Ed Milibands obsessive pursuit of the Net Zero agenda will spell disaster for this government, writes Aaron Newbury.
Miliband is obsessed with Net Zero (Image: Getty)
Ed Miliband has a gift for making bad situations catastrophically worse. As oil prices skyrocket following Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, the energy secretary’s response is to reach for the chequebook.
The Government will splash around some more money to pay people’s energy bills rather than do anything sensible like, say, extracting the oil we already have. Britain sits atop titanic oil reserves in the North Sea, more than enough to ease the burden on families now staring at ever higher energy bills.
The wealth stored in the North Sea is also enough to reduce our dependency on Middle Eastern despots and their tendency to close vital shipping lanes whenever the mood takes them. But Miliband will not hear of it.
So instead we shall pay through the nose for foreign oil whilst our own sits idle beneath the waves. Meanwhile, 36% of the price of every litre of petrol goes straight to the Treasury in fuel duty.
The Government could cut that and put money back in people’s pockets, easing the pain at the pumps in doing so. But no, it is seen as far better to keep taxing drivers into poverty whilst claiming to care about the cost of living.
The cruel joke is that Britain cannot even protect its own shipping interests anymore. Chronic underinvestment in the Royal Navy has left us unable to keep trade routes open.
We once ruled the waves. Now we cannot defend a convoy through the Strait of Hormuz.
Now we cannot defend a convoy through the Strait of Hormuz (Image: Getty)
Miliband’s net zero obsession has created precisely the instability and foreign dependency he claims to oppose. We are more exposed to volatile oil markets than ever, more vulnerable to supply shocks and now more at the mercy of regimes that do not have our interests at heart.
All because extracting our own resources might upset climate activists. With local elections looming, voters will remember who did this to them. Labour won its landslide on wafer-thin support.
Many of its MPs hold seats by margins that could evaporate overnight. When people cannot afford to heat their homes or fill their cars, they do not blame Iran. They blame the Government and they blame Miliband.
The energy secretary’s green zealotry, combined with successive governments gutting of the Navy, has delivered disaster. The Government could fix this tomorrow. Unlock the North Sea and cut fuel duty, perhaps even splash some cash and invest in defence. But ideology it seems trumps sense, and Labour will pay the price for it at the ballot box.
