Ed Miliband is reportedly set to deny new licences for drilling in the North Sea and the cost of Net Zero is projected to run into the hundreds of billions. The scene is being set for the failures that could eventually bring down the Government, says Ross Clark in the Spectator. Here’s an excerpt.
Denying new licences for the North Sea – if the reports are true – will do nothing in itself to reduce demand for oil and gas, either in Britain or globally. All it will achieve is to reduce production from one minor player in the industry: the U.K., which produced 0.7% of the world’s oil in 2022, and force the U.K. to import more oil and gas. It will, therefore, put a little more power in the hands of non-democratic oil-producing countries. If you really wanted to reduce the power of dictatorships to fix global oil prices you would want democratic countries to produce as much as possible. Indeed, the power of Opec has diminished considerably since the U.S. became the world’s largest oil producer.
I don’t know how much Miliband is consulting the Chancellor Rachel Reeves, but he ought to be reminded that Labour’s manifesto assumed £1.2 billion a year in extra revenue from an enhanced windfall tax on oil and gas producers in the North Sea. How is the Government going to generate that income if oil and gas companies are not going to be allowed to drill? …
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones has admitted that the Government’s Net Zero commitments will cost “hundreds of billions” of pounds. Trouble is, Labour’s manifesto only committed £4 billion a year of public money. The risk of Miliband helping bring down the Government has just got bigger.
Worth reading in full.
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