last July, with the promise that the British economy would grow again, after fourteen years of conservative neglect. Six months later, GDP records flat figures, analysts already speak of stagflation – high inflation, 2.5%, more frozen growth -, on which it fell last October Starmer tries to reconquer the support of markets with the promise of an ambitious urban and environmental deregularization.
“In the 1980s, the government of [Margaret] Thatcher deregularized financial capital. In the era of new Labor [de Tony Blair]Globalization increased trade opportunities. This will be our equivalent. For a long time, [el exceso] Regulation has prevented the United Kingdom from building its future, ”Starmer has written in a tribune for the newspaper The Timeshours before the Minister of Economy, Rachel Reeves, announced a battery of measures to increase investment, accelerate urban and industrial projects and boost the desired growth.
The star measure, fought for two decades by environmental organizations, has been the announcement that. “We can no longer drag this decision. The last great airport track of the United Kingdom was built in the forties. We have been without any progress for eighty years, ”Reeves announced. The minister has assured that the construction of the track will not collide with the emission reduction objectives acquired by the British government.
The Government is confident in obtaining the expansion plans by the company that owns Heathrow as soon as possible, so that the planning is ready and approved in 2029.
Conservative governments courted the idea, without daring to do it. Boris Johnson fought her during her mandates as mayor of London. , because “breached the commitments against climate change agreed by the United Kingdom in the 2015 Paris Agreement.”
The announcement of Reeves has immediately unleashed a flood of criticism. Among them, the London Labor Mayor, Sadiq Khan. “Despite the progress achieved in the aviation sector, to make it more sustainable, I still have no convinced that hundreds of thousands of additional flights in Heathrow each year will not have a huge harmful impact on our environment,” he said.
In search of lost popularity
The disapproval index of the Starmer government, according to the company YouGovhas reached its highest level from the elections, with 64%. The opposition smells the blood, and among the analysts, the idea that the Labor will not govern beyond a mandate.
Starmer and her minister have decided to launch all winks to entrepreneurs to recover lost popularity, but at the same time they have defended the painful measures that, according to them ,. To achieve growth and investment, Reeves has justified, the first step was to provide stability to the British economy. “I accept that being responsible has its costs. But the cost of irresponsibility would have been even greater, and those who have expressed their opposition to my budget, ”he has argued.
Reeves has promised for next spring the start of the processing of a planning and infrastructure law that “will fundamentally reform environmental regulations”, in order to achieve the number of objections and resources against the new urban developments.
“Under growth does not have to be our destiny. But the growth will not come on its own, without giving the battle. Without a government that does not put on the side of the working class, and that is willing to adopt the right decisions to improve the country’s trajectory, ”said the minister.
Among the new promises of the Starmer government is also to build, in the corridor that joins the towns of Oxford and Cambridge – which concentrate between them an increasing number of start-upsor emerging companies – a new “Silicon Valley of Europe”, with urban development plans and new rail connections between the two cities.
Shock with the employer
The promises of impulse of the British industry and the increase in the investment of Reeves have collided with the skepticism of Stephen PHipson, the president of the industrial employer Make UK. “There is a clear contradiction between the advertisement of these Liable Measures of Reform of Urban Planning and Investment in Infrastructure and the approval, at the same time, of a series of measures that will inevitably reduce investments and freeze the hiring. The government must resolve this internal dichotomy, ”he denounced.
Reeves has launched into the complicated mission of cutting the ears and hearts of businessmen without arouseing the suspicion of the unions, the historical allies of the Labor Party. The minister has defended the promises of reform of the labor laws with which they won the elections, aimed at giving greater security and stability to the British work, and strongly answered by the business.
“A workforce that feels safer will also feel more confident, it will be more productive and will have a greater mood to spend and inject money into the economy,” said Reeves, in a demonstration of force also destined to silence the voices of the voices of the that predict their political defenestration.
