At an NGO-led Save Our Wild Isles event in Westminster recently, green experts I spoke to were anxious about the state of Labour’s messaging on the environment.
There were positive plans were coming out of Ed Miliband’s shadow climate team. But leading members of the front bench have, at times, portrayed climate action as at odds with the party’s fiscal rules. On nature, meanwhile, the shadow environment secretary Jim McMahon has been a strong and eloquent advocate for action on water quality and access to nature (including promising a right to roam act), but he has been less vocal about deeper, structural reforms needed on farming and land use – reforms that would ensure there is sufficient nature left to experience in the first place.
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