Labour are still reeling from having to rescind on their £28 billion pa green spend and I suspect have tried to cobble together a sound bight fix to keep the criticism from their believers at a minimum. Problem with running policy on the fly without proper costing is that it usually has to be amended. Given they cancelled the green spend on 9th Feb and then announced the EPL hike etc the day after, its unlikely that much thought was put into it.
OEUK held "crisis" talks this week with producers and supply chain operators, the results of which are not yet known, but given that not a single producer has commented on Labour's proposal, I'd say the findings will be pretty damning.
Labour are battling on a number of fronts at the moment 1) Rochdale by election and antisemitism and 2) accusations of meddling in parliamentary procedure for political gain (with Starmer being accused of bullying the speaker), so the last thing they also need is further damning criticism of their green policy. I believe that the anger in the offshore industry is utterly incandescent, and I really wouldn't be surprised if one or more majors actually decide to completely withdraw from the North Sea.
This will probably not change the voting public sufficiently to alter the outcome of the election, but stranger things have happened. In particular, Labour are banking on winning a number of Scottish seats from SNP (after SNP's train wreck with Nicola Sturgeon) but this Windfall tax issue has incensed the Scots who are in the cross hairs to see most job losses should the policy be rolled out and are determined to push back on any change from the current arrangement. Should Labour fail to get those seats, then the election becomes a whole load more interesting.
Interesting interaction between Scottish Labour and SNP in Edinburgh yesterday:
HHR Price at posting:
1.3¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)