The burning question John Swinney must answer in Aberdeen on SNP net zero policy
Which way is the wind blowing? Is Scotland still on for our ‘world-leading’ target of 2045 or not?
There was a time, not so long ago, when the green agenda was all the rage among our elected representatives even if the electorate did not share their enthusiasm. Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat leaders David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg effectively removed energy and climate debate from political discourse in 2015 by signing a pledge that their parties would work together on these issues, whatever the outcome of the impending general election.
Four years later, perhaps seeking to carve out some thin sort of legacy in the dying days of her premiership, Theresa May set Britain on the path so many now wish to leave. A week after her resignation as Conservative party leader, she laid a three-line statutory instrument before MPs amending the Climate Change Act 2008. With no vote and minimal debate, the UK became the first country in the world to commit to net zero by 2050.
Ever keen to appear one moral step ahead of Westminster, the then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon promptly declared a “climate emergency” at the SNP’s 2019 conference and set Scotland a “world-leading” net zero target of 2045.
By 2023, with support for the Tories cratering after 13 years in power, the then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak backtracked on key climate pledges around the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles and the rollout of heat pumps, but it was too little too late. The following year, Sunak’s party was blown away in a landslide for Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour that saw the Tories lose 251 seats, thanks in part to the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which is opposed to net zero.
Just 15 months after that remarkable victory, Starmer is now the most unpopular British Prime Minister since polling began. Reform is doing to Labour what it did to the Tories before the election, with research by Opinium this week putting Farage’s party on 34 per cent and Starmer’s on 21 per cent.
Troublingly for Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, her party has managed to become significantly more unpopular than it was even at last year’s electoral nadir, polling at just 16 per cent. At the Tory party conference in Manchester this week, Badenoch and her team appeared to have heard the message loud and clear on the energy front and moved on from the type of disastrous climate-inspired policies advocated by May and her successor Boris Johnson.
Miliband a ‘walking, talking, cost-of-living crisis’
Shadow Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho said it is her mission to get her hapless and fanatical opposite number Miliband sacked, describing him as a “walking, talking, cost-of-living crisis”. In her conference speech, Coutinho said the Conservatives now back axing the carbon tax and wind farm subsidies – “the biggest racket going” – to cut household electricity bills by 20 per cent.
This followed Badenoch’s call for the repeal of the 2008 Climate Change Act, brought in during an earlier incarnation of Miliband as Energy Secretary. The Act underpins the UK’s net-zero ambitions and led to the creation of the all-powerful and unelected Climate Change Committee.
Of course a great deal can change between now and the next general election, which is unlikely to take place until 2029. But, as things stand, neither the wildly unpopular Starmer nor any of his Labour comrades is likely to be voted in as Prime Minister next time around.
Green gravy train grinding to a halt
The significance of the destruction of the Potemkin village that was the so-called “political consensus” on net zero can hardly be over-stated. The wind and solar powered green gravy train will grind to a halt as investors weigh up the next round of subsidies and look beyond the lifetime of Starmer’s administration to a future that does not include the current renewable energy framework.
In the meantime, as British energy prices remain the highest in the world and deindustrialisation continues apace, the net-zero political debate and cost-benefit analysis will open up in a way that has not happened since Cameron, Miliband and Clegg signed their pledge a decade ago.
Politics will start to function more like it is supposed to, with arguments for and against freely aired, to stand or fall on their own merits. This is healthy. There should be no place for the “no debate” mantra when it comes to political perspectives.
Where does SNP stand?
Conference season continues this weekend with John Swinney’s SNP gathering in Aberdeen, a city known as the oil and gas capital of Europe and where the effects of egregious energy policies are keenly felt.
Does the party still support the “presumption against offshore drilling” enshrined by Sturgeon at the height of her green evangelism? A faction that includes Stephen Flynn, the party’s Westminster leader and Aberdeen South MP, appears to be less than enthused.
Or is their position, as Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes has suggested, to judge each licence application on a “case-by-case basis”? If so, under what circumstances might it be acceptable to drill in one location but climactically perilous to do so in another? And is there any prospect of the SNP joining the 21st century by ending its irrational opposition to clean, safe and reliable nuclear power?
Perhaps, with an eye to the Holyrood election in May next year, it makes sense for the party to try to keep the Scottish Greens on side. The SNP may well need what its detractors dub the party’s “gardening wing” in the next parliament.
On the other hand, yet another SNP victory could see the party stumble towards 24 years in power while increasingly under fire for persevering with a suite of ruinous and unpopular policies that have been jettisoned to general relief by an incoming administration at Westminster.
So, Mr Swinney, are we still on for net zero by 2045 or not? And if we are, how exactly do you and your party propose we get there?
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