Andy Burnham made a big pitch in Makerfield to reindustrialise Britain. The question is, has anyone told Ed Miliband?
Because while Andy has been making those promises up north, down in Westminster, Ed Miliband was setting out his plans to shut down the North Sea – the greatest act of industrial self-harm committed in a generation.
Last night, he whipped his backbench MPs to support a ban on new oil and gas licenses and refused to sign off on the two fields, Rosebank and Jackdaw, which have been sitting on his desk for two years.
He is single-handedly engineering the wilful destruction of thousands of jobs and our energy security because his climate ideology prefers dirtier foreign imports to clean British production. Why?
It’s because the gas we’ll be forced to import from Qatar doesn’t count in our Net Zero targets, nor does the jet fuel, petrol or diesel that we’d ship in from India, nor the chemicals that we’d get from places like China, which are still powered by coal. It is simply absurd, however, to pretend that any of this is helping the environment.
Swapping British production for dirtier imports is bad for emissions, it’s bad for the economy, and it’s bad for our energy security too. If the war in Iran and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine have taught us anything, it’s that having your own supply of oil and gas is crucial.
In fact, like so much of what Ed Miliband does, his so-called ‘Energy Independence Bill’ actually delivers the opposite of independence – it is going to leave us weaker, poorer and more reliant on foreign regimes. By shutting down the North Sea, we will be more dependent on foreign imports of oil and gas.
The Bill does nothing to abolish the Carbon Taxes, which are killing off British refineries. It keeps us hooked on solar panels made with Chinese slave labour, and by Ed’s own figures, his plans will leave us twice as reliant in 2030 on electricity imports from our neighbours like France to keep the lights on.
A so-called Energy Independence Bill that makes Britain beholden to Donald Trump for our gas, Xi Jinping for our solar panels, and could see us rely on Marine Le Pen for our electricity. You couldn’t make it up.
During his campaign, Burnham should find the time to visit the Runcorn salt plant down the road from Makerfield. This is the last salt plant left in the country, and it is fighting for its life because of sky-high energy costs and soaring Carbon Taxes.
Salt might sound mundane, but without it we cannot purify our water supply, produce most of our pharmaceuticals, or even make explosives. If Runcorn closes, we will become entirely dependent on salt imports for the first time in history.
Andy Burnham's made a big pitch to reindustrialise - has anyone told Ed Miliband? - Claire Coutinho
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If Andy cares about British industry, he needs to sign up to our fully costed plan to slash energy costs and Carbon Taxes for British industry before it’s too late.
The truth is that it doesn’t matter who Labour picks. Wes, Andy, Angela or – god forbid – Ed Miliband. They will all fail very quickly if they can’t keep their promises.
That’s what happened to us Conservatives in Government, it’s happening to Labour now, and it is happening to Reform at a council level. It will happen to whoever is in Government next unless they face up to the trade-offs we need for growth.
The world over, growth has been delivered by two things: cheap, abundant energy and economic freedom. By keeping Net Zero legislation in place, shutting down the North Sea, cancelling large-scale nuclear projects, leaving a distorted electricity market untouched and putting forward endless tax rises and jobs-killing regulations, Labour are making our energy problems worse and stifling the dynamism we need for growth.
Reindustrialisation is just a meaningless slogan if Andy Burnham is not prepared to face down Ed Miliband. If we want British industry to succeed, the bare minimum we have to do is to scrap Net Zero legislation, get Britain drilling again, axe the Carbon Tax killing off our industry and make electricity cheap.
Under Kemi Badenoch, the Conservatives are the only political party with a fully costed plan to do all of those things, Andy and all the other contenders should back it.