Labour and Unite go to war over oil 17 May 2024, 4:52pm There is...

Labour and Unite go to war over oil

17 May 2024, 4:52pm

There is nothing new about battles between the unions and a Labour government. But could a Starmer government be upset by a growing union rebellion from an unexpected quarter?

In a move which has been remarkably underreported in England, the union Unite has launched a campaign against Labour’s policy of refusing licences for new oil and gas extraction in the North Sea.

The campaign, called ‘No ban without a plan’, demands that Labour suspends the policy. If successful, it means a future Labour government would continue, like the Conservatives, to grant new licences, until it has come up with a plan to create at least 35,000 new ‘energy transition jobs’ in Scotland – equivalent to the current roles held by oil workers. The union’s General Secretary Sharon Graham has accused Keir Starmer of following a policy which would allow Britain to ‘be held to ransom by Saudi Arabia or other nations’ and adds:

Labour needs to pull back from this irresponsible policy. There is clearly no viable plan for the replacement of North Sea jobs or energy security… Unite will not stand by and let workers be thrown on the scrapheap. North Sea workers cannot be sacrificed on the altar of net zero.

Opposition to Labour environmental policy is often assumed to be coming mainly from the right: from the Conservative right and Reform. Labour’s standard approach is to portray opponents of net zero measures as dinosaurs. The Unite campaign blows that assumption out of the water and shows that workers in the oil and gas sector are becoming increasingly restive about the prospects of losing their jobs, and aware that the promise of ‘green jobs’ to replace those in fossil fuels has failed miserably to deliver.

According to the trade body Offshore Energies UK the number of jobs in the oil and gas sector has plunged from 117,900 to 74,100 over the past decade. Over the same time the number of jobs in Scotland’s low carbon and renewables sector has grown only from 23,200 to 25,700.

Unite’s campaign is of most immediate relevance in Scotland where Labour has ambitions to take advantage of the SNP’s weakness. While the SNP is refusing new oil and gas licences, the Conservatives could well end up the beneficiaries: the party is projected to hold onto seats in Aberdeenshire, the heart of the oil and gas industry.

However, there is also the potential for union opposition to Labour’s green policies across Britain. GMB general secretary Gary Smith told The Spectator last year that Ed Miliband’s policy of decarbonising the national grid by 2030 is impractical.

While Labour’s policymaking lies in the hands of its young, green, metropolitan vote, its purse strings remain tightly held by the unions, who seem to be taking a very different line on green issues. Keir Starmer is going to find himself caught uncomfortably in the middle.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/labour-and-unite-go-to-war-over-oil/