Labour’s strategy raises a bigger set of questions about the type of state we want. Starmer’s vision for government-by-BlackRock reduces the question of state capacity to “how do I get BlackRock to invest in infrastructure assets?” This model involves the state in effect subsidising the privatisation of everyday life. This doesn’t only make it harder to bring public goods back into public ownership; it also allows big finance to tighten the grip on the social contract with citizens, and to become the ultimate arbiter of climate, energy and welfare politics, which will have profound distributional, structural and political consequences.
Already, BlackRock is betting on becoming a key provider of green energy infrastructure – though its actual commitment to tackling the climate crisis only extends so far. The firm has
lobbied heavily against European proposals to regulate its lending to fossil fuel interests with penalties, and has instead called for voluntary climate commitments. It is aiming to rapidly grow its green energy profits by tapping the government subsidies that will probably be provided through Starmer’s
GB Energy, and through the
US Inflation Reduction Act.
But the profits BlackRock will hope to generate through investing in green energy are likely to come at a huge cost. In Britain, we know that the
public ownership of green energy is more effective at lowering consumer bills, accelerating the green transition and creating good jobs. The risk is not only that our climate future will be vastly more expensive if actors such as BlackRock are driving it, but that this future will also produce a more unequal society, where citizens equate green measures with unaffordable public services. This may well provide the kindling for authoritarian, far-right fossil-fuel politics that reject the green transition and frame it as an assault on people’s living standards.
