Last week in Montreal I talked to the UK’s Labour leader, Keir Starmer, and Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre.

Both believe the left globally is losing the social licence to act on climate, because climate policy has become a proxy for class conflict.

Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, whose popularity has receded after nine years in government, opened the event arguing that progressive politicians have to prove that their concerns and policy prescriptions are relevant to the lives of working people.

“He’s right about that,” Starmer told me. “In the UK, I have long thought we drifted too far from working people.”

He talks about “economic change”, not “climate change”. When you say “green jobs” people hear “I’m going to lose my job”. Voters’ biggest issue everywhere, not just here, is cost of living and inflation. They’re worried about climate too, so Starmer talks about the “axes of insecurity”: cost of living, employment insecurity, defence insecurity with the war in Ukraine, migration, and climate insecurity.

Focusing on working people’s security is a contrast to what these centre-left leaders see as the moralising approach on the left, that focuses on “reforming the immoral carbon practices of the masses”.

Josie's column is here.