SOONER or later it is going to dawn on Keir Starmer that his cabinet purge failed to remove the biggest liability to his government.
In leaving Ed Miliband as Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary, he has condemned his administration to a long, lingering death.
PAEd Miliband’s much-vaunted ‘green jobs’ are mostly going to China[/caption]
GettyA poll has revealed just how quickly the public are turning against net zero[/caption]
There may have been a time when the public fell for the fuzzy arguments advanced by the net zero lobby, when a majority believed that switching away from fossil fuels and embracing wind and solar energy really was going to make us richer as well as greener.
But that time is well and truly over. A poll for The Times has revealed just how quickly the public are turning against net zero.
In a similar poll in 2021, 51 per cent of the public said they wanted petrol and diesel cars banned. That is now down to 30 per cent.
A mere six per cent say they would be happy to see domestic heating bills rise to pay for net zero, down from 11 per cent in 2021.
Just 20 per cent say they would be happy for taxes to rise, down from 26 per cent four years ago.
Only on air travel are significant numbers of people happy to see fares rise for cleaner travel, but even that no longer commands majority support, down from 57 percent in 2021 to 48 per cent now.
There should be no mystery to any of this.
When confronted with someone with a clipboard and asked, in general terms, whether they support net zero, people tend to say ‘yes’ because it sounds vaguely virtuous.
But when it is spelled out to them what net zero is going mean for them personally, they change their minds — and sharply.
For years, we have been sold a lie — and not just by Miliband but by just about every government minister, Conservative as well as Labour.
They told us that we could have our cake and eat it, that pursuing net zero would create countless well-paid jobs and lead to economic boom.
They said that if Britain got ahead in what they liked to call the ‘race to net zero’ we would reap a disproportionate number of the rewards.
But is becoming ever harder for the net zero lobby to maintain its sales patter.
It has become like a secondhand car salesman still trying to tell us that the clapped out Escort in front of us is a ‘nice little runner’, even when smoke is pouring out from underneath the bonnet.
People are not stupid. They can tell every time they open an energy bill that they are being stung by net zero.
Why, if Britain’s enthusiasm for wind turbines and solar farms is supposed to be saving us money, are we paying three times as much for our electricity as US consumers?
Sky-high windfall taxes
Motorists can see that switching to an electric car is not going to save them money, especially if they do not have a driveway where they can charge their vehicles on off-peak electricity.
It is obvious, too, that net zero is decimating what remains of British industry.
Who do you really want to believe: Miliband parroting his line about green jobs, or Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who announced this week that he is pulling £3billion of investment from the UK and directing it to the US instead because of sky-high windfall taxes on North Sea production?
Meanwhile, Miliband’s much-vaunted ‘green jobs’ are mostly going to China.
Britain, with one per cent of the global population, has just 0.3 per cent of the world’s jobs in renewable energy according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.
So much for the supposed bonus of getting ahead of other countries in transitioning away from fossil fuels.
People are also becoming more sceptical about what they are being told about global warming, with 25 per cent now saying they think fears are exaggerated.
True, there is good data to show that the Earth is warming, but to blame every flood, every storm, every hot day on man-made climate change is coming across more and more as alarmism.
It took a while for the implications of net zero to seep into the consciousness of the UK public, but there is no hiding them now.
Ross Clark
There is no global ‘race’ to net zero. Rather Britain is stumbling along all by itself, with the EU trailing along some way behind. The rest of the world is standing by, bemused, as we trip over the laces on our running shoes.
There are many countries which have embraced renewable energy to some extent — not least China, which has built more wind and solar plants than anyone else.
But there is a very big difference.
No other country is doggedly pursuing net zero at the expense of economic growth. They are maintaining their fossil industries and unashamedly putting cheap energy, and the security of the energy supply, first.
It took a while for the implications of net zero to seep into the consciousness of the UK public, but there is no hiding them now.
Miliband is so far behind the curve on public opinion that it is laughable to watch his increasingly mad sermons on the subject.
Or at least it would be laughable, were he not condemning us to poverty and industrial decline.
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