Starmer: It’s Up to Miliband Whether We Drill in North Sea
Sir Keir Starmer has said it is Ed Miliband’s decision whether Britain drills for oil and gas in the North Sea, claiming he has no power in the matter. The Telegraph has more.
The Prime Minister claimed he had no power to approve more licences and insisted that the final call lay with the Energy Secretary.
Labour is under mounting pressure – including from Donald Trump – to approve new extraction at Rosebank and Jackdaw, two fossil fuel sites in the North Sea, after the Iran war caused energy costs to spiral.
At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservatives, said that Sir Keir could make the decision to drill today and accused him of “hiding behind” Miliband.
Critics have already claimed that Miliband wields too much power over the Prime Minister after he successfully led opposition to the UK allowing the US to strike Iran from British bases.
Despite the energy crisis, Miliband has reiterated his vocal opposition to North Sea drilling, arguing repeatedly that it would not bring down prices.
When Badenoch challenged Sir Keir to approve the licences, the Prime Minister insisted that current laws prevented him from overruling the Energy Secretary.
Sir Keir suggested any move by Miliband to drill would be a legal decision rather than political, saying: “It’s absolutely clear that the quasi-judicial duty of the legislation rests with the Secretary of State.”
He added: “The only way forward is to go further and faster on renewables and the leader of the Opposition’s approach is to outsource our foreign policy and let the US decide whether we go to war, to outsource our energy policy to Russia and Iran and let them set the price of energy. I will never do that, because it’s not in the British national interest.”
Badenoch had questioned whether it was Sir Keir or Miliband, who has been touted as a potential leadership contender, who was really in charge.
The Tory leader said: “The Jackdaw gas field could be up and running before winter. All that gas would be used here in the UK to heat 1.6 million homes – that is enough to power Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex put together.
“So will the Prime Minister approve the licences or is the Energy Secretary running the Government?”
Badenoch added: “He is hiding behind so many people. He is the Prime Minister, he can make the decision today, he can. He is so weak, he’s the first person to be pushed around by the Energy Secretary.”
She later shared an image of Sir Keir with his head in his hands shortly after PMQs with the caption: “TFW [that feeling when] Ed Miliband is running the Government.”
Worth reading in full.
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It’s hard not to feel a stirring towards serious violence the longer this story goes on.
I actually think it’s rather funny. Another transmission from the bridge of RMS Labournic under way in the Northern Atlantic at top speed as – thankfully – all the icebergs, especially the one we’re heading directly towards, will melt away because of global boiling real soon now!
Philip K. Dick once quipped: “Reality is what doesn’t go away when you stop believing in it.” And 2-Keir & The Milied set forth to prove him wrong. Good luck with that one. BTW, this huge, white thing in front of you really isn’t an iceberg, it’ll just feel like one when you hit it. But maybe, you can still decolonize it in time!
The man (and I use that term advisedly) is nothing short of a complete farkwit.
He is the Prime Minister, I cannot understand why the King is not calling him to wherever he needs to go and telling him that parliament is being prorogued and a new election called. Well, actually I can because the King is also made of the same sort of stuff, soft and malleable.
I really despair, this ship of fools are steering for the edge of the world and have no comprehension of what lies beyond.
That’s because the king cannot do that. He’s really just a ceremonial lackey of the government who must only act publically on advice, that is, orders from ministers. At least, that’s the legal theory but Charlie Big Ears is certainly not going to contest that in practice.
Nothing is ever his problem is it? Can you imagine working for, or with a man who claims “the buck stops here”, but always side-steps everything?
Can’t we drill a hole into the bottom of the North Sea and put the Milied into it to go faster on renewing Great Britain?
He’s a poor excuse for a man.
It’s just confirmed what we already knew, Starmer is a pathetic waste of skin and bone.
The man is not fit for the job. The last thing we need as a prime minister in this over-legislated world is a goddamn brainless excuse for a lawyer who is void of any spine, character and imagination.
Is Starmer not the PRIME minister? My quick AI explanation (which must be true) states that the PRIME minister is the HEAD of the government, who LEADS the cabinet, setting policy and directing the country. Has no one explained this to Starmer? He is supposed to be the HEAD, not the tail, and setting policy and ensuring that his appointees toe the line. It seems clear that Miliband is the tail that is wagging the dog and the dog is just rolling over.
He’s just a figurehead, he probably has trouble running a bath! The civil service run the country, and allow ministers to pretend they do!
FFS, he doesn’t even know what a woman is, despite being married to one!
Except he’s Minister for the Civil Service and in charge of them too. As PM and ultimate leader of the country he has the power to make all the significant changes necessary to make GB a serious country again but he chooses not to. He could stop the endless immigration and scrap DEI, for instance. He even created his ‘tool cabinet’ – they are subordinate to him – and could sack any of them at any point. He doesn’t get to be absolved of his responsibilities. There’s nobody else to point at and scapegoat.
Isn’t it interesting that people can just be useless, woke or corrupt in their leadership roles, completely independent of their sex and ethnicity, though? Almost as if these are personal qualities quite separate from what one’s sex chromosomes, or melanin levels are doing..🤯
Chances are that he cannot really do much beyond calling an election and choosing ministers without first repealing a mountain of Blair-era legislation designed to guarantee New Labour rule in perpetuity regardless of election outcomes he probably won’t find parliamentary majorities for because there are too many people with vested interests and too much money who would oppose this.
Chances are that he also doesn’t want that because – after all – he has a well-paid and prestigious job and knew of the attached strings beforehand.
The Civil Service has, after all, successfully choked the pretty modest Rwanda plan and the home secretary is routiney blocked from deporting foreign criminals in accordance with existing law by use of seriously flimsy pretexts. Not to mention that an attempt to open a new coal mine in Wales was judically blocked by insisting that entirely hypothetical future emissions must be double-counted.
There’s something pretty fundamentally f***ed with the state of this country and it’s not easily fixed for as long as the monarch plays ball.
Power the North Sea drilling with a windmill? That might swing milibrain.
But, it’s not funny having Britain held to ransom by dogma.
Dogma and TheScience™
Potent mix.
We don’t need to drill Jackdaw.
The platform is built and the wells are drilled. Milipenis just won’t let Shell open the valves.
It is an ultra-high pressure field, all ready to go into production. This is utter insanity.
Wow— thanks for that shocking information!
Communist dictatorship of green lefty retards.
Down with this government.
”This is women again. This is what happens when you let women have power and decision making.”
Yeah but imagine how much worse things would be with a woman at the helm!😱
I don’t understand why your comment about women in positions of power has been censored and removed by the Moderator, while feminist tirades against men are allowed without question. You did not advocate for the Extermination of Women, nor did you urge men to beat their wives on a daily basis, nor did you say men should shoot their own mothers dead for refusing to ask their permission to go out shopping, as happened a few years ago in Gaza with a Palestinian Muslim Man living at home. It’s similar to the way in which the Unholy Muslim-Marxist Alliance wants to ban all criticism of Islam, while criticism of Christianity and every other religion is allowed.
Freedom of Speech means Freedom of Speech, not exempting special groups just because they complain a lot.
Since this government was elected I have been trying to understand what motivates their unusual, to be kind, behaviour and thought processes. This latest episode, the PM’s apparent subordination to his ministers, reveals a further insight into the behaviour. The PM is limited by laws and his ministers, but ,whether his ministers are limited by laws is unclear despite them having autonomy.
So all in all it would appear that this PM is not personally responsible, being limited by laws and the autonomy of ministers, for any government decisions!
PS
threfore we dont have a leader just anarchy
Lyndsey Hoyle is not doing his job or taking any responsibility for ensuring that 2TK answers the questions. Nigel Farage asked him about Liebour’s promise to “stop the gangs” and again the he just swerved the question resorting to insults. When is he going to be made to give a straightforward answer?
Hoyle is doing the job they need him to do to keep the left in place.
Well he is the latest in the line of Labour Speakers – and that includes the little runt Bercow who was screwing a Labour party member.
Perhaps the “Opposition” and Media should stop saying that drilling for oil/gas would bring prices down and start saying VERY PERSISTENTLY that it would increase tax revenue for the Government and therefore bring taxes down for “hard working Brits” …..
and watch Two-Tier/Theeves and Miliband squirm as they try to defend deliberately keeping taxes high in order to virtue-signal over Net Zero.
Starmer is clearly in the process of “checking out” from his leadership role. He knows he’s a lame duck and will be on his way before the year is out – probably just after the local elections in May. I personally won’t be sorry to see him go, but I will be sorry to witness the arrival of whoever succeeds him in the post. They won’t be any better for the UK, and will probably be considerably worse.
Perhaps it’s just yet another way Stumbler dodges responsibility and also eliminates another rival for the Premiership?
Because if fuel costs escalate even more, when Net Zero finally crumbles, it didn’t pass Stumbler’s desk.
Despite the energy crisis, Miliband has reiterated his vocal opposition to North Sea drilling,
arguinglying repeatedly that it would not bring down prices.And over in a far off land no longer run by retards, the US has paid off Total for the windmill licences it bought on the agreement that they invest in gas and oil in the US instead.
https://open.substack.com/pub/catherinemcbride/p/yes-the-north-sea-could-give-the?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=b9r3f
Catherine McBride has written about the nonsense talked about British gas production and whether it would benefit British customers. Mad Ed is deluded and ignorant.
He’s reluctant to take advantage of North Sea Oil reserves NOT because it won’t reduce energy prices (how can it possibly not?!) but because he will lose the vote of all the young climate change fanatics… Much as he is reluctant to enter the war because it will lose him the vote of his much-venerated Muslim electorate….
Which, by the way, are also the very same reasons the Greens are categorically opposed to the war in Iran, as well as drilling in the North Sea.