Andy Burnham votes for net zero – but will climate action survive?

The would-be Prime Minister has drillers to the Left of him, and drillers to the Right.

Rumours suggest Burnham might make Miliband his Chancellor of the Exchequer

Andy Burnham has uncovered a new problem that every would-be Prime Minister dreads: a policy area with hardly any safe ground left to stand on.

This week, the freshly-elected Makerfield MP and Prime Minister-in-waiting was among the 332 who voted to adopt the UK’s seventh Carbon Budget, the government’s plan for cutting CO2 emissions.

The latest budget, which is based on the independent Climate Change Committee’s advice, includes an ambitious target of cutting emissions 87 percent by 2040. This would be achieved by electrifying transport, heat, and industry with a huge boost in electric vehicles and heat pumps. It also supposes the government will keep its ban on new North Sea oil and gas licences. This is the sort of thing a talented politician could tell a compelling story about.

But this agenda is squeezed between competing political revolts over oil, gas and net-zero. Facing a backlash from the political right, Kemi Badenoch declared her Conservative Party’s recent victory in the Aberdeen by-election to be “a referendum on oil and gas”, and clearly believes she has found a winning policy to lift the Tory gloom.

North Sea drilling is the issue she talks about most now, along with defence spending.

It’s won her friends in low places. This week she spoke at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London, a gathering of cranky right-wingers, conservative Christian groups, and Donald Trump fans.

An investigation by Unearthed and DeSmog has revealed that the event was largely funded by oil and gas investors, along with uber-rich donors to President Trump and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

Speaking of pressure, Trump’s energy secretary Chris Wright (himself a former oil and gas executive), beamed into the ARC event by video link on Tuesday to express his wish for Britain to join the “shale gas revolution”.

He also appears to have thought a record-breaking heatwave, during which several people have already died, was the moment to tell a London audience that “cold is a vastly larger killer than heat”. If you want to know where much of the push for more fossil fuels is coming from, you need only look Trumpwards.

Trump on Burnham: “I hear he’s extremely liberal, extremely, so that means he probably won’t open up the North Sea.”

At the ARC event, Badenoch repeated her call to “repeal the net zero by 2050 legislation, the Climate Change Act”, which “would abolish the Climate Change Committee”. Then, she said, “we would be able to drill our own oil and gas in the North Sea. There’s £25 billion of revenue that’s there. Let’s get that out, let’s use it”.

Reform UK agrees, but unlike the Tories, its leaders don’t feel the need to pretend they believe in man-made climate change. It’s worth noting that both parties have received a fortune from donors with financial interests in oil and gas.

Badenoch went on to attack Wright’s UK counterpart, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, as the “villain in the story of Britain’s de-industrialisation”, adding: “We need to make sure that Andy Burnham understands that this man should not be let anywhere near the levers of power – not in the energy department, not in the Treasury.”

This latter point followed reports (better known as “rumours”) that Burnham might make Miliband his Chancellor of the Exchequer, putting a man the Right calls an “eco-zealot” in charge of the UK’s economy.

But things aren’t so easy on the left flank, either. Oddly, this move was also opposed by Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite, the country’s largest trade union. She told the press that Miliband was “rushing Britain to net zero with almost no thought for jobs, skills and national security”, and that a Chancellor Miliband “would be a noose around the neck of what we need to do on jobs”.

Her remarks were rejected by 40 progressive economists who wrote a public letter rejecting her claims. They pointed to an analysis commissioned by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, a pro-green think tank, which found that the net zero economy was worth £100 billion per year, and provides more than a million jobs at higher than average wages.

But Graham is no lone union voice. Gary Smith, general secretary of the GMB union, which represents many oil and gas workers, has been a long-time basher. Earlier this month he claimed the government’s energy policies are “closing factories, hitting investment and hitting jobs”, and driving his members to vote for Reform UK.

Meanwhile, former health secretary Wes Streeting – who after the Makerfield by-election dropped his leadership ambitions (for now) and endorsed Burnham – suggested in May that Miliband should grant new oil and gas licences, citing the calls by Unite and GMB. This followed Tony Blair’s call for Labour to shelve net zero and “use what is left of our North Sea oil and gas resources”.

For what’s worth, I don’t think the point about oil and gas workers’ jobs should be waved away with some stats and the promise of a green future. If the energy transition is going to be a just one, these workers need to be supported. But you don’t help them by propping up a dying industry, (and one which is the leading cause of climate change), while trashing the net zero and renewable energy sector, which is growing.

Burnham has drillers to the Left of him, and drillers to the Right. When asked a few weeks ago about new North Sea licences, he said: “I’ve got something of an open mind, you know. I don’t have a sort of fixed position.” That sounds like he “sort of” hasn’t thought about it at all.

For all the noise, climate action is a popular policy, and it’s already a net positive for the economy. If Burnham wants to help post-industrial areas, he’s going to have to decide what he wants them to make. Through all the talk of “growth”, the net zero sector is growing perhaps three times faster than the rest of the economy.

It’s also a useful point of difference with the Right. If Burnham wants to “beat Reform”, he could point out that Farage wants to chain us to the fossil fuel market, with all the wonderful results for “cost of living” and “national security” we see around us – along with the little matter of heating the planet.

There’s an opportunity here for a new administration. All Burnham would have to do is adjust his crown and read the Carbon Budget for which he just cast his vote.■

About the author: Adam Barnett is UK News Reporter at DeSmog and a freelance journalist. He writes a politics column for the Big Issue and has reported for The Guardian and Private Eye.

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