The UK is facing multiple, overlapping crises of public health, unemployment, inequality, and climate breakdown. As the government trails its response, Labour has set out its four tests to hold them to account. Shadow Cabinet members and the public recognize that we need nothing short of transformative policies for a renewed society. Yet Labour risks letting the Tories get away with a return to the old exploitative economy, washed with a veneer of green.

The public appetite for change is high, with recent polling revealing that nearly 60 percent of the public want to see changes to how the economy is run. People want to keep the clean air and calm streets of lockdown — and they want state investment to provide good, sustainable jobs for those left out of work. Accordingly, Chancellor Rishi Sunak has duly attempted to co-opt the “Green Industrial Revolution” framing that Labour campaigned with in the 2019 general election.

The government has promised “green jobs” and new infrastructure spending — but there’s very little green and nothing revolutionary about Sunak’s proposals. His will be a program of modest spending in a few headline-grabbing projects while seeking to recover the status quo pre-pandemic economy, focusing on profitability for capital while abandoning working people and the climate. The fact that one of the first measures announced by the government this week was a plan to spend £100m on carbon-intensive road infrastructure says it all.