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Coffee House Shots

Is Labour's 2030 clean power target achievable? Live at Labour conference

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Daily News, Politics

4.42.2K Ratings

🗓️ 28 September 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Decarbonising power by 2030 is one of the flagship policies for Keir Starmer’s government. Whether this is achievable and how we go about the green transition will impact ten of thousands of jobs and everybody's energy bills.

So just how do they plan on reaching this ambitious target? Gary Smith, general secretary of the GMB, argues that there is a fundamental dishonesty about the route to net zero, with communities being hollowed out and the working class left behind. All of this has resulted in fertile ground for the far right.
 
The Spectator's editor Fraser Nelson sat down with Gary Smith at Labour conference last week, to give an alternative take on the net zero debate. 

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Transcript

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0:00.0

The Spectator magazine is home to wonderful writing, insightful analysis and unrivaled books and art reviews.

0:06.0

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0:11.6

along with a free 20 pounds John Lewis or Weight Rose voucher.

0:15.0

Go to Spectator. UK.

0:20.0

Thank you for coming to this rather unusual fringe events.

0:26.2

I'll tell you why it's unusual.

0:27.8

It's probably the only energy debate that hasn't got a sponsor in this whole concert.

0:31.8

Now we actually tried, I mean when we asked around saying

0:34.5

that we're going to be doing a French debate in energy policy there's quite a few

0:37.5

people were interested in it. When they found out we're going to be asking

0:40.5

if 2030 was deliverable, there was less interest in that topic.

0:44.0

I mention the words Gary Smith and the line goes dead pretty much.

0:48.0

So it was interesting actually which made us all the more intrigued to rather than drop Gary Smith to probably drop everybody else

0:56.5

to speak to Gary about what does he's got to say which doesn't seem to have the

1:02.2

lobbyists that infused.

1:04.1

I think we can all agree that this is a flagship policy of this new government.

1:08.8

Whether this is attainable or not, the merits of it will affect tens of thousands of jobs and the whole

1:15.0

country's electricity bills. What we're about to discuss could not be more

1:18.1

important, but there seems to be a certain narrowness of a discussion so far, which I think doesn't really do

1:24.4

justice to the subject. I mean the spectator we believe that subjects are best

1:30.3

to look at when you look at every single angle imaginable and you take the

1:35.1

all the debates on their merits a good idea a bad idea we have open debate and that's how we

...

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