By William Atkinson

Clearly, there must be a competition going on between the Conservative and Labour frontbenches as to who can more readily unlearn the economic lessons of the 1970s. If I was Dominic Sandbrook – a guy can dream – I would be mailing copies of my works to Downing Street and Labour HQ immediately.

No content to see Rishi Sunak get all the stick for doing a full Edward Heath and lobby for price controls against inflation, Keir Starmer is expected to announce a future government of his would ban new oil and gas developments in the North Sea. Labour thus hastens to snuff out one of the few bright sparks to emerge from Harold Wilson and James Callaghan’s grisly governments.

The Sunday Times reported that Starmer will announce the block in Scotland when he soon sets out his net-zero energy policy. Westminster, not Holyrood, oversees energy licences. Labour hopes that this will come alongside investment in renewable energy to create up to half a million new jobs.

When asked, Jonathan Ashworth said Labour would continue to “manage…sustainably” those oil and has fields currently in use; a Labour source said doing so was part of their quest to turn the UK “into a clean energy superpower”, following their ‘Great British Energy’ plans announced last year. Yet this announcement is already likely to hit investment.

Rishi Sunak hasn’t been the North Sea’s biggest friend recently. It was his windfall tax which raised the total rate on North Sea oil and gas to 75 per cent last year. Already, lobby groups are suggesting 90 per cent of operators are reducing activity – and £200 billion of investment is at risk.

But the Prime Minister has at least backed further exploration. What Labour is suggesting is that the “presumption” against it that the SNP suggested in January would become national policy. That is even when there might still be 15 billion barrels’ worth left in the ground – and when pursuing such a strategy means economic suicide in the name of appeasing Just Stop Oil.

Simply put, whilst one can legislate against the use or extraction of oil and gas, you cannot abolish the demand for it. Even if future governments can succeed in delivering our eye-raising targets for banning non-electric cars or installing gas boilers, we are still going to need magical dinosaur juice.

That’s not only because oil and gas is used for much more than powering vehicles or heating homes. Any transition to renewable or carbon-neutral forms of energy will still require fossil fuels to bridge the transition. Oil and gas still provide around three-quarters of our energy mix. The sun does not always shine, the wind does not always blow, and we will probably never build another nuclear power station.

If a Starmer government would like to avoid taking its seventies tribute act to the logical endpoint of blackouts and three-day weeks, a Britain uninterested in extracting its own fossil fuels would have to get them from somewhere. Unfortunately, there are governments out there that are even more unlikeable than the SNP.

The footballing giants of Qatar, perhaps? Or Russia? Not directly, of course. But many countries currently happily ignoring our pleas to show solidarity with Ukraine would happily take Moscow’s fuel, stick their own flag on it, and sell it to the UK at a healthy profit. This would hardly be good news for our woeful balance of payments – or the planet, since importing energy produces more emissions.

It would also do little good, one expects, for Labour’s prospects at the ballot box. It might play well in a few university constituencies where current Labour MPs are worried about losing votes to the Greens. But where are the masses of new voters Starmer hopes to attract with this policy?

For the Scottish Conservatives, this is the best news they’ve had since Nicola Sturgeon resigned. The campaign leaflets for those campaigning across the northeast of Scotland write themselves. Vote Labour, SNP, Green, or Liberal Democrat and see one of the few Scottish industries of any consequence disappear down the swannie. Vote Tory, and save your job.

Which all begs the question: if this policy is so clearly impractical, immoral, and politically inadvisable, why is Starmer set to announce it? Leaving aside his party’s newfound partiality for taking money from Just Stop Oil enthusiasts, and one is left with a simple quandary. Does Starmer believe in it or not?

In all fairness, Starmer seems to be a genuine enthusiast for Net Zero and all it entails. He has shown no sign of rowing back on any of the Government’s myriad commitments. By draping his last party conference in the slogan ‘a fairer, greener future’, he clearly wants to go further. Rachel Reeves’ commitment of £28 billion a year to fight climate change is one of Labour’s few distinctive policies.

So when Starmer says he can ban further exploration in the North Sea, pump billions into renewable energy, unlock hundreds of thousands of new jobs, keep the lights on, and keep the public finances in check, he may well believe it. He wouldn’t be the first Labour leader to dabble in economic fantasy.

Yet it might be ex-Labour leaders and their fantasies that lie at the heart of this policy. Ed Miliband is Starmer’s Shadow Secretary of State of Climate Change and Net Zero. Being a former Leader of the Opposition and ex-Cabinet Minister, Miliband is – hilariously – the closest thing Labour have to an elder statesman. And party intellectual, cos he has a podcast. All this is bad news for Starmer.

Why? My unified theory of Starmerism is that the Labour leader is a sphinx without a riddle: he is simply an affably bland, middle-aged, left-leaning, ex-public sector bod who just really wants to be Prime Minister. Consequently, he offers little else than basic competence – and not being a Tory. At the moment, that’s not too bad a pitch.

Yet if a relatively loud voice comes along pushing fashionable agendas on climate change which entail spending cash in a way that even the Conservatives will struggle to criticise, Starmer must be all ears. Politics abhors a policy vacuum. And thus Labour gets driven to ever-more radical positions on climate change and energy, in the interest of Starmer shutting his predecessor up.

Cynically, the Labour leader could sign up to all of this in opposition in return for a quieter life and a happier Left and drop it in government on the grounds of feasibility and cost. Doing so might make sense for party management purposes even if it does little for trust in politics. But who cares, if it gets you one step closer to Downing Street?

KeyFacts Energy news: North Sea Focus