The UK Labour government, led by a former human rights lawyer, has now announced that it is going to ride roughshod over the human rights of anyone objecting to national infrastructure projects. The Guardian headline tells us that “Legal challenges to infrastructure plans to be blocked in Starmer growth push”. More specifically, the Prime Minister is quoted thus:

“For too long, blockers have had the upper hand in legal challenges – using our court processes to frustrate growth,” he said.

“We’re putting an end to this challenge culture by taking on the nimbys and a broken system that has slowed down our progress as a nation.”

It’s interesting that he has never, to my knowledge, made similar comments regarding the multifarious and endless legal challenges to the proposed Cumbrian coal mine and to various attempts to produce oil or gas. The two tier Keir jibe has always seemed to me to be a little cheap, but perhaps not if he adopts a different stance to opposition to different types of infrastructure developments.

Given all those challenges to the coal mine and to oil and gas projects, this is eyebrow-raising, to say the least:

Government officials said the approach would ensure access to justice and protection against genuine issues of propriety, while pushing back against a “challenge culture” where small pressure groups used the courts to obstruct decisions taken in the national interest.

Nothing, it seems, is to get in the way of the government’s dash for growth, even if many of its policies (increasing employers’ national insurance, expensive energy policies) seem calculated to cripple any chance of the economy growing. So much is this the case, that airport expansion is now the thing. The Guardian, again, reports that:

Reeves will give her firm backing to the long-mooted plan to build a third runway at Heathrow, which is Britain’s busiest airport….along with bringing a second strip at Gatwick into full-time use and increasing the capacity of Luton, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the move.…

…The government trumpeted the expansion of Stansted airport at last October’s investment summit, when the prime minister welcomed a £1bn commitment from its owner, Manchester Airports Group, as a sign of getting “our economy moving … through the shock and awe of investment”.

Presumably all this has the backing of the Prime Minister. Despite the fact that:

In February 2020, Starmer tweeted “congratulations to the climate campaigners” when plans for a third runway at Heathrow airport were ruled illegal by the Court of Appeal after a judicial review.

“There is no more important challenge than the climate emergency. That is why I voted against Heathrow expansion,” he said then.

The operative word being “then”. Perhaps (and I reserve judgement, because he is so far playing his cards close to his chest about the possible Heathrow expansion) things look different when you’re in government. Maybe the “climate emergency” (sic) isn’t quite so important after all. The Sir Flipflop jibe might have some merit too.

And that’s also true with regard to non-doms. Now we are told that “Rachel Reeves to soften non-dom tax changes to woo rich for growth push” despite the express provision in the Labour Party manifesto before the last general election that “We will abolish non-dom status once and for all…”. According to the Guardian:

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where she has been meeting business leaders and entrepreneurs, Reeves said: “We have been listening to the concerns that have been raised by the non-dom community.”

Non-doms are a community, are they? Who knew? It’s just a shame that the communities opposed to the destruction of their precious neighbourhoods by wind and solar farms that will drive up energy prices and reduce the UK’s energy security apparently aren’t worth listening to. There was a time when the Labour Party represented ordinary working people. The clue’s in the name.