Tories should back Workington Man, not Woke-ington Man
West Cumbria is staggeringly beautiful. Not the chocolatebox beauty of its near neighbour the Lake District, but the rugged beauty of an unspoilt coastline, contrasted with industry such as Sellafield. Despite this, it has its challenges. The infrastructure is appalling – the A595 connecting it with the county’s other industrial hub, Barrow, literally passes through a farmyard. In some areas, broadband speeds are comparable to London in the Nineties. It has significant pockets of deprivation and should be top of the list of areas needing to be “levelled up”.
Despite this, Twitter lit up last week with Lefty celebrations as the Government U-turned on its announcement not to intervene or delay a locally made decision to grant planning to a new deep metallurgical coal mine in West Cumbria. Ed Miliband, Greenpeace, and Extinction Rebellion were ecstatic. While tepid prosecco was being uncorked across Islington, the reaction in Cumbrian towns such as Whitehaven and Workington was dismay and grief.
At the last election, it was “Workington Man” not “Woke-ington
Man” nor Extinction Rebellion who gave Boris Johnson the largest Conservative majority for a generation. This very same voter is now faced with the loss of 2,500 new jobs, as well as the estimated £100million a year that would have been delivered by the mine to the local economy.
These stark financial facts are part of the reason that the mine was approved on three separate occasions by the local council. The Government has decided to intervene and call for a public inquiry, despite having twice ruled it out in January. This further delay, coming on top of a five-year planning process, will probably prevent the development proceeding, as West Cumbria Mining may finally run out of patience.
Some have blamed this decision on comments made by John Kerry, the US Climate Envoy. When questioned about the west Cumbria mine by the BBC, he commented that “coal is not the future”, ramping up pressure on the Government to change its decision in advance of the COP26 climate summit later this year. Mr Kerry, of course, failed to mention that the US remains the third-largest coal producer in the world and has in recent years opened just this type of metallurgical coal mine in Pennsylvania, supplying national and international steel production.
Stopping this application will not reduce, by one ton, the amount of coal used in UK steel production; however, it will ensure our continued reliance on coal imported from Russia, Australia and the US. Mr Kerry did not suggest 2,500 jobs in Pennsylvania should be sacrificed so we could mine British metallurgical coal to satisfy our own demand rather than importing it. This is despite evidence that using our own natural resources to produce British steel would save millions of tons of carbon a year, as well as contributing £1.8billion to UK GDP and creating £2.5billion worth of exports in the first 10 years.
I see no reason why Great Britain should “bend the knee” on this issue to one of the world’s biggest polluters. We should never prioritise jobs in Pennsylvania over jobs in the North of England. Unlike the US, we should be proud that in June
2019, the UK was the first major economy to set a legally binding target to reach net zero by 2050. This commitment may, for many, justify stopping a new mine being opened in England, but they are wrong. The west Cumbria mine is net-zero 2050 compliant and accords with UK green industrial commitments, including government commitments to no coal production beyond 2049. It satisfies the highest levels of greenhouse gas emission mitigation.
Despite the facts, it now appears that the Government has buckled to a sustained campaign by vocal climate activists. This is the worst type of decision – our route to net zero must be based on the best science, not guided by those who shout the loudest.
To all those armchair activists “woke-ing from home”, I say this: the North is not some green playground you can visit after lockdown; we are the cradle of the new green industrial revolution and we want “coal not dole”. You don’t knit wind turbines. You make them from steel. Let’s make it British steel, made with British coal.