Labour MP Breaks Ranks to Call on the Government to Drill in the North Sea
Labour MP Henry Tufnell has broken ranks with Keir Starmer and Ed Miliband with an article in the Sun that calls on the Government to change its approach to energy and drill in the North Sea to boost energy security and ease prices. Here’s an excerpt.
While hard working families suffer, our economy is flatlining and exposed. Economic growth is minimal and our debt is mounting.
Drilling in the North Sea and scrapping carbon taxes on British manufacturing would kickstart economic growth, tackle unemployment and economic inactivity in some of the poorest areas of our country as well as prevent further deindustrialisation.
Offshoring our carbon emissions might give some a sense of moral superiority or perhaps relief from guilt, but the fight against climate change is global.
Importing oil and gas from foreign facilities that are less carbon-efficient and require long-distance shipping is simply displacing the problem elsewhere and impoverishing our own communities.
Pragmatism and realism must win through – drilling in the North-Sea would be a boon for tax revenue while British manufacturing would become competitive again and prevent corrosive deindustrialisation.
The difference between an unjust or just energy transition for my community is the difference between poverty and aspiration.
Pembrokeshire is home to one of the UK’s last four oil refineries, which employs around 1,000 workers.
If our refinery closes due to oppressive green levies, we will lose the heart of our community.
Generations of expertise will disappear and opportunities for a just transition to renewable energy will be lost as the skill base moves elsewhere. Similar community stories are numerous on the shores of the North-Sea.
The Labour Party is the party of industry and the unions. We were created in the fire of the industrial revolution. Now is the time to act like it.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: In a leading article, the Sun argues that “tin-eared Miliband must pull his head out of the sand and start listening to common sense on North Sea drilling”.
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Yeah, whatever mate. Your party are for the metropolitan elite. For people who think electricity comes from a socket and food comes from a supermarket shelf. Your party has no idea.
Oh! Might there be an election toon in Wales soon and might his party be on course for a thrashing.
Perhaps he will switch to Reform?
If our refinery closes due to oppressive green levies, we will lose the heart of our community.
What does he mean ‘if’?
Unfortunately, pragmatism and realism are not words in Miliband’s dictionary.
Government and climate activists who want to strictly adhere to NET ZERO targets will try and tell you drilling in the North Sea for oil and gas will not lower prices are WRONG.
When we do not use our own gas we have to import it, from eg Qatar. This gas has to be liquefied, this costs money, it then has to be shipped, this costs money, then when it arrives it has to turned to gas again, this costs money. The government also loses all the tax revenue it would have had from using North Sea Gas, and thousands of people lose really well paid jobs in the Oil and Gas Industry.
—It does not get much more absurd than NET ZERO, but absurdity is the order of the day for people who put Ideology FIRST and people LAST.
“The Labour Party is the party of industry and the unions.”
WAS.
Now it’s the Party of the North London Metrosexuals; Fabians and Cultural Marxists; Anti-Semites/Muslims and the welfare class.