Labour will drop ‘unaffordable’ net zero policies, predicts Reform’s deputy leader

Fiona Harvey

Labour will back down on its policies aimed at achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions, the deputy leader of the Reform has predicted.

Richard Tice, the energy spokesperson for Reform and MP for Boston and Skegness, told the Guardian his party would withdraw from the 2015 Paris agreement that tries to limit global heating to 1.5C.

He also said Reform would end a five-year funding plan to help developing countries cope with the impact of climate breakdown.

“The idea that we can afford £10bn for climate aid is ridiculous,” he said. “We have plenty of problems ourselves that we rely on government to look after.”

Tice, who drives an electric car, said he believed Labour had “a growing anxiety that they have got it wrong on net zero. If energy bills do not come down, they will be in serious electoral trouble.”

He accused the government of trying to “bury” the costs of net zero in the latest spending review, and called the push for renewable energy “unaffordable” and “a colossal misjudgement”. He said: “That’s why we will see change, they will back down.”

Pointing to a Holyrood byelection last week, in which Labour won the seat with fewer than 1,500 votes more than Reform, he said: “That sends a very serious message to Labour that even where they used to be dominant in Scotland, there are very many people who will say Reform are the right party.”

But he did not expect Keir Starmer, the prime minister, to make a public U-turn on net zero. Rather, Labour would give way gradually, he predicted.

“I think they will delay, they will gradually wind down, they will push back the timing of targets and policies,” he said.

“They will be trying to find clever ways to walk back from their clean power targets [of decarbonising the electricity sector by 2030].”

Labour has come under pressure over its net zero plans from the Conservatives, sections of the media and from some unions. In April, former prime minister Tony Blair wrote that any strategy based on phasing out fossil fuels in the short term, or limiting consumption, was “doomed to fail”. There have also been unfriendly briefings from within government against Ed Miliband, the energy secretary.

But Starmer silenced internal critics of his policies with a landmark speech declaring he would go “all out” on climate action and “not wait, but accelerate” on net zero.

In this week’s spending review, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, lavished more than £60bn on green efforts, including £13.2bn for home insulation, about £30bn for nuclear power and £15bn for public transport outside London. Miliband was one of the big winners in the review, as the budget for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero ballooned by 16% a year, or 68% over the period of the review, to 2029.

A government source said Tice’s attacks on net zero would not sway Starmer. “This is nonsense from Tice. We are doubling down on this agenda because it is the way to take back control of our energy, protect households and create jobs,” said the source. “As the prime minister recently said, it is in the DNA of this government. We will fight Reform’s anti-jobs, anti-growth, anti-energy security, ideological agenda, community by community, as we make the patriotic case for clean energy and climate action.”

Reform’s vows to move away from renewable energy would mean job losses and raise costs by increasing reliance on expensive fossil fuels, some experts have said. The New Economics Foundation found that 60,000 jobs in wind and solar energy would be lost under the party’s policies and the costs to the economy would reach about £92bn by 2030.

Energy experts pointed out that renewable power was cheaper than overreliance on fossil fuels. Jess Ralston, analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said: “UK electricity is becoming more British and every bit of renewable power we get from solar reduces the amount of gas we need to import from abroad as the North Sea continues its inevitable decline. Campaigns against [renewables] leave the UK more vulnerable to geopolitical meddling of foreign actors like Putin.”

Reform has also pledged to reverse Labour’s ban on new drilling licences for oil and gas in the North Sea after Donald Trump, the US president, announced his backing for more North Sea fossil fuel production.

Ami McCarthy, the head of politics at Greenpeace UK, said: “While it might be entertaining to watch Richard Tice’s Tiny Trump impression, Reform’s energy policy is completely deluded. As we have seen before, Reform has no solution to the energy challenges we face. More drilling for volatile fossil fuels serves no one except the oil and gas bosses that have been profiting exponentially at the expense of bill payers. And putting a windfall tax on wind will only make our bills go up, not down.”

Courtesy: theguardian