Meeting the Shadow Chancellor

• 22 July 2008 at 10:17
• Politik Pop

I have given money to an organisation for the environment for a few months and I received an invitation to a conference with George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor.

Little explanation on this. The Shadow Chancellor is a member of the opposition who is part of the Shadow Government, a group of Member of Parliaments (MPs) that is supposed to form some kind of counter-government. The Chancellor in Britain is like a minister of economy and he's always the number 2 of the team (This is how important economy is to the British.) So Mr Osborne could be the next minister of economy if the conservatives won the next election.

First of all, I found very interesting to listen to the point of view of the conservatives on tackling climate change. Using the market mechanisms, and stuff. (Yes, this is basically all that I remember. To read the complete speech, click here.) Then, I found it funny when he was slamming the New Labour at power, designating it as the party creating "innefficient taxes", which is not that false when you see that some members of the current government admit the failure of their own projects. Finally, I have been very impressed by the level of knowledge of that guy. The people there were all very aware of the issue (the head of a parliamentary commission here, the CEO of a firm whose I forgot the name there, the PR of a small agency about clean energy behind, a BBC journalist in front), the level of the debate was too high for me but the guy managed to answer very precisely to most of them. I was surprised.

Even if no general election has been called yet, the Tories (the other name for conservatives in UK) are already campaigning. David Cameron, the Shadow Prime Minister, is popular at the moment and by listening to the medias and by feeling the atmosphere in the room, everyone expects him to be the next leader of the country. It's unlikely that the Labour Party gets back on tracks until the next election, because they have no more ideas at the moment and they just keep following opinion polls and copying right-wing initiatives. This is when you can see, finally, the traps of centrism, of social-democracy and the "third way". Osborne seemed to me like he was more motivated to fight climate change than the New Labour whose I still wonder who is their minister for the environment.

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