The Green Party are holding Starmer to account in the most genius way!

Right, so here’s a novelty. Keir Starmer as many of you will be aware ditched a set of 10 pledges that he stood on to become Labour leader. He didn’t do it all at once, he ditched a bit here and a bit there, binning stuff like a Green New Deal, abolishing universal credit as the failure that it has been, defending the rights of migrants instead of attacking them I’m sure there will be others you can recall without me going over all them again, history as they are now, consigned to the bin, Starmer never really meaning a word of it. And so it is in light of that perhaps, and also to expose the new Prime Ministers history of a loose association with meaning what he says that the Green Party have drafted what amounts to a new set of 10 pledges for Keir Starmer, in what can be seen as a clear swipe at Starmer’s past for being less than honest, but these aren’t 10 pledges for Starmer to deal with at some point over the next 5 years, the Greens are demanding Starmer deal with all of their pledges within the first 100 days and whilst they might not be Labour policy, much more on the lines of Green policy as you’d expect, I’d challenge anybody not to agree with them.
Right, so 10 brand new pledges for Keir Starmer, though given he hasn’t made them himself, he cannot technically be accused of breaking them when he inevitably does not deliver I suppose, but deliver on all of these he absolutely should and on some he has actually already managed at least partial success.
The Green Party has laid down what it calls its 10 steps in 100 days, so I thought I’d take a look at these and see where Labour is on these issues, where it might be getting somewhere and where it blatantly isn’t.
The first step the Greens want delivered is to settle the pay dispute with junior doctors.
Now Labour might be getting somewhere here already, it’s been a long running dispute over pay for the junior doctors and although positive noises have come from the doctors themselves no final deal has yet been reached, but is Starmer wants to get NHS treatment on the rise again, as claimed, then he needs this resolved and fast. Right wingers and by that I mean to the right of Labour in this case are already jeering that Labour are capitulating to the doctors wants, but given the Tories haven’t even spoken to them since March, anything Labour do at the moment is more than they were doing. The argument by these right wing prats is that the junior doctors are demanding full pay restoration ,which would amount to a pay rise after years of pay suppression of 35% and a cost of £1.3bn. Labour could find this if they wanted to and wouldn’t even need the Green Party desired wealth tax to allow the government to spend. When Rishi Sunak’s bankers tax giveaway came in at £7.3bn, Labour could always just reverse that, uprate the doctors by what they are owed and still have cash left over.
Second on the Green Party list is to remove the two child benefit cap. This I covered in a video specifically the other day so won’t go over too much of that again here, but the fact is there looks to be enough dissent both in the Labour Party and on opposition benches to possibly force a vote on this and depending on how many Labour MPs really ant to be seen as keeping kids in poverty, it will be a test to see just how unassailable Keir Starmer’s majority is.
Meanwhile he’s been quizzed on this on Good Morning Britain and asked how he can justify spending billions on weapons and a £3bn a year aid package for Ukraine and still keep kids here in poverty and he had the brass neck and temerity to say there is no easy fix for child poverty. There is. Give Ukraine less, or again, reverse Sunak’s bankers tax giveaway and use some of that.
Third is a demand to bring criminal charges against water companies for persistent discharge of sewage into our rivers and seas.
I don’t think there would be many of us who wouldn’t want to see this, but where Labour committed in their manifesto to prosecute failing water firms, and when they first stepped into power one of the biggest issues they were facing was the multibillion pound potential critical failure of Thames Water, instead of mounting such prosecutions, Labour have instead, at this point anyway, allowed our water bills to rise by anywhere between 22% and 44% over the next 5 years and which I did another video on just today so won’t go over too much of this again here either, go and watch that video instead, but when this can be summed up as instead of prosecuting water firms, they’re going to make us pay to have our sewage cleaned up and clean water provided for twice, its an immediate example of Labour failure and doing nothing different than the Tories before them ,so the Green Party are absolutely right to be demanding better on this as we all should be.
Fourth, make solar panels compulsory on all new suitable homes and reverse the de facto ban on onshore wind. Labour have already done the latter, which is good, far be it from me to not give credit where due, though, as always when you’re a cynic and you’re looking for a catch, who will be building them and who will be owning them in our privatised energy market will be the devil in the detail. That said, the solar panel idea is a good one, as it is environmentally sound, helps keep customers bills down, would be popular, far more so putting more solar panels on houses than filling up fields with the things, land that can be used for other things and by including solar panels on new builds, it’s a lot cheaper having them installed as standard, rather than having to retrofit them at a later date. We see panels going up around us all the time, it’s not as if people don’t want them, this really ought to be a no brainer and would be a popular shift for Labour, it’s an easy good headline for them and if they were planning on building new housing themselves I daresay it would be, but anything that could be seen as disincentivising for all of those private housebuilders set to be building the 1.5m new houses Labour have promised to deliver this parliament – which works out at roughly 25,000 a month, or 5700 a week, quite the ambitious target – is unlikely to be considered.
Fifth, produce a local plan for local rail links that could be reopened. But the Greens opposed HS2 I can hear some saying, it was an overly expensive nonsense that benefited only a relatively small proportion of the population at ridiculous cost, for not a whole lot of gain, shaving half an hour off the travel time. The Beeching reforms of the 60s isolated a lot of communities, the money from HS2 could be better spent improving local rail links around the country than an exorbitant Tory vanity project like HS2. Now it is conceivable, given Labour are still saying they’ll renationalise rail, by taking franchises back under government control as they expire, that this could happen, that proper investment in rail without the need to pay off shareholders could see such benefits become a reality, but how exactly Labour plan to administer this, run it, ensure the money is still put in is what we must watch for, because we saw nationalised services engineered to fail before and we must look out for any sign of this apparent renationalisation if it materialises, being designed to fail from the get go.
Sixth, is to call an emergency dentistry summit. This one has received much mockery on social media I’ve noticed, claims by detractors that the Green Party are not a serious party by including such a policy and it reminded me of Jeremy Corbyn being laughed at one PMQs for bringing up bus routes. I daresay the sneering sorts deriding this idea are people who can afford to pay a dentist, given that finding an NHS one is akin to looking for a needle in a haystack. You have people unable to get a dentist pulling their own teeth out, and stats out just yesterday showied that between 2022 and 2023, just 4 out of every 10 adults managed to get a dental checkup in the UK. It’s not funny, it’s a major health issue, gum disease for example has been linked to the development of diabetes and for those us who were born with issues affecting our teeth, I was born with a cleft lip affecting my dental development for example, it’s all the more important and the consequences can be all the more difficult to manage. We have a crisis in this country, not just affecting patients, but dental practices too. Dentists, unlike doctors and nurses aren’t employed by the NHS, they just get payments from them to cover treatment and many, like my dentist have had to stop serving NHS patients because the cost of doing so would see their practice go under. So if you’ve laughed at this policy, there’s really nothing to laugh at here and it’s good that the Greens have platformed it.
Seventh, restore the right to strike to public sector workers. Last year the Tories past a law banning this. Labour are supposed to be the party of the trade unions, so why not repeal this? Surely that is obvious. Are you on the side of workers or not? Well, Starmer won’t go on picket lines will he and sacks people who do, it’s been a question for a long time as to why some unions still fund them, now they are in government, if they don’t make good on backing workers rights, why give them workers dues? Not a union I’d want to be part of if Labour carry on and don’t enhance workers rights once more. Labour have committed to introducing legislation on this and to do so within 100 days, so the same timeframe as the Green Party demands, surely an easy win win situation then? Well we will see won’t we?
Eighth, this one will screw Starmer up royally, recognise the state of Palestine. We all know he won’t do it, despite still saying he will, just not exactly when. There is no excuse not to, it would be a huge step on the way to a two state peace solution by treating both sides as equals, Israel and Palestine. France looks set to do it, Ireland, Spain and Norway have all recently done it, why not us too? Well that’ll be the Israel Lobby with so much clout behind the scenes of Starmer’s party, his donors, those who got him where he is today, he owes the Israel Lobby everything. I just can’t see that recognition ever coming.
Ninth, Introduce a Natural History GCSE, I wouldn’t have minded studying such a thing, I’m not sure if I’d make it one of my 10 priorities, but I can see the sense of it, making people more aware of the intertwined issues, of climate change and ecology, and the natural resources too many of us take for granted would be beneficial for sure, nobody can say it’s a bad thing, but would Labour do it? Who knows?
And tenth, Strengthen renters rights. End no fault evictions and provide local authorities with new powers to control rents. Labour are bringing in legislation to end no fault evictions, landlords are squealing about it, but I have no sympathy whatsoever. Private landlords exploit a housing shortage, drive up prices, price out first time buyers and being able to evict people for no good reason is just ridiculous so I’m glad Labour are stepping in there, I fully support that. But rent controls they won’t go to either, so still, landlords can charge what they like, regardless of local incomes, keeping people impoverished and keeping the housing benefit bill inflated actually. Rent controls would bring down that bill and why should anyone have to pay an overinflated rent because they can’t get on the housing ladder, when a mortgage on the same property might be significantly less? It’s a mess, Labour aren’t going far enough, too many Labour MPs being landlords themselves, anathema to the foundation of their own party.
So all in all I don’t think that’s a bad list of demands and I think packaging it, whether intentionally or not as a mockery the 10 pledges Starmer broke is clever. It reminds us that this is a PM who needs watching closely, holding to account, to mean what he says and if he doesn’t to hold the receipts.
Meanwhile here’s a link to that two child benefit cap rebellion that might be in the offing, a plot to knobble Starmer and perhaps show his supermajority is not unbeatable and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.