Despite ‘control freak‘ Sue Gray’s not-so-svengali wrangling causing chaos with government appointments, Labour SpAd teams are coming together and beginning normal operation. Over at DESNZ Ed Miliband’s squad brings some unorthodox ideology to the table…
Miliband is retaining his long-term advisers. Guiding the UK’s energy policy operation will be climate activist Tobias Garnett, the former coordinator of Extinction Rebellion’s legal strategy team who represented the road-gluing activists in court. Garnett believes our trajectory is currently “descending swiftly into a politics of ecofascism forged in the crucible of scarce resources, droughts, floods, climate wars and forced migration.” Doesn’t quite sound like politics that will “tread lightly on people’s lives”…
Also on the team is Jonty Leibowitz, whose passion is arguing for socialist reforms to football that include:
When it comes to his energy brief Leibowitz’ contribution is a policy paper which argues that “regional banking” should be forcibly re-oriented to “financing the energy transition“. Ideas shared by radical Corbynite and “green” bank devotee Miatta Fahnbulleh – recently appointed energy minister…
SpAd Eleanor Salter’s focus is “integrating nature into the climate offer“. Salter thinks a “fundamental shift” is required to deal with the “climate breakdown“, which includes “taking many cars off the roads altogether.” Her other “nature” proposals include allowing anyone to traipse across private property to make “the countryside open to all” but especially to gypsies, whose “access rights are already under threat from the authoritarian Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which seeks to criminalise trespass.” And who would have guessed that Salter once said our “best sources of hope” come from Jeremy Corbyn, and that Extinction Rebellion has been “hugely successful… a great accelerator for activism”…
SpAds are often relied on to temper the barmy ideas of their Cabinet Minister. No chance of that in Ed’s team…
