With Nigel Farage targeting net zero, could government policy change to protect jobs, revenue and votes?
It was inevitable that Nigel Farage would take Reform UK’s campaign tour to Aberdeen. On a visit to the capital of the UK’s oil and gas industry on Monday he welcomed a defecting Aberdeen Conservative councillor, the 13th defection to his party’s ranks in Scotland to date.
Reform is hoping to make political hay from the discontent surrounding the government’s North Sea policies, the demise of the oil and gas basin and the vast workforce that depends on it. The populist party has vowed to reverse the government’s ban on fresh North Sea oil and gas drilling as a “day one” priority if elected to power in 2029.
Farage’s naked targeting of the Granite City and of net zero – which he has described as “lunacy” and the “next Brexit” – has some in Westminster and the energy industry asking what would once have been unthinkable: will Labour be forced to water down or even U-turn on its North Sea pledges?
The Labour government swept to power last summer with a manifesto pledge to end new North Sea oil and gas projects and make Britain a clean energy superpower. But in less than a year the government has bent to the backlash against some of its most high-profile policies on benefits and winter fuel allowances, stoking speculation that its stance on the North Sea might be the next position to crumble.
