Climate sceptic donated to Reeves before pledge dropped

This would be manna from heaven for the SNP of old but Humza Yousaf is neutered by the Greens

RACHEL REEVES accepted £10,100 from a climate sceptic just days before Labour abandoned its flagship £28bn green energy spending pledge.

Bernard Donoughue, a Labour peer who previously told Parliament that the climate change debate suffers from “scaremongering” and “exaggeration”, donated to the shadow chancellor’s office late last month.

Labour formally ditched its spending plan less than three weeks later, when

Sir Keir Starmer and Ms Reeves announced they would spend just £4.7bn a year on clean energy policies.

Lord Donoughue, who last spoke to Ms Reeves three weeks ago, said he supports Labour’s decision to drastically scale back the pledge but emphasised his donation had nothing to do with the party’s green U-turn.

He said: “That was a sensible decision in the national interest. The donation was totally unrelated. I haven’t been involved in those £28bn discussions. And quite rightly so. She needed help staffing her constituency. I think she’s crucial to the Labour Party and country. She’s so sensible and she’s got such good political and economic judgment.”

Formerly a secretary of state under Tony Blair, Lord Donoughue later chaired the Global Warming Policy Foundation, set up by Nigel Lawson in 2009 to scrutinise the economics of climate change. His support comes as Ms Reeves faces fresh criticism over the party’s plans to fight climate change.

Ryan Crighton, director of policy at the Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of

Commerce, has accused her of spearheading a planned windfall tax that will “wipe out 100,000 jobs” and cost the Treasury £20bn in lost revenue.

A Labour source said: “Lord Donoughue is a long-standing friend of Rachel’s and Labour peer. She does not share his views on climate change and has spoken of her determination to be Britain’s first green chancellor.”

It is understood Ms Reeves intends to keep the donation.

Heading to Scotland to betray people in the pursuit of money and power has become very fashionable in 2024 thanks to the TV show The Traitors.

However, the back-stabbing stars of the hit series have nothing on Labour, who are heading for Glasgow for their

Scottish Conference tomorrow having just delivered one of the biggest betrayals in Britain’s industrial history.

The party’s “proper” windfall tax – which will result in energy firm profits being levied at 78pc for another five years – will wipe out 100,000 jobs, according to analysts, and cost the Treasury £20bn in lost revenue.

To put the devastating job toll in context, it was the axing of 20,000 jobs that sparked the miners’ strikes in 1984-85. This one policy will potentially wipe out five times as many.

Even for a party known to indulge in a bit of pre-election self-flagellation, this really takes the shortbread biscuit.

Labour – the party of workers and unions – is happy to cast tens of thousands of hard-working men and women on the scrapheap and place a world-class Scottish industry on death row.

It does not matter what your political persuasion is, a policy that costs 100,000 jobs is a bad one.

The fact that opposition parties cannot make political capital out of such a ruinous strategy highlights just how shambolic energy policy has become on these isles.

The SNP of old would be standing up for the tens of thousands of Scots now facing an uncertain future. The prospect of a Westminster government shutting down Scotland’s biggest industry would be election manna from heaven.

However, hamstrung by their ill-conceived presumption against oil and gas, and politically neutered by the

Greens, Humza Yousaf has no moral high ground to occupy on this issue.

Neither do the Conservatives, who implemented the windfall tax in the first place and have since ignored multiple pleas to remove it, despite energy prices normalising more than a year ago.

Based on the above, you can understand why the forthcoming general election has paralysed investment in the North Sea. But that paused investment will become lost investment if Labour wins on this policy platform.

When we welcomed Sir Keir Starmer and Ed Miliband to Aberdeen in November, they looked us in the eye and told us they wanted to work with the energy industry to deliver a transition that leaves nobody behind.

They say they want to work in partnership with industry. But just like last summer, when they sprang plans for an exploration ban, this windfall tax extension has been done with zero engagement.

Right now, their energy policy is an

absolute disaster and they need to sit down with industry and rewrite it from scratch if we are to retain any hope of remaining a global energy hub. As things stand, the UK is set to lose out on £40bn worth of investment between now and 2030.

Going forward, their policies must also reflect three key points: we need oil and gas; we need the people who produce it; and we need the companies who finance it.

Oil and gas will still be 20pc of our energy mix in 2050 under a net zero scenario. And we need new fields to offset decline, otherwise we will lose 75pc of our production inside a decade, leaving us reliant on more energy imports from abroad as well as potential energy shortages.

This is also about people – if you wind down the North Sea too quickly, before jobs and opportunities are available at scale in the renewables sector, then you lose the world-class workforce and supply chain.

That will make what is already an enormous challenge even harder,

perhaps impossible. We cannot allow that to happen.

Finally, you need energy companies to have faith to invest in the long-term future of the UK. That means working in lockstep with many of the companies currently producing oil and gas, because they are the ones who will invest the huge sums required to commercialise new technologies.

If Labour wants to win power, the party needs to prove to industry – and the public – that it can be trusted with our energy transition. The early signs are not good, and if we get this wrong the economic and social damage will be enormous.

Ahead of the 1992 general election, there was a famous front-page headline that urged the last person to leave Britain to “turn out the lights” if Labour won the election.

This time around, the lights may go out themselves.