Last month, our swimming pool in Rye closed. Just ten days before the doors closed, I joined a huge crowd gathered to protest the closure and show the strength of feeling in our community at the loss of our pool. People of all ages showed up, and it was particularly moving to see so many children make their voices heard.
The case for keeping the pool open has been well made in these pages, but we must not lose sight of why we find ourselves in this situation. Leisure facilities, like the rest of society, have been subject to spiralling energy costs. Our Conservative government spent the summer having a leadership contest instead of tackling energy bills and our wider cost of living crisis.
When they did finally get around to addressing the problem, too late in the day, they put forward uncosted plans and crashed the economy in the process. Unlike the Conservatives, Labour under Keir Starmer’s leadership has always set out how we would pay for every policy. We were the first to call for a windfall tax on oil and gas giants making bumper profits in this crisis, to help fund our energy price freeze. Our own Conservative MP made reference at the pool protest to the need for additional central government funding for leisure facilities. With the economy crashed by her Conservative colleagues leaving a reported £50bn black hole in the public finances, the prospects of finding extra funding for Rye pool and other leisure facilities look slim. In the week when Shell recorded yet more eye-watering profits, perhaps she could urge her government to look again at Labour’s windfall tax plans. Is it any wonder that this government has failed to plan ahead to save facilities like Rye pool when we’ve had three prime ministers in three months, and four chancellors in four months?
And this comes on the back of twelve years of Conservative government that has failed to prepare and refused to invest in energy security, leaving bills higher and our country less secure. It is directly because of this failure to make the UK energy independent that we are so exposed to the fluctuations of the global gas market, which has been too easily manipulated by Putin and other dictators. Other countries, which are more energy secure, have not been impacted as heavily as us. If we are to save Rye pool and get to grips with rocketing bills, we need long-term solutions that cut bills for good. That is why the central mission of a Labour government will be to turn the UK into a clean energy superpower. We will establish Great British Energy, a new home-grown company that will harness the power of Britain’s sun, wind, and waves to deliver good, secure, high-paid British jobs, cut energy bills and deliver energy independence for our country. By investing in cheap offshore wind, onshore wind, nuclear, solar, and tidal power, we can cut bills, create jobs, and protect our world for future generations by tackling the climate crisis.
We should be in no doubt that our pool is closed because of this reckless Conservative government and its failure to deliver energy security, sound finances, and a fully costed energy support package for families, businesses, and community facilities. The British people deserve so much better than this revolving door of chaos. The long-term solution is a change of government.
