SNP warns Nigel Farage's renewable energy 'sabotage' will 'turn Aberdeen into Detroit'
Reform UK is opposing the renewables industry, despite almost 50,000 Scottish jobs reliant on the sector.
The SNP’s Westminster leader has warned Nigel Farage’s plans to “sabotage” Scotland’s renewable energy prospects will leave Aberdeen "looking like Detroit in 30 years’ time”.
The alarm comes after Reform UK, which is leading in several UK-wide polls, announced last week it would turn its back on the renewables sector and threatened to strip public subsidies for wind and solar projects.
The move comes after Reform deputy leader, Richard Tice, used a visit to Scotland in March to claim his party would oppose “net stupid zero” at next year’s Holyrood election.
The renewables sector is thought to support more than £15.5 billion of output, more than £6.6bn of GVA and more than 47,000 full time equivalent jobs across the Scottish economy.
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Mr Tice has written to energy companies urging them not to invest in the latest round of green energy contracts, known as Allocation Round 7 (AR7).
He said he had put the companies on “formal notice” that their investments were “politically and commercially unsafe” as a future Reform government would seek to “strike down all contracts signed under AR7”.
The deputy leader added that net zero policies and subsidies are “crippling our economy and driving people out of this country.”
In response, SNP Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, warned that Reform’s energy and industrial strategy would leave his constituency of Aberdeen resembling Detroit in the United States, which has become a symbol of de-industrialisation and a ghost town after car and other manufacturers left the city.
Mr Flynn said: “The best way to take Nigel Farage on is to deal with the facts with him.
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“To say to him, if you are going to come after Scotland’s renewable energy sector, you are putting at risk tens of thousands of jobs - you're going to leave cities like mine looking like Detroit in 30 years’ time rather than an expansive future-looking city that exports its skills and expertise across the globe.
“If he wants to sabotage our renewable future in order to play up to his own ideology and whilst doing so, he doesn’t have to face any of the consequences for the decisions he’s made in relation to collapsing the UK’s economy with Brexit.”
Mr Flynn has warned that Labour will need to address the impacts of Brexit if the UK government is to get the economy back on track and see off the electoral threat of Reform.
He said: “Britain is broken. The public finances are in a mess and the politicians are at a loss as to how to get out of that particular mess.
“The guy who orchestrated it, doesn’t have to face the consequences of the economic damage that Brexit has done to the UK. It has made us smaller and it has made us poorer.
“If the Labour party want to defeat Nigel Farage, they need to accept the premise that Brexit has been a disaster and explain to people across the UK that the only way, the best way to grow the economy and get our public finances in a fit state as a result, is if we align our relationship with the Europe Union in a more positive way.”
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