Ed Miliband’s new green jobs will bring Britain hope. I dare Reform to denounce them | Polly Toynbee

This government fails to proclaim what it is for. But to find out, follow the money. Its boldest investment is in green energy, designed to generate prodigious returns in economic growth, jobs, training, climate action and much more. So far it’s been a tough sell. Vague talk about greenery goes unnoticed by most people, and “who owns the growth, anyway?” is a realistic question in a country where salaries are stagnating and the civil service is deteriorating. But this week, Ed Miliband gave substance to the green words, by making jobs and projects a reality. Huge numbers of green jobs – 400,000 by 2030 – are expected to be created in 31 “priority trades”, from welders and production managers to plumbers and joiners, everywhere from Centrica’s £35m state-of-the-art training academy in Lutterworth to Teesside’s net zero decarbonisation cluster.

This is what a Labor industrial strategy should look like. Nigel Farage’s retro campaign for this week’s Caerphilly by-election promises to reopen Welsh coal mines. But Miliband’s Doncaster North voters want well-paid, clean, green energy-powered jobs in their home districts, the minister tells me, not sending young people to reopened mines. Government figures show that jobs in the wind, nuclear and electricity sectors pay more than most others: the average advertised salary in the wind sector is £51,000 per year, compared to the average of £37,000. Unions, once skeptical and fearful of losing jobs in unionized industries, are now stepping up by guaranteeing that any new factories receiving subsidies must “support greater union recognition” and a fair labor charter.

Faced with the prospect of a tight budget, Miliband knows how to restore hope. Big green investment is Labour’s best hope for growth and the best way to close the huge skills gap, putting the nearly one million lost young people back to work.

The political hope should be an easy victory against the wrongly engendered culture wars of the right. This is a serious challenge to Britain’s Reform and Conservative bluster about scrapping net zero targets. These 400,000 jobs will be realities on the ground, where Farage hopes to win. Will he and Kemi Badenoch tell a thousand Siemens workers in Hull to stop building wind turbines, or workers on Teesside to abandon their decarbonisation tools, or close the new cable factory in Scotland? Miliband met a young woman who left her job at Pizza Hut when she won a clean energy apprenticeship at Sheffield Forgemasters. Who would unplug it?

The right-wing politicians’ culture war toward net zero emissions is completely out of step with public opinion. Perhaps they think they are fighting the ideas of Greta Thunberg; instead, they will find themselves explaining to families why their jobs and those of their friends will be eliminated. Voters are resolutely in favor of renewable energy and anti-fracking (which Farage wants to revive). Miliband’s promise to cut energy bills by £300 by the next election stands: he is not ruling out a possible VAT cut on energy bills in the budget. In the meantime, this is a strong challenge to the Green Party threat that is quickly looming to the left of the Labor Party.

Where are the people for these new green jobs? The normally depressed and undervalued higher education sector is suddenly jubilant, as Miliband explains exactly what new skills are needed, from making super-batteries to installing solar panels. He promises that five new colleges of technical excellence will focus on building clean energy skills. Over the years I’ve had sullen conversations with David Hughes, CEO of the Association of Colleges, about “15 years of absolute devastation when adult education and retraining was cut in half”. The pay gap between school teachers and his college staff is huge, he says. We’ve often talked about the fact that UK employers only invest half the EU average in the skills of their workforce: employers’ organizations complaining about Labor should ask themselves why they continue to cut apprenticeships.

But this week, “it’s great news,” Hughes says of Miliband’s green plans, alongside the government’s white paper reforming post-16 education with new vocational courses called “V Levels”. “I’ve never felt so optimistic,” he told me. He congratulated the Prime Minister by announcing that instead of 50% of students going to university, the aim was for two thirds to obtain either a degree or a technical qualification, a big step towards equalizing the value of skills. He is delighted that employers will not obtain any visas for migrants without investing in the training of young people. He believes that the experience of Keir Starmer, his famous toolmaker father, his sister a nurse and his mother, led him to know the value of technical skills.

Enthusiasm is contagious. I visited Crawley College, with its specialist ‘green village’, which is already training thousands of people for green jobs. A house cut in two teaches them insulation techniques, the installation of heat pumps, renovation and energy savings of all kinds. Walking around an FE college is always a reminder that these are places of hope. Here, professors speak movingly of second chances for those who have failed, of lives transformed and eyes opened by the extraordinary diversity of courses. Colleges can now look forward to a new lease of life.

As for the culture wars, a Reform or Conservative government would probably do away with the teaching of this “green bullshit”, in David Cameron’s timeless phrase. Farewell to Crawley College’s village green and the new colleges of technical excellence on clean energy? As an election speech, Miliband transforms the right’s culture war into a “war on jobs”. Here is another good answer to the question “What is work for?” »