Left in the dark by Tory climate change whiffle
The Tory election manifesto, it has been observed, is long on grandiloquent assertions and pious aspirations, but short on detail – and nowhere is this more obvious than on one of the potentially most disastrous problems confronting us: our hopelessly skewed energy policy, and how we can keep our lights on.
In different places, for instance, it proclaims that “we are at the forefront of action against climate change”, “we will continue to take a lead in action against climate change” and “we will continue to lead international action against climate change”. But the only evidence given for this is that we ratified the virtually meaningless, non-binding “Paris agreement”.
The manifesto’s only vaguely specific aspiration in this respect is its “desire” that we should have “affordable, reliable electricity” (while, of course, “meeting our global commitments on climate change”). But this “desire” is blatantly contradicted by everything the Government is doing in its drive to “decarbonise” our economy.
On “affordable”, one would never guess that, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, soaring “green” subsidies and levies are due virtually to double during the next Parliament to £14.7 billion a year, paid mostly through our energy bills, equating to £561 for every household in the land.
As for “reliable”, this is made nonsensical by a double-whammy. On one hand we are to pour billions more into subsidising intermittent (and therefore unreliable) “renewables”, such as offshore windfarms, producing electricity at nearly three times the normal wholesale price. On the other, the Government wants to phase out those coal- and gas-fired power stations which still provide more than half the power we use, and without which we would have no back-up to keep our lights on when the wind isn’t blowing.
What makes this even odder is that the chief input on drafting the manifesto, we are told, came from Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s joint chief-of-staff, who memorably wrote in April 2016 that the Climate Change Act, under which all this “decarbonsation” is being driven, was for Britain a “unilateral and monstrous act of self-harm”. Yet a year later we now see the manifesto boasting that we were the first (and indeed only) country in the world “to introduce a Climate Change Act”.
Mr Timothy was equally excoriating about the plan to build at Hinkley Point the world’s most expensive nuclear power station, under a deal so absurd that, scarcely was Theresa May in Number 10 than it was put on hold. Yet back it came, along with everything else the Government is doing under that “monstrous act of self-harm”.
All we get now is endless whiffle about how we are “leading the world against climate change”, which sounds rather like the first lemming, as it heads for the cliff edge, shouting “aren’t we clever!”, while failing to notice that not a single other lemming is following behind.