Gordon Brown’s set-piece announcement tomorrow morning is the environment. The plan is for the PM to lay out the path to the Copenhagen climate talks later this year.
Apparently he wants to go further than the European council which held some inconclusive talks earlier this month. The EU’s 27 nations discussed a E100bn climate finance package (paying developing countries to stop polluting) but will not make any decision until the autumn.
The suspicion is that Brown would like to steal their thunder by urging the promise of a “fair share for the EU”.
He may also come up with a big unilateral number for the UK alone. My colleague Fiona Harvey, our environment correspondent, has heard the figure of £1.5bn.
As usual, it might take us a while tomorrow to work out how much of this is genuinely new money. I’m told the Treasury has been resistant to the idea of topping up funding beyond existing Difid commitments.
Brown is also likely to talk about global carbon markets (still over a decade off, in reality, given the reluctance of China, India, Brazil et al).
There are also rumours that he may pledge to attend the Copenhagen talks himself. If so, he would be the first world leader to do so and it would be welcomed in green circles.
UPDATE
The PM has made his speech.
We were more or less right: He has promised to commit the UK to a new global climate finance fund (of $100bn a year): the country “will pay its fair share of the global total”.
And he has insisted that this won’t come from existing development aid budgets. There must be “additional finance”.
What’s missing is the figure. Maybe that will come out later today.
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey