hazy, scattergun approach. From pothole fixing to an abolition of trail hunting – the chosen examples of priorities make me feel like they’ve rummaged in a raffle and picked out a few at random because that’ll do.

The only pledge even vaguely linked to the environment in their manifesto highlights is the oxymoronic ‘Clean Power’. Where is the seagrass? The peatlands? The temperate rainforests? The recognition of farmers and landowners as crucial allies in a wilder future? Where is the wild colour, intelligence and vibrancy in this manifesto that should galvanise a new generation of voters, and reassure them that their voice truly matters when standing up for nature?

To me, Labour writes of nature as the accessory to their ties and blazers – instead of the beating heart in the body underneath.The way the environment is written of is not only boring and lifeless but concerning. Labour repeatedly encourages us to join them and ‘turn the page’ – but they hardly make it easy. True to their namesake, the manifesto is a laborious read. I’m wading through treacle to find anything that excites or reassures me that they have clarity on the true state of the natural world. Is the Labour party aiming to motivate action for nature and its restoration, or deflate it?

It’s crunch time and I feel as though Labour are still at the door lacing up their brogues, while the rest of us are standing there in waterproofs wondering when they will come outside and feel the storm. I wanted this to be an oak tree of a manifesto that had nature’s back, that defends her corner with sword and shield. Instead, Labour takes aim with a skinny green arrow and misses in that sweet, stunning form of denial which takes years to refine. Labour, take a bow.

Would I vote for these policies?:

Would you?

This is one of a series of opinion pieces on the political parties’ 2024 general election manifestos. They were commissioned by Wild Justice several months ago by approaching a wide variety of conservationists and environmentalists long before the date of the general election was known. Some people who originally agreed to write pieces found the date and short timescale impossible and had to back out. We did not know what they would write and their only brief was to pick one or two political parties’ election manifestos and tell us what they liked and didn’t like about their environmental policies. We didn’t tell people what to write and we haven’t edited what they wrote (except to squeeze things into a common format, to correct minor grammatical and spelling errors and typos). The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Wild Justice.

If you think you could produce a review of one of the 2024 general election manifestos then we would need to receive it as soon as possible, but in any case before 26 June, in a similar format to that above, as a word file and with a .jpg or .png image of yourself, the author. Send any potential texts to admin@wildjustice.org.uk and we will look at them. We’ll let you know if we want to publish your piece and we may be able to pay you a small amount for it.