Planet Normal: Sir Keir Starmer's North Sea plan faces union backlash

“You’ve had the GMB, the third biggest Trade Union in the Country, saying that Labour’s policies on the North Sea are incoherent and dangerous”.

On the latest Planet Normal podcast, which you can listen to using the audio player above, columnists Liam Halligan and Allison Pearson discuss the reaction to Sir Keir Starmer’s policies to ban new investment in North Sea gas and oil.

“You’ve had Sharon Graham, the head of Unite, the second biggest trade union in this country...comparing Labour’s policy with the Tory policy to close down all coal mines in the eighties, which of course is ideologically like nuclear waste to the Labour Party”, says Liam.

“The UK’s oil and gas complex, of course employs upwards of 200,000 people in Aberdeen, across Scotland and across the country, not least in our ports and associated industries.”

Allison isn’t surprised at the backlash, branding Net Zero a pet project of the elite classes.

“You know, people like to feel good about themselves with a Tesla parked out the front of the house to signal their eco credentials, and then a Range Rover and a little run around round the back”.

“We are getting more and more emails… from Planet Normal listeners who run businesses, people who work on oil rigs, who are heating engineers, and these people calling for no new oil projects have to live in the real world, not in Miliband’s windmills of your mind”.

Liam is looking at the financial and environmental impact of this policy; “why are you closing down the North Sea? We are just going to have to import all this oil and gas with much bigger implications for our carbon footprint and at much greater cost.

Listen to Planet Normal, a weekly Telegraph podcast featuring news and views from beyond the bubble, using the audio player above or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your preferred podcast app.