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I’m a little sceptical of reports that Ed Miliband is prepared to back down and accept new drilling for gas in the Jackdaw field in return for being made chancellor. Last time that Miliband was reported to be on the point of granting permission for new oil and gas licences in the North Sea it turned out not to be true. He dug in his heels, and a hapless Keir Starmer let him do so.
Maybe Miliband’s ambition to be chancellor, and his desire to inflict a deeply left-wing fiscal policy on Britain, really does trump his net-zero zealotry
But maybe Miliband’s ambition to be chancellor, and his desire to inflict a deeply left-wing fiscal policy on Britain, really does trump his net-zero zealotry. Moreover, he has no doubt worked out that he could save face with the net-zero fundamentalists by letting his successor as energy and climate secretary announce the change of policy – once he has gone to the Treasury. Andy Burnham has previously said that he is ‘open-minded’ about new drilling in the North Sea.
Either way, the government is being driven towards new drilling in the North Sea by plain logic. To refuse to exploit the North Sea is not magically going to change the balance of Britain’s energy consumption: three quarters of our overall energy needs are currently met by fossil fuels. All it will achieve is to make us more reliant on imports, not least on the very ‘fossil fuel dictators’ Miliband says he wants to free us from.
