In 2007, over a friendly drink, the Guardian’s economics editor, Larry Elliott, came up with a radical plan to address the effects of the financial crisis and climate change. He called it the Green New Deal. Plus: the Guardian’s education correspondent on why schools are going to test four-year-olds

In 2007, Larry Elliott met a friend to discuss the financial crisis. Over the course of the evening, and several drinks, they cooked up the Green New Deal – a plan to deal with the effects of the economic crisis and the threat of climate change. They formed the Green New Deal Group and, though Gordon Brown and Barack Obama briefly flirted with the idea, it did not progress much further.

But in 2018, the youngest US congresswoman in history, the Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, picked it up and the idea has been gaining traction ever since. Ocasio-Cortez’s plan mixes old and new. She wants a living-wage job for anyone who wants one; universal healthcare; and basic income programmes as part of a “detailed national, industrial, economic mobilisation plan” that would ensure the US is powered by 100% renewable electricity, and eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing, agriculture and other industries.

Elliott talks to India Rakusen about how the deal first came to fruition and why it is essential if we are to tackle climate change.

And: Sally Weale, the Guardian’s education correspondent, on why teachers and parents are speaking out against a growing culture of testing within primary schools.

We were incredibly sad to learn of the death of Stephen Smith. In February, a picture of his emaciated frame went viral after the Department for Work and Pensions had deemed him fit to work. We covered his story in our fit-for-work scandal podcast on 26 February. Our thoughts are with his family.

