A new £8billion national energy company? Labour couldn’t even run a bath
AFTEr the terrorist attack which knocked out the Nord Stream gas pipeline, widely blamed on russia, does anyone in Whitehall still think it’s a good idea to import electricity from Morocco?
There are already fears that Putin might target britain’s North Sea energy infrastructure, in retaliation for our support of ukraine. a third of this country’s gas supply currently comes via two pipelines from Norway. North Sea oil and gas rigs are at risk, too, according to defence experts.
russian submarines could also sabotage undersea communications cables which service the international banking industry. against this background it would be insane to go ahead with plans to lay four 2,300-mile long cables from Morocco to Devon, designed to bring ‘sustainable’ solar and wind power from the Sahara Desert.
Never mind Mad Vlad, the £18billion project would be an irresistible target for Islamist terror groups in North africa, desperate to strike a blow against the Little Satan.
Ministers wedded to the Fantasy Island Net Zero agenda are attracted to the scheme for two reasons. Electricity generated in Morocco would be half the price of nuclear energy produced in britain.
and unlike our own intermittent War of The Worlds windmills, Saharan turbines are guaranteed to operate 20 hours a day. With energy bills going through the roof, politicians are desperate for any source of cheap, green electricity.
Labour’S solution, unveiled at its conference this week, is to create a new, publicly owned organisation called Great british Energy.
Keir Starmer says it will be a stand-alone company and he’s ruling out full re-nationalisation of the energy sector, even though that’s what most of his activists want.
He says it would have a budget of £8billion to invest in renewables and emerging technologies.
Sounds suspiciously to me like the failed policy of governments ‘picking winners’ before pouring billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money down a black hole, never to be seen again.
Politicians, especially Labour politicians, have a dismal record when it comes to backing successful enterprises. They have no business running companies.
These are the same kind of people who brought you british Leyland, british Steel, the Meriden Motorcycle Co-operative and upper Clyde Shipbuilders, all of which collapsed. My guess is Great british Energy would suffer the same fate.
and where would this £8billion come from? apparently, it would be drawn from a yet-to-be-established National Wealth Fund. What ‘wealth’? Last time anyone looked, britain was drowning in debt, after borrowing hundreds of billions to beat Covid.
I wouldn’t trust Labour to run a bath, let alone an energy company. We’ve been here before. When I was an industrial correspondent, the energy market was controlled by the government. It was a disaster. The unions ran the companies, which lost money hand over fist. Supply was frequently interrupted by strikes. Power cuts were commonplace.
The problem we face now is price, which is set not domestically but globally. admittedly, the private energy companies can be arrogant. Some are poorly run, but they are a vast improvement on what came before.
back in the bad old days before privatisation, the utilities were run entirely for the benefit of those who worked for them.
In fairly recent memory — to an old git like me, at least — you could only buy a cooker from the gas or electricity board and then had to wait weeks for a unionised fitter to come round and plug it in. It could take six months to get a telephone installed.
Competition put a stop to that. We now live in an age of bewildering choice. Yet, curiously, it is younger people used to instant gratification via mobile apps, internet shopping, same-day delivery and ubers on demand, who frequently say they are in favour of nationalisation. be careful what you wish for, kids.
Sadly, far too many of my
THERE will be no statue of Queen Elizabeth on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, says London’s Labour mayor Genghis Khan.
Thank heaven for that. Her Maj deserves a far more fitting memorial than being stuck on a pedestal which has been home to a selection of avant-garde tat over the past few years.
Nothing less than a magnificent statue on The Mall or in Hyde Park will do. Perhaps Wee Burney could unveil one outside Bute House in Edinburgh, too. generation have been lulled by Covid into thinking government should and must provide the answer to all life’s problems.
Which is why Starmer thinks he’s on to a winner with Great british Energy. He says, with some justification, that for too long we’ve been paying our energy bills to companies with overseas owners, such as France’s EDF.
Gordon brown promised british jobs for british workers. Starmer promises british energy for the british people.
THE easiest way to do it would be to support the recent decision to lift the ban on fracking. but Starmer is committed to reversing that. He’s also pledging to end the use of fossil fuels for energy generation by 2030. Good luck with that. If successive governments hadn’t turned their backs on gas and oil in pursuit of the elusive Net Zero, we wouldn’t be in this mess today.
That’s why the Truss Government is right to green-light fracking and encourage further extraction in the North Sea.
For now, we are at the mercy of Putin, although fortunately we are better placed than most other European countries.
The answer is to drill, baby, drill. Not come up with hare-brained schemes to import electricity from the Sahara Desert.
If ever a plan could properly be called a pipe dream, this is it.