Starmer’s hot air won’t save the planet

One thing that the World Economic Forum in Davos doesn’t need more of is hot air – the organisers have turned it into an art form. Besides, think of all those shrinking Alpine glaciers.

So it is unfortunate that Sir Keir Starmer – in between banging on about the fact that he had turned up and the Prime Minister hadn’t – unleashed a gust large enough to power half of Switzerland with all his loose talk about spearheading the green energy transition.

If you’re going to make a big song and dance about showing up, then at least make sure you’ve got something to say. Instead, not for the first time, the leader of the opposition talked a lot without really saying much at all.

To be fair, he didn’t embarrass himself quite as much as eco warrior Al Gore, who appeared to lose the plot on stage. The former US vice-president has spent the past two decades sounding the alarm on climate change but at Davos he became so purple during a hysterical speech about “rain bombs” and “boiling oceans” that it is a miracle he didn’t melt what is left of the polar ice caps.

Sir Keir’s attempts to join him on the eco bandwagon were only marginally more credible, however. People keep talking about how Labour is a government-inwaiting, which isn’t actually that difficult considering how ineffective the current one is. The problem is that under Sir Keir, the opposition seems incapable of acting like one.

He has had months to get his lines right, yet when presented with the opportunity to woo a crowd of the most influential business figures on something as fundamental and topical as energy policy, the Labour leader seemed like he was making it up on the spot. Let’s begin with a suggestion that the opposition would turn its back on the oil and gas industry if it wins the next election. This is disingenuous in the extreme. Not investing in new North Sea projects is not nearly the same as giving up fossil fuels, as Sir Keir might want his supporters to believe. And we will need to keep using oil and gas during the transition to net zero – something that he acknowledged.

His pledge, therefore, is neither one nor the other – a classic fudge of the sort that Sir Keir is becoming expert. Besides, even if Labour had called time on the North Sea, the gains from the region are pretty small now anyway. It’s effectively a sunset industry already, so it’s definitely not quite the bold statement that the party might want us to believe.

But even an attempt to accelerate the winding down of an industry that remains of huge importance to both the Scottish economy and still has a role to play in Britain’s energy security is not one that any politician should be grandstanding on.

So what is Labour’s plan for an estimated 120,000 that are still employed offshore in the UK? Will they all get a job building a wind farm?

The move towards a greener world free of carbon is not a partisan issue, as the Left would have us believe. It is, as this newspaper has pointed out, a goal that crosses the political divide. But what is of great concern to many people is the speed with which the transition occurs.

True, it can’t happen without more wind farms, solar energy and nuclear power. But if the shift is accelerated as Sir Keir is suggesting without also building the massive infrastructure that is required, there is a risk that Britain becomes more reliant on fossil fuel imports, not less – and we only have to look at our current energy bills for a reminder of where that leads.

The fact is that this country is currently a desperately long way off being able to support a fully clean energy system.

At Christmas, queues of Teslas snaked out of service stations around the country. There aren’t nearly enough electric vehicle charging points; we have just one battery gigafactory; storage is virtually non-existent; and in some parts of the country it is impossible to build new homes because the ancient electricity grid has run out of capacity to support them. Better to allow that side of the equation to catch up before doubling down on renewables output, perhaps.

As for Sir Keir’s plan for an “inverse Opec” that acts together to bring down prices, it is really nothing more than a cute soundbite with no substance.

It’s not even a loose alliance – no one has signed up, nor are they likely to. America and Europe have demonstrated that they intend to act in their own interests when it comes to renewables subsidies, and with all the will in the world, you can’t have an alliance of one. Sir Keir should spend less time grandstanding on green issues – and more time thinking about what a realistic energy transition would look like.

‘He had months to get his lines right. It felt like he was making it up on the spot’