SIR KEIR STARMER was warned today his plans to avert climate breakdown fall far short of what is needed following the Labour leader’s attack on the Tories’ climate change record.   

Sir Keir reiterated calls for a green new deal today after figures revealed more than 75,000 green jobs were lost in Britain in just five years under Tory rule.

Official data showed a loss of 33,800 direct jobs and a further 41,400 in the supply chain for low carbon and renewable sectors between 2014 and 2019, including in solar power, onshore wind, and renewable electricity. 

On a visit to a wind farm in Scotland alongside his Scottish counterpart Anas Sarwar, Sir Keir demanded Prime Minister Boris Johnson address the “chasm” between his rhetoric and his policies ahead of November’s United Nations COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. 

Despite promising action, the PM was slammed for not intervening to block a new coalmine in Cumbria, axing the Green Homes Grant, and cutting foreign aid, sometimes used to develop renewable energy use abroad.

Sir Keir said: “We’ve had a decade of broken promises on climate action under the Conservatives. We need real action, now.”

He wants £30 billion in planned investment to be brought forward to support up to 400,000 jobs in manufacturing and low-carbon industries, but the amount is dwarfed by the £250bn demanded by Labour for a Green New Deal (L4GND).

The cash injection would be paid for by a windfall tax on fossil fuel giants, the campaign group said. 

A L4GND spokesperson told the Morning Star that, while Sir Keir is right to highlight the Tories’ abject failures, his own proposals are severely lacking. 

“We need to radically transform every aspect of our economy, and this will require not only massive public investment, but public ownership. The renationalisation of key sectors is vital: the market will not adapt to the need to avert climate breakdown.

“These pledges continue a theme of Labour going backwards when the situation demands we urgently go forward.”

Communist Party of Britain general secretary Rob Griffiths blasted Sir Keir’s “feeble, late-in-the-day” intervention. 

He said: “We need an alternative approach to free market capitalism which is not dominated by monopoly interests, as well as different models of social ownership which serve the interests of the people and not the profiteers.”

Parliamentary reporter @TrinderMatt