Former Scottish Labour leader slams Keir Starmer for ditching £28bn green spending plans

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A former Scottish Labour leader has slammed Keir Starmer for ditching his £28 billion a year green spending plans.Richard Leonard said that the Labour leader's scaling back of the pledge but promising the same outcome was "not economically or environmentally literate".The Central Scotland MSP also said it was "not politically credible" to use the lack of public finances as an excuse not to tackle the climate crisis.

Leonard also said the party had its "priorities wrong".He has rarely spoken out against Starmer's leadership, despite the two being from different wings of the party.Labour announced that it would drastically scale back its green spending plans on Thursday.

Instead of promising £28bn a year, Starmer said the party would spend £23.7bn over the course of the next parliament.He blamed Liz Truss' disastrous mini-budget and higher interest rates for the scaling back.Leonard said: "It is not economically or environmentally literate to suggest that we can achieve the same outcomes and the same number of green jobs with significantly less investment."And it is not politically credible to recycle discredited rhetoric about the nation's credit card to put off tackling the climate emergency."Politics is about priorities and I think we’ve got the priorities wrong."Starmer claimed the ambitions behind Labour’s green prosperity plan remain the same, and said he was committed to his mission to achieve clean power by 2030.But the party’s plan to insulate homes is set to be cut, with five million expected to be completed in the first five years rather than the 19 million initially promised.Leonard was Scottish Labour leader between 2017 and 2021.