Industry fury over net-zero climbdown
JULIE BINDEL’S been a Labour supporter all her life. But here she accuses Sir Keir and his party of a shocking distortion of what really happened in Wednesday’s PMQs
LABOUR faced a business backlash over its green plans last night as it cut investment and threatened tax hikes.
In a major retreat, Keir Starmer said that planned green spending of £28billion a year would be cut to less than £5billion.
The Labour leader said his party would also ‘extend’ the existing windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas to extract another £10.8billion from an industry it has threatened to run down. Industry sources last night warned the move would further damage investment in the sector, where Labour has warned it will issue no new licences for exploration.
Emma Pinchbeck, of the trade association Energy UK, warned that cutting investment in the transition to net zero would undermine confidence, saying: ‘ Business needs to know that politicians won’t pull the rug from under them.’
She added: ‘Labour’s spending plans are a signal to the market. The party has been engaging constructively with business over recent months, but retaining the confidence of the market is dependent on not making U-turns that damage the UK’s investability.’
Sir Keir insisted Labour would be able to keep most of its stated commitments, including £2.5billion to develop ‘green steel’ and £8.3billion to fund the creation of a state-owned firm – Great British Energy – to invest in clean energy.
But he said there would be ‘no further investment’ under the Green Prosperity Plan, which had been the centrepiece of Labour’s economic strategy. Sir Keir acknowledged that hitting Labour’s target to decarbonise the UK’s energy supplies by 2030 would now be ‘difficult and challenging’ to achieve, but insisted that radical reform of the planning system would encourage massive private investment to help plug the gap. A pledge to insulate 19million homes over the next decade has also been scaled back. Labour had wanted to spend up to £6billion a year on the Warm Homes Plan but now aims for £1.6billion a year.
Sir Keir said the scheme might now take up to 14 years to achieve with only five million properties completed in Labour’s first term.
Mike Childs, of Friends of the Earth, accused Labour of having ‘turned its back on the people who most urgently need these essential upgrades – the many millions of lowincome households suffering from living in poorly insulated homes’.
The Unite union welcomed the commitment to the steel industry but criticised plans to cut back wider investment in industry. General secretary Sharon Graham said: ‘Britain needs more not less investment and there is still much to do in order for Labour to gain the trust of workers impacted by net zero.
‘If Labour keep getting scared off by Tory attacks, they will end up outsourcing their policy making to the Conservatives.’
The North Sea oil and gas industry already faces an effective tax rate of 75 per cent following Rishi Sunak’s decision to impose the Energy Profits Levy to help fund subsidies for households suffering crippling increases in energy bills.
The additional tax is due to remain in place until 2028.
Labour yesterday said it would raise the levy to 78 per cent and extend it by up to two years.
Tax breaks allowing firms to offset 90 per cent of the cost of the levy against new investment will also be closed down.
How can an exchange in the House of Commons, broadcast live on TV and radio, be so egregiously misinterpreted? Anyone scrolling through social media over the past 48 hours would be led to believe that at wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions, Rishi Sunak made a transphobic joke at the expense of murdered schoolchild Brianna Ghey.
Now, I am no fan of Sunak. In fact, I am a lifelong Labour supporter. But I feel compelled to speak out over what amounts to a dangerous distortion of the facts.
For in no way did the Prime Minister make a transphobic joke. In reality, it was his political opponent, Sir Keir Starmer, who falsely accused him of doing so while also weaponising the tragic case of Brianna Ghey to score political points.
So, how — and why — were the events of wednesday’s PMQs so shockingly misconstrued both on social media and by large swathes of the British media? To answer this, we need to go back to the event itself.
Shortly after midday on wednesday, as every week, the Prime Minister faced 15 questions from members of the house. Six of those questions are allotted to the Leader of the opposition. In response to one of Starmer’s questions, Sunak took the opportunity to lambast the Labour leader’s wellchronicled history of policy U-turns.
‘Pensions, planning, peerages, public sector pay,’ began Sunak, before landing his humdinger of a line: ‘Defining a woman — but that was only 99 per cent of a U-turn!’
The Prime Minister was, of course, ridiculing Starmer for his failure to define what a woman is. In April last year, the Labour leader made the ridiculous claim that 99.9 per cent of women ‘haven’t got a penis’ — implying that one in a thousand women do — only to later change his mind and describe a woman as an ‘adult female.’
There was nothing transphobic about Sunak’s jibe. In fact, it was a legitimate attack against a man who continually fails to distinguish between biological sex and gender identity. what was appalling was Starmer’s response: ‘of all the weeks to say that,’ he began, ‘when Brianna’s mother is in this chamber. Shame.’
STARMER was suggesting Sunak’s jibe was both transphobic and in poor taste because Brianna’s mother was watching from the gallery. Her 16-year-old was murdered last year by two peers, then aged 15, one of whom was said to have been motivated by transphobia.
But there are two problems with Starmer’s response. Firstly, Brianna’s mother esther Ghey was not yet in the gallery; she only entered after the remarks.
Secondly, and more importantly, it was Starmer who brought up Brianna, and he alone who tried to score political points. In no way did Sunak’s ‘ 99 per cent’ remark relate to Brianna. And yet, unable to defend himself, the Labour leader used the teenager’s murder as a political shield.
To my mind, this marks a new low for a man who prides himself on his personal and political integrity.
Kemi Badenoch, the Business and Trade Secretary, rightly tried to set the record straight by accusing Starmer of ‘weaponising’ the case. ‘ every murder is a tragedy. None should be trivialised by political point scoring,’ wrote Ms Badenoch on X. ‘ As a mother, I can imagine the trauma that esther Ghey has endured. It was shameful of Starmer to link his own inability to be clear on the matter of sex and gender directly to her grief.’
Badenoch is absolutely right. And yet, in an appalling twist, it is Sunak who has been painted as the villain.
Labour MPs, who broke into a chorus of ‘shame’ in the Commons, immediately set the agenda on X. with her characteristic eloquence, Birmingham Yardley MP Jess Phillips said of Sunak: ‘How dare he be so gross in the face of the family of a murdered child. He is the lowest of the low.’ Yesterday, the front page of Labour-loving paper The Mirror depicted Sunak next to the headline: ‘Shame on you.’ Meanwhile, the Independent’s front page described the PM’s ‘callous trans jibe’.
The BBC fanned the flames by replaying the incident on the Radio 4 PM programme, with presenter evan Davis suggesting Sunak had made trans people the ‘punchline of a joke […] metres from the mother of a murdered trans person.’ He failed, however, to suggest Starmer might have done anything wrong. In other words, from the moment Starmer falsely accused Sunak of being transphobic, the Labour Party machine, the Leftwing Press and the all-powerful trans lobby confected a scandal and painted the Prime Minister as an insensitive transphobe — an accusation for which there is simply no basis of truth.
even Tory MPs, fearful of becoming targets themselves, spoke out against Sunak. Dehenna Davison said it was ‘disappointing to hear jokes being made at the trans community’s expense’, while
Jamie wallis described Sunak’s words as a ‘display of insensitivity’. even the Leader of the House, Penny Mordaunt, expressed her hope that the Prime Minister had ‘reflected’ on his words.
But should we really be surprised that even Tory MPs are siding with trans activists, a group notorious for launching vicious, career-ending attacks? I would know, because I’ve been the victim of so many.
Making my way into a conference centre recently, to give a speech about male violence towards women and girls and how to
challenge it, I had to walk past socalled trans activists holding banners proclaiming: ‘ Suck my d*** you transphobic c***.’
And don’t forget, the trans ‘women’ holding such banners have been through male puberty and are therefore bigger and stronger than I am. It was intimidating to say the very least.
No one is saying trans people have it easy. And it must be incredibly difficult to be a young person experiencing gender dysphoria. But this is no excuse for shutting down legitimate debate. In twisting the facts, and launching an attack on Sunak, the trans lobby is attempting to discredit the view that sex is a biological reality.
Brianna’s father, Peter Spooner, has since told Sky News: ‘I personally feel shocked by his comments and feel he should apologise for his remarks.’
YOU could be forgiven for assuming he was speaking about Starmer, but in fact, it is the Prime Minister from whom Mr Spooner would like an apology. I have every sympathy for Brianna’s parents. Losing a child — especially in such horrific circumstances — must be an incomprehensible trauma.
what’s more, Mr Spooner and esther Ghey have had to grieve in the public spotlight, with millions of people following and fascinated by the trial of her teenage killers, Scarlett Jenkinson and eddie Ratcliffe.
However, the Prime Minister has nothing to apologise for. In fact, it should be Starmer saying sorry. He is the man who turned Brianna Ghey into a political pawn. whichever way the Left tries to spin it, Starmer should be deeply ashamed of himself.
Yesterday, Sunak stood by his remarks, calling his line of questioning ‘absolutely legitimate.’ The Prime Minister continued: ‘I’ve nothing but the most heartfelt sympathy for [Brianna Ghey’s] entire family and friends.
‘ But to use that tragedy to detract from the very separate and clear point I was making about Keir Starmer’s proven track record of multiple U-turns on major policies, because he doesn’t have a plan, I think is both sad and wrong, and it demonstrates the worst of politics.’
As a consequence of the furore, Starmer’s latest U-turn yesterday on Labour’s £ 28 billion green pledge was conveniently overlooked. And, as the political circus rolls on, so will this distasteful incident.
But this is a clear example of how easily facts can be distorted.
In the case of this week’s PMQs, the truth was buried under a social media frenzy, one viciously concocted by the Labour Party and the trans lobby to which it is in thrall.