Image by Claudia Hinz from Pixabay

By Paul Atkin

Forces on the right of the labour movement are seeking to use the impending Labour leadership contest to attack what’s left of Labour’s commitments to a cheap sustainable energy policy.

In this they are the auxiliaries of the full throated and downright dishonest attacks coming from the Conservatives and Far Right; whose desire to act as local agents of the USA’s bid for global energy dominance trumps* any concern for the higher energy bills and the economic shrinkage that would result from a retreat on renewables. Genuine “patriots” would not want to keep the UK in hock to expensive and environmentally ruinous LNG imports from the USA and Qatar. If they weren’t in hock themselves to fossil fuel interests they could paint wind turbines red,white and blue and call them “freedom farms” if they wanted to; but they don’t.

This has been appositely described by James Murray, the editor of Business Green as “wanting to build a typewriter economy… after the invention of the PC”; and wanting “to turn UK industry into a heritage railway.”

• Badenoch and Farage (and Blair) know that the UK has no viable energy future based on fossil fuels; as the North Sea is steadily becoming exhausted, and fracking is too geologically difficult to be profitable.
• They also know therefore that slowing down or shutting down the “rush to renewables” and what they call “net zero madness” would mean that the UK would remain dependent on expensive fossil fuel imports that would keep bills high. The exact opposite of what they claim in the papers.
• They are also perfectly well aware that, since the start of Trump’s war on Iran, a war that they wanted the UK to join in initially, the energy produced by the wind and solar that has already been built is saving billions in displaced fossil fuel import bills. A paradox of a war aimed at securing US “global energy dominance” is that it is persuading countries all around the world to accelerate their shift to electrification and renewable energy.
• And that on a domestic level, as fossil fuels get more expensive, the technologies they power become unaffordable as well as dirty, so millions of people are drawing the conclusion that getting off them cuts costs: hence the rapid growth in EV and solar panel purchases. 

They also know that theirs are not popular polices.

Even Reform voters would rather have a solar farm near them than a fracking site at a rate of almost 2 to 1, while in most local authority areas around three quarters of people are worried about climate change, three fifths think it should be a government priority and more than three quarters support renewable energy. But they are seeking to brass it out with the help of what might best be called “fossil media” and covering fire from sections of the labour movement.

This push backwards from Trump’s local agents is, however, given some encouragement from Wes Streeting’s call for new oil and gas licences to be permitted in the North Sea and Andy Burnham’s recent statement that he’s got “something of an open mind” and no “fixed position” on it. While Streeting is in open retreat, there is notably a deafening silence on climate in the summary of Burnham’s polices written by Daniel Green on Labour List this week; though some of them, greater public control of water, energy, housing and transport, cutting back the standard bus fare to £2 from £3, allocation of £39 billion solely to social housing, not social and “affordable” housing, are implicitly steps in the right direction and would have a positive, if limited, impact.

All this might be considered an example of Burnham’s capacity to sustain wide support through positive sounding ambiguity, but any indication of weakness on this issue is an invitation for attack. And so, a number of people, many of them quite obscure, have wheeled themselves out and laid down a barrage of bad faith arguments in defence of fossil fuels this week; summarised here on Politics Home.

Looking at these one by one.

If you discount Tony Blair, and who doesn’t these days, the most heavyweight voice is that of Gary Smith, General Secretary of the GMB. Gary, sadly, has consistently echoed climate sceptic talking points since his election, to the delight of right-wing media outlets from the Sun to the Spectator.  His comparison of the government’s net zero agenda this week to the deindustrialisation policies of Margaret Thatcher; arguing it is “closing factories, hitting investment and hitting jobs” and telling Times Radio that the “policy” of phasing out North Sea oil and gas was “economic madness” leading to thousands of job losses, turns reality on its head.

• The “green economy” is the one part of the UK economy that is booming, growing at 9% a year and already supporting over a million jobs, as the rest of the economy grinds along at 1%. Opening factories, drawing in investment, boosting jobs. If the GMB, and other unions, get on the right side of history on this, we could recruit many of the workers in these growing sectors, the way that ASTMS did with white collar workers in the late 60s. This is vital for the renewable workforce to be unionised to ensure bargaining rights and empowerment into the future.
• When it comes to the oil and gas sector in the North Sea, the fact is that tens of thousands of jobs have already been lost without the GMB’s existing policy saving a single one of them. 
• This is because the basin is running out of oil and gas. This makes continued extraction decreasingly profitable. In effect, the North Sea is phasing itself out.
• All the additional investment permitted under the last lot of Conservative governments, which amounted to hundreds of additional licences, contributed just 36 days of additional supply.
• This is a physical reality. Not a “policy”. The policy, of successive governments is about managing that reality.
• The difference between the decline of North Sea oil and gas with and without investment, and therefore the jobs that go with it, is about 2% by 2050. This is marginal, not a lifeline, let alone a “goldmine”. 
• The only lifeline for offshore workers is to fight for an easier transition from oil and gas to offshore wind. If the platform is sinking, we need to make sure that the workers on it can get into the only lifeboats we have.
• Pretending that it can stay afloat forever sells the delusion to his members that further increases in investment in oil and gas would save their jobs. It wouldn’t. And he knows it.
• So, the question for Gary is why keep leading your members up the garden path, where Nigel Farage has been waiting for them? There’s little point in denouncing Reform at GMB Congress, which he rightly did as “rebadged Tories”, if his arguments on climate echo their policies and, even their language, rather than fight for the transition his members need as much as the rest of us do. The net result of that approach has been more GMB members supporting Reform than Labour in recent polling.

Luke Akehurst, Labour MP for North Durham, and one of the founders of scandal hit faction Labour Together, said “I do think ministers need to listen carefully to what the GMB, one of Labour’s largest affiliates, is saying about the industrial and employment impact of our energy policies, and take a pragmatic approach that safeguards well-paid, unionised jobs in the oil and gas sector. The promised ‘green industrial revolution’ hasn’t involved enough job creation yet here in the UK. My constituents don’t get any jobs from the mass import of solar panels from China.”

• No jobs creation? The jobs growth created by that 9% a year growth in the “green economy” is running at four times the rate they are being lost in carbon heavy sectors. Diverting investment from the future to the past would choke this off.
• And, while the UK is only a marginal player in solar panel manufacture, it has competitive advantage in other sectors, some of which generate exports. The 2017 Renewables UK Export Nation Report listed these as follows “an extraordinarily wide variety of goods and services, including supplying, installing and maintaining onshore wind turbines and components, designing gearboxes, manufacturing offshore wind turbine blades and steelwork, supplying and laying underwater power cables, installing, inspecting and maintaining offshore wind farms, providing helicopters, crew and vessels, developing wave and tidal energy projects and providing components for the marine energy industry, as well as designing software, conducting geological surveys, monitoring wildlife, and providing financial and legal services”. 
• And “the mass import of solar panels from China”, or anywhere else, requires the mass employment of the workers needed to install and maintain them. Luke’s Durham constituency is just twenty minutes by train away from Sunderland, where a deal announced this week between Nissan and Chery to manufacture EVs at the biggest car plant in the country holds out the prospect of keeping the 6,000 “well paid unionised jobs” sustained by it secure into the future. So long as this inward investment by a Chinese company is not sabotaged on the sort of spurious Cold War “national security” grounds that pulled the rug out from the prospective wind turbine factory investment in NE Scotland from Minyang last year; after pressure from the US Embassy that Luke Akehurst would be one of the first to echo.
• As Miatta Fahnbulleh, a former energy minister who, in a hopeful sign, is helping Burnham develop policy ahead of his bid to replace Starmer, has said “There is a global industry that is building up around the green transition around renewables. China is at the absolute forefront of that. Why the hell would we not want a piece of that? Why would we not want to be on the front foot?”
• As for taking notice of large affiliates – the implicit argument being not to assess the quality of the argument but just to weigh the votes – perhaps Luke missed what UNISON, Labour’s largest affiliate had to say on this matter this week, with General Secretary Andrea Egan arguing on Labour List  “Climate change denial is creeping into politics like never before, with far-right parties treating fossil fuels as a panacea for the country’s problems (my emphasis). Some Labour figures are even calling on the government to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea”…which… “wouldn’t make a significant difference for working-class people in Britain, and it would be grossly irresponsible to working-class people in the Global South.” Andrea’s recognition that the working-class interest in averting climate breakdown is international is essential if our movement is to forge global alliances that push beyond the limitations of self subordination to the UK ruling class.
• And workers in oil and gas will need full trade union protection for as long as there are workers in those sectors, particularly because it is in decline. Part of that protection is negotiating transition. 

Jonathan Hinder, MP for Pendle and Clitheroe, chimed in with: “Britain must be pragmatic in our energy transition. We need oil and gas, and will do so for many decades to come. It is common sense to use our own resources as much as possible, supporting jobs and tax receipts in the process, rather than relying on foreign imports.”

• “Pragmatic”. Akehurst used the same word. Did these people get given a script, or is this sort of cliche hard  wired into their thinking? Is there any pusillanimous capitulation to power over truth that can’t be described as “pragmatic”? There is nothing “pragmatic” about ignoring the damage that would be done by additional carbon emissions when we are already in a world of trouble. Nothing “pragmatic” about ignoring scientific reality under pressure from fossil fuel interests and their political agents who are seeking a few more years of profits as the world tips towards disaster around them. A comment from Jo White, who convenes the “Red Wall” caucus, expresses the tension in this. “We need an energy policy that lifts the foot off the throttle for UK growth and jobs by ensuring that the severe impacts of rising costs from imported energy are mitigated through targeted interventions, a faster shift to home-grown green energy production, and keeps UK oil and gas in the mix until that point is reached,” So, the issue isn’t whether oil and gas will continue to be used. They will, and will stay “in the mix” as we make that “faster shift to home grown green energy production”. But their use has to be at ever decreasing levels. Oil and gas not where the future lies – if we are to have one. The faster we can get off them the more we limit the damage to the climate, and the cheaper it will be. We can’t be reckless and cavalier about that.
• And to restate the bleedin’ obvious; allowing new exploration in the North Sea, or approving the licences for Rosebank and Jackdaw, would make a miniscule difference to production, will not stop the decline of the basin, will not save jobs, will make no difference whatsoever to energy bills. Everyone knows this, but so many pretend otherwise.
• And “our resources” are not “our resources”. They belong to the companies that own them. They are not ring fenced for local use. Most are sold on the world market. All are sold at world market prices. All of these people talk as if North Sea oil and gas were a nationalised industry, but none of them are in favour of actually nationalising it; which would be the best way to manage the transition to make sure that it’s just.

Henry Tufnell, Labour MP for Mid and South Pembrokeshire, said “UK energy prices that are four times more expensive than the USA and six times more expensive than Texas cannot support a competitive industrial base.” 

• No country in Europe can emulate US energy policy, because no country in Europe has the vast supplies of relatively cheaply accessible fossil fuels that the USA has. If they did, seeking prosperity on the back of them would, in any case, be a short term fool’s paradise; as the consequence of burning them would put any hope of averting climate tipping points out of reach, with the rapidly increasing damage that we are already seeing. The US itself is already suffering enormous damage.
• To put this in figures, allowing global warming to reach 3°C by 2100 could reduce cumulative economic output by 15% to 34%. Alternatively, investing 1% to 2% in mitigation and adaptation would limit warming to 2°C, reducing economic damages to 2% to 4%. This net cost of inaction is equivalent to 11% to 27% of cumulative GDP. Not a “pragmatic” course to follow. By contrast, the cost of meeting the 87% GHG cut by 2040 has been assessed by the Climate Change Committee at 14p per person per day. Not exactly “eye watering”.
• And, if Henry wants cheaper energy bills, for households and manufacturing, he should note that Wind and solar have made Spain “one of Europe’s cheapest power markets”. In the first four months of 2026, the average wholesale electricity price in Spain was €44 per megawatt-hour. In Italy, where the Meloni government had dug in on gas reliance, it was €127.  In the UK, €103. The story behind that ranking is that Spain increasingly pushed gas out of its electricity supply, so the price of electricity dropped. Pragmatically, would it make sense to follow the Spanish example, or the Italian? Italy itself, even under Meloni, has drawn the right conclusion in getting a €23bn State aid scheme approved by the European Commission to support a shift to electricity production from renewable sources to counteract the impact of a fuel import bill that has risen to €60bn this year, up €8-9bn from 2025 .
  
  And then there’s yesterday’s man, war criminal, aging millionaire errand boy for billionaires, and wholly owned subsidiary of Larry Ellison, Tony Blair; who got in early last month to urge the government to slow down its “net zero agenda” to get closer to Donald Trump and “prioritise cheap energy over clean energy” neither noticing, nor caring, that dirty energy is expensive and clean energy is cheap.

Whoever ends up running the Labour Party and therefore, in this Parliament, the government, will be under enormous pressure to appease Donald Trump’s ferocious last ditch defence of fossil fuels – with Badenoch and Farage as his local agents – in the context of an energy cost crisis given a vicious upward spike by his war on Iran amid the growing heat of the impending El Nino.

Streeting, following Blair and, indeed, Mandelson, would fall in with that agenda.

Burnham looks like applying what might be called Starmerism with a human face; saying, “normally you would want a good relationship with the United States, but if you can’t agree with them, then say that as well. That’s the only way I think to deal with them. Obviously, the relationship is important to the UK, but not to the point where we just go along with anything they say. We’ve got in trouble in the past when that happens. I think the approach that Keir has taken is the right one.”

On climate, a sign of how much he will stand up and how far he will bend the knee to Trump will be whether he keeps Ed Miliband on at the DESNZ. While the GJA and others have critiqued the limitations of Miliband’s over technicist approach to green transition, were any new leader to throw his head to a press that has been baying for it since before the General Election in an attempt to appease them, they will find instead that they will have simply thrown chum into the shark filled waters they want to swim in.

Looking to the example of the Spanish government, pushing harder on energy transition, resisting increases in arms spending, welcoming migration, is the alternative course that we should fight for whoever comes out on top for now; while taking inspiration from Jean Luc Melenchon’s call at his campaign launch for the French Presidential election for regenerating society on a social and ecological basis.

*pun intended.