Using Westminster’s ‘Autumn of Discontent’ to promote a Social and Green New Deal

As MPs return to Westminster and prepare for the Conference season there will see a return to a massive debate about what the Government should do across a range of issues and how to pay for it.

My Guardian letter below, explains why Labour must redefine growth such that it meets social and environmental priorities and why UK Savers as Saviours should be Rachel Reeve’s emphasis, rather than foreign investment and forcing people into the unstable stock market.

Finally, two points I didn’t have room to make in the letter below re the Stock Market:

1. Smooth city fat cats will relentlessly purr that the stock market ‘could’ generate higher returns for savers than cash. What they never say is that it took approximately 25 years, i.e. until November 1954, for the Dow Jones to recover to its pre-crash levels after the 1929 stock market collapse . Hardly reassuring for older savers!
2. Until now, most financial crises have been the result of cyclical, inadequately controlled greed fests by the financial sector. However, the effects on our financial stability of the ever more rapid and worsening climate crisis will not be cyclical, they will be permanent. A recent comprehensive Financial Times analysis illustrated this rarely realised systemic threat.

How Labour can build a stronger British economy

Rachel Reeves should shift her focus from global financiers to UK savers, says Colin Hines. 

Thu 21 Aug 2025

If Rachel Reeves is serious about ensuring that Labour’s second year in power is all about a stronger economy that rewards working people across the country (In our first year Labour fixed the foundations – now we must build a stronger economy for a renewed Britain, 13 August), she needs to rethink what your editorial called the UK’s “broken growth model” (6 August). The growth that Britain needs is an increase in economic activity that improves social and environmental infrastructure nationwide. This involves a huge increase in secure, well-paid jobs to rebuild a more resilient future economy.

The last thing that is required is Reeves’s obsession with more deregulation of the City and pressuring savers into investing in the stock market. What is needed instead is a massive increase in a socially and green-oriented bond market that will provide secure returns for savers.

This will require intense pressure to be put on Reeves to shift her emphasis away from global financiers to recognising UK savers as saviours. She should make clear that in return for the tax breaks that those investing in Isas and pensions receive, a considerable percentage of such savings would be invested in green and social infrastructure projects. This would help tackle the climate crisis and rebuild our economy as well as the crumbling cohesion of our society. Colin Hines Convener, Green New Deal Group