KEIR STARMER’S Labour claims to be a party of government – but it is clear to even the casual observer that it has now become the party of protest and disorder.
Labour is backing a new Luddite coalition of chaos made up of the eco mob and trade unions.
Look outside your window. Vast numbers of ordinary people just trying to earn a living — commuters, white van drivers and even ambulance staff — have found themselves blocked by campaigners for Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion. This new Luddite rabble are glueing themselves to roads, bringing Britain to a standstill.
It is infuriating.
No wonder so many people — frustrated by police who often just stand back and do nothing — take matters into their own hands and try to drag these crusties away.
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Astonishingly, it now appears the Labour Party has thrown its lot in with the protestors.
Sir Keir has picked his side — and he is with the Luddites. They have been given a seat at the top table. They are calling the shots.
Last week, The Sun revealed that Tobias Garnett — the legal brain who has acted for Extinction Rebellion — now works for Ed Miliband, helping to draw up Labour’s eco policy.
Meanwhile, Dale Vince — who has pumped cash into Just Stop Oil — is also one of Labour’s main donors and has revealed that he has had cosy chats on the phone with Sir Keir himself.
And what’s the upshot? We now hear that Labour would ban new domestic oil and gas drilling.
Labour’s latest policies on the environment are being drawn up by this new Luddite coalition.
Last week, Vince even took to the streets with a slow-walking Just Stop Oil protest. The result? Traffic snarled up and people unable to get to work or hospital. After the protest, Just Stop Oil goons pathetically claimed they were staging these infuriating protests to “stop genocide”. Yes, “stop genocide”.
Genocide is defined as the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim to destroy that nation or group. It is a crime against humanity — the worst thing a human being can do.
Look abroad and it is happening.
Extreme protest
That Labour’s new friends have the temerity to compare themselves to people struggling to survive under the oppression of dictators, watching families being dragged away to their deaths, is disgusting.
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Sir Keir now wants to ban all new North Sea drilling. This would make Britain massively dependent on what it can import from abroad.
This is worse for the environment, worse for consumers and a lot worse for Britain’s energy security. Experts and even trade unions have pointed out that three-quarters of the UK’s energy consumption is still derived from oil and gas.
In “people terms” that’s some 24million homes with gas boilers, 32million diesel and petrol vehicles and the power stations generating more than 40 per cent of our electricity, not to mention thousands of jobs. Labour’s “protest policy” of no new North Sea fields will overnight mean production levels could fall by 80 per cent.
Offshore Energies UK has pointed out the UK’s part of the North Sea has around 15billion barrels available, which would be enough to fuel the UK for another 30 years as we transition. But because Labour seems to have succumbed to the vastly expensive policy of extreme protest, we will be left with no energy security and even less credibility on Net Zero.
What’s worse, we already have a large chunk of our taxes used to subsidise solar, wind and nuclear.
If Labour follows this Luddite plan, taxes will have to rise even further, even while we have cost-of-living problems and, of course, the poorest will suffer the most.
If the invasion of Ukraine teaches us anything, it is that we need energy security. An oil-rich country like Britain can increase energy security, even as we transition, by using oil from the North Sea so we are less dependent on imports.
These imports are more often from states with terrible human rights records where their gas has to go through an intensive liquifying process, which increases carbon emissions, just so they can transport it to the UK.
This ideological obsession means three-quarters of energy production will lie untapped under the North Sea while we instead increase global emissions.
Even in other countries run by governments of the Left, they recognise the absurdity of such a course. US President Joe Biden is spending hundreds of billions on climate change. Yet the reality is he can only do this because he has a fracking industry that has made the country self-sufficient in energy for the first time in two generations.
Even left-of-centre Norway granted 47 new offshore oil and gas licences to 25 different companies.
And it’s not just national Labour.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan, not content with driving up the cost of doing business in central London through his Ultra Low Emission Zone charge, has taken his anti-car agenda even further.
Ideological pursuit
He will now extend his deeply unpopular ULEZ to the rest of London, costing builders, traders and ordinary people more and more just to use their cars.
This while even Transport for London has pointed out that such a move will have a negligible effect on air quality.
Left wing councils are part of this ideological pursuit of motorists, and are going even further, levying huge extra charges on vehicles.
And when it comes to transport chaos, Labour’s union paymasters are inflicting chaos alongside these Luddite protesters. Aslef, the train drivers’ union and Labour affiliate, has caused misery for millions with its rolling rail strikes, aiming to cause the greatest chaos possible.
Trains are cancelled. People can’t get to work or set off on their holidays. They even targeted the FA Cup Final. On top of that, Unite — Labour’s biggest donor — is about to heap further misery on the public: 31 days of strikes by security guards at Heathrow this summer.
Labour’s silence on this coalition of chaos is deafening.
If they stay on this course, linked to the very people who are creating mayhem on our streets, they will be seen as extreme by ordinary people — people who will bear the brunt of this ideology as they watch their lives made more difficult and more expensive.
They will have moved from “moderate” New Labour to ideological New Luddite in one bound.
As Labour becomes the party of protest, the rabble who are ruining the country would end up running the country.
