Watch Tom Harwood challenge top Labour peer over North Sea drilling dividing Cabinet - 'Makes a TINY difference?!'

Susanna Siddell
Sun, 05 Apr 2026 11:05:58 +0000

Watch the moment Tom Harwood challenged a top Labour peer over support for drilling in the North Sea driving a wedge through Sir Keir Starmer's Cabinet.

Joining GB News this morning, Dianne Hayter insisted the differences that arose between Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband were merely "tiny".

Discussing the ever-fracturing party's view on whether Britain should drill in the North Sea, Tom started: "Although strangely, for the first time in a very long time, we don't really know the Prime Minister's own mind on this."

Last week, Ms Reeves handed out support to two new drilling sites in the North Sea, but her view appears to be at odds with her colleague.

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Mr Miliband, as part of the party's Net Zero drive, has warned against overreliance on fossil fuels, but has recently fallen under increasing pressure to cave to pressure from rising fuel costs amid the Iran war.

Meanwhile, Ms Reeves said Labour would back oil and gas "for decades to come" and said the Iran conflict showed that "we have got to take control" of British energy supplies.

As a result, Tom insisted the divide over the Iran war, as well as its fallout on working Britons, was rather revealing of Sir Keir's leadership strength.

The presenter said: "When it came to the Iran war, much reporting at the start of the war was that the Prime Minister wanted to go one way, and actually it was his Cabinet that pushed him in the other.

"I can't think of a Prime Minister in modern history who's been more sort of willing to delegate to his Cabinet. Is that a strength or a weakness?

"You shouldn't believe everything you read in the papers!" Baroness Hayter quickly responded.

The peer went on to mention Jim Callaghan, who served as Prime Minister from 1976 to 1979, working in No10 during a time when "we had fewer leaks" due to less exposure to the media's scrutiny.

She added: "We didn't have these lovely programmes like yours. And so a lot of these things would happen, but we didn't know about them.

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"So I think some of the things we said... This is very different. It's actually because people are talking more - the media, quite rightly, and it's not a criticism, is looking at tiny differences between ministers."

But her claim the ministers' divide over their views was a mere "tiny difference" perturbed Tom, who interrupted his guest.

"More than a tiny difference, Baroness Hayter!" he laughed.

"Whether we drill more or end new drilling in the North Sea! We're talking about the potential for tens of billions of pounds of tax revenue."

"I doubt that it's that much, but it would be very nice," the Baroness responded. "You may have got an extra nought nought on there, but these big decisions are what Governments take.

"And they take big decisions about what we do in war. They take big decisions about, you know, futures, pensions, about all sorts of issues.

"Governments have always taken very big decisions, and it's very good that those debates go on. As I say, we see more about them now than we did in I was around in Jim Callaghan's day.

"I remember when he became Prime Minister and a lot of this stuff was done behind closed doors. It's better that we're discussing it.

"I think it's very good that you and others are on the airwaves exposing the challenges that any Government has to face up to and the decisions that has to take."