Corbyn’s plot to carpet UK with wind turbines

Labour’s Brexit chaos

JereMY Corbyn will today vow to carpet Britain in thousands more wind turbines in a ‘green jobs revolution’.

The Labour leader will pledge to tear up planning rules to allow developers to double the number of wind turbines on land, and increase the number at sea sixfold.

The move would mean installing almost 20,000 extra wind turbines across the UK.

And Labour will set a target for retro-fitting insulation to four million homes – a move which could cost middle-class families thousands. Mr Corbyn will also promise solar panels on every ‘viable’ roof. And he will use his keynote speech to Labour’s conference in Liverpool to step up his attacks on business, to end the ‘greed is good culture’.

Labour has faced a ferocious backlash this week after unveiling plans for mass nationalisations, share confiscations and the sacking of highly-paid bosses.

Theresa May last night said Labour had shown its true colours this week, adding that shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s plan to force large firms to hand over 10 per cent of their dividends and shares to workers and the state was a ‘tax on companies and a tax on people’.

Labour sources last night said Mr Corbyn’s push for green jobs gave the lie to claims he would wreck the economy, saying his plans would create 400,000 jobs over 12 years.

Mr Corbyn will say the UK has to ‘ lead by example’ on the environment, adding: ‘There is no bigger threat facing humanity than climate change.’ The claim is similar to one made in 2009 by Gordon Brown, who also promised to create 400,000 jobs.

The decision to launch a new drive for onshore windfarms is likely to prove highly controversial in rural communities.

Labour sources said planning laws tightened by the Coalition government would be relaxed, although local people would still have ‘a say’ in the process. Labour’s targets would mean building an extra 7,000 wind turbines on land, with a further 12,000 erected off shore. There are currently 7,100 on shore and just under 2,000 at sea.

Mr Corbyn will also back the £1.3billion project for a tidal lagoon in Swansea Bay, abandoned this year due to ruinous costs. And, as part of a £12.8billion package, he will announce plans to insulate four million homes in Labour’s first five years in government. The state would pay for low income households, while better off families would be offered interest-free loans. Mr Corbyn’s past support for the reopening of Britain’s coal mines has been quietly dropped as part of the drive to slash carbon emissions.

The Labour leader will also step up his attack on the way Britain’s market economy has been run, accusing successive governments of propping up the UK’s ‘greed-is-good, deregulated financial capitalism’.

Meanwhile, Labour last night announced it would extend free child care for all parents. Mr Corbyn will today pledge to tackle ‘patchy’ provision and scrap means-testing – benefiting up to a million children and their parents.

Under current Government rules for free childcare, 15 hours a week is offered for all three and four- year- olds, regardless of income, but under Labour’s changes it will be doubled to 30 hours for three and four-year-olds with two-year-olds also included.

‘Tax on companies and on people’