By Nick Timothy, Tory MP for West Suffolk
Next to the Prime Minister, Donald Trump criticized Labour’s taxation approach to North Sea oil and gas, stating it “makes no sense”, and labeled Ed Miliband’s wind farms as a “con job”.
Keir Starmer looked like a rabbit in the headlights, because he knew what Trump said was true.
The eco policies this Labour government is pursuing simply make no sense.
They are spinning us a lie.
The government tells us we must urgently hit Net Zero targets because the cost of fossil fuels are unaffordably high.
But renewables cost more money and push up bills.
They say Britain must build more wind and solar farms so we can wean ourselves of foreign gas and become energy sufficient.
But at the same time No10 bans new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea – leaving us more dependent on imports.
And the government tells us this dash to go green will create thousands and thousands of new jobs.
Meanwhile, trade unions representing energy workers caution that Labour’s aggressive environmental policies might lead to the loss of tens of thousands of well-paid jobs in the UK.
It is a mad Alice in Wonderland world where down is up and up is down.
Ed Miliband has gone through the Looking Glass. His policies are the stuff of the Mad Hatter.
And today I can reveal that Labour’s Net Zero drive will cost an estimated £23 billion a year by 2030.
That is the equivalent of slapping another £389 a year onto the cost of living for households.
It is a cost this country cannot afford.
Let me give you a few examples to show you just how barmy our energy policy has become under ‘Red Ed’.
First- the oil and gas industry.
Just weeks after winning the election, Labour banned new licences to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea.
Furious trade unions said that up to 30,000 UK jobs could be lost, but their dire warnings fell on deaf ears.
But the most ridiculous thing is that Britain still imports oil and gas taken from the very same seabed from Norway.
So, Norway gets to keep the taxes, profits and jobs, while the UK goes without.
It is a grotesque example of self-harm.
Second – the bizarre case of the Drax power station in North Yorkshire.
It imports wood from halfway around the world to burn, yet the UK taxpayer has spent billions of pounds in green subsidies on the power station.
This simply makes no sense.
Third – the sky high cost of wind and solar energy.
Labour has set the UK insane targets to quadruple offshore wind and double onshore wind in just five years.
But energy produced by these wind farms is actually MORE expensive.
Ed Miliband has promised wind farms a fixed price of £113 per MWh for the next 20 years.
That is 50 per cent HIGHER than the average cost of electricity.
The cost of building new wind and solar farms is also enormous.
An estimated £40 billion a year will be spent upgrading the National Grid, and rolling out new pylons and battery storage sites.
Worst of all, wind and solar are even paid NOT to produce energy.
This is because our creaking National Grid cannot handle big surges of energy.
So when it is particularly windy they have to pay wind farms to switch off.
This year alone we have paid £700 million to wind farms to STOP generating power.
It is bananas.
In addition, Brits face environmental levies included in their energy bills, which are additional charges intended to fund the development of new, greener energy sources.
Labour are sending environmental levies hurtling towards £14.8 billion in 2030.
The PM promised he would cut energy bills by £300 by the next election.
But the opposite is true. They are getting bigger and bigger.
No wonder President Trump thinks we are mad.
Our energy costs are twice those in America. As a result their economy is booming while ours is stagnating.
The US President could see the truth and was unafraid to say it.
Britain needs to completely change course.
It’s time to junk the clean power target and support energy policies that actually work.
We should take the US President’s advice and “drill baby drill” in the North Sea.
We should expand nuclear energy.
And we should ditch our expensive green energy levies and subsidies.
Otherwise we remain Ed Miliband’s mad world – and we will all pay the price.
