Labour has become the political wing of Just Stop Oil and their plans will cost us all dearly
IS anyone fooled by Sir Keir Starmer’s efforts to distance himself from the eco zealots who have been blocking roads and on Saturday interrupted a rugby match at Twickenham?
Every day, Labour is looking more and more like the political wing of Just Stop Oil.
Much though he might like us to think he is on the side of ordinary Britons who just want to get about, and watch sports events, without them being disrupted by attention-seeking numpkins, the Labour leader has just adopted Just Stop Oil’s central demand: To stop all licences for new oil and gas extraction in the North Sea.
Foolish policy
Not only that, it turns out that Labour has accepted £1.5million in donations from the same green energy tycoon who has been keeping Just Stop Oil afloat.
Dale Vince, who has amassed a £100million fortune by setting up green energy firm Ecotricity, made his latest £500,000 donation to the party last October, at a time when Just Stop Oil protests were at their peak.
That was the month when protesters threw tomato soup over a Van Gogh painting in the National Gallery in London.
READ MORE ON KEIR STARMER AND JUST STOP OIL
Vince, a former environmental activist himself, has previously admitted giving “tens of thousands” of pounds to the group to help it get started, as well as bailing it out with further funds last November. If Star-
mer really thinks Just Stop Oil are “wrong” and “arrogant”, as he has said in the past, why accept donations from one of their biggest supporters — and why then cave into their demands?
To ban licences for new oil and gas extraction in the North Sea might sound virtuous, but it is a foolish policy which will further undermine national energy security, as well as drive up energy bills.
Much though it is nice to think that Britain might one day be powered entirely by green energy, we are decades away from being able to wean ourselves off oil and gas.
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Moreover, gas remains absolutely essential for filling in the gaps between the supply of wind and solar power.
When the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining, we keep the lights on by switching gas-fired power stations into the national grid.
Gas-fired power stations have the flexibility to be switched on and off fairly rapidly, unlike nuclear plants, which need to be maintained at a steady level of output.
We will need to use gas for this purpose for a long time to come.
We have very little in the way of energy storage which would allow electricity generated on a sunny and windy day to be used on a sunless and windless winter’s evening. Britain is still a long, long way from eliminating the need for petrol and diesel vehicles, too.
Electric cars have enough problems with their high cost and the lack of recharging infrastructure, but it will be far harder still to decarbonise heavy vehicles such as lorries and long-distance coaches.
As for swapping gas boilers for electric heat pumps, that will take many, many years, not least because the installation of a heat pump costs several times that of a gas boiler.
There are huge numbers of households which simply won’t be able to afford the cost of £10,000 or more.
Hostage to fortune
But even if we could decarbonise homes, transport and the national grid, we would still be reliant on fossil fuels for many industrial purposes.
We need them to manufacture plastics, fertilisers, steel and many other things.
The choice, then, lies between using UK-produced oil and gas and importing it from other countries. We saw, following the invasion of Ukraine, the perils of coming to rely on Russian gas.
The lesson — at least as far as most of us are concerned — is that an energy security policy is vital, with Britain making as much use as possible of native resources.
That is why the Government has been moved to issue more licences for oil and gas extraction in the North Sea. But it is a lesson which sadly seems lost on Labour, whose environmental policy remains in the hands of Ed Miliband, the former Climate Change Secretary who gave us the Climate Change Act and its targets of slashing carbon emissions by 2050.
Miliband has turned Britain into a hostage to fortune given that no one knows if the technology will be ready by then.
Perhaps Labour hopes to attract votes from the Green Party and the SNP — but it will cost us all dearly.
Every shipload of oil or liquified natural gas (LNG) which has to be imported will take Britain’s trade balance even further into the red.
Nor will it do a thing for the planet.
Indeed, importing gas in the form of LNG involves more gas emissions than producing gas from the North Sea because the liquification and regasification process swallows around ten per cent of the energy being transported.
Eco activists love to accuse anyone who disagrees with them of being somehow in the pockets of big oil and gas firms, an accusation which has been made against me many times but which has no truth whatsoever.
It is Labour which is in the hands of the green energy lobby.
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To adopt Just Stop Oil’s economically and environmentally illiterate policy of banning new oil and gas extraction so soon after taking large donations from Dale Vince does not look clever.
Starmer might as well be on the streets stopping the traffic himself.
