Why the unions are turning on Starmer’s bonkers oil and gas plan

Hurray for Gary Smith. The general secretary of GMB is one of the few sane voices to question Labour’s bonkers plan to ban all new North Sea oil and gas exploration should it come to power. 

The leader of Britain’s third biggest union has slammed the proposal as naive, one lacking in intellectual rigour which will lead to a cliff-edge when it comes to oil and gas extraction. In a damning TV interview at the weekend, Smith described Sir Keir Starmer’s latest wheeze as “bad for the environment, because it will mean more imports, it’s bad for the economy. We are already spending twice as much as our defence budget on importing oil and gas. It will be absolutely calamitous in terms of jobs.” 

There’s more: he claims the plan is economically incoherent and will lead to a loss of investor confidence in the UK. Grant Shapps, the energy secretary, couldn’t have put it better himself if he had tried.

What’s more, the Edinburgh-born Smith warned that Scottish Labour will lose seats over the “stupid” and “catastrophic” ban on new North Sea oil developments, a move which would be seen as an attack on Scotland. And if Labour doesn’t get off the hook, he says, the political fallout will be hugely significant across the country with potentially tens of thousands of workers losing their jobs. 

He’s right of course – just as Scottish Labour is beginning to get its mojo back and gain on the SNP, Starmer comes up with a stinker of a plan which threatens thousands of jobs across the country. How daft is that? It’s certainly not one that is going to help Labour’s chances in Scotland if it hopes to gain even a decent majority at the next election.

But the stinger in Smith’s critique was this one: that “Labour can’t just focus on appealing to graduates in Edinburgh… or being popular rather than doing the proper thinking to understand what is right for the country.” Or, you might say, appealing to middle-class Just Stop Oil protestors.

Smith, who cleverly describes GMB as a “critical friend” of Labour, is not the only union boss to come out attacking Starmer’s ban. Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite, the UK’s second biggest union which includes oil rig workers as members, has been equally critical, claiming the proposal is reckless and ill-thought through.

Graham had a killer line too: she suggests the proposed ban would be every bit as devastating to the coal miners and their communities as Lady Thatcher’s closure of the mines in the 1980s. Known for her independence – Graham has said in the past she would withhold funds from Labour if Unite didn’t agree with its policies – she didn’t stop there. “When Keir Starmer decided to let the world know that he would halt new oil and gas production in the North Sea he left out everything that was important – the detail.”

“Labour must now be very clear that they will not let workers pay the price for the transition to renewable energy. When it comes to jobs, we can’t have jam tomorrow… Grabbing the headlines is easy, developing a serious plan for more renewable energy is not.”

That’s quite a pile-on for Starmer to handle: who needs enemies when you have friends like these? GMB and Unite are two of the Labour party’s biggest funders. Together with Unison, the UK’s biggest union, the three unions contributed £1.2 million of the £4 million raised from all unions last year. 

That’s not money to be sneezed at. With an election coming up, Labour will need their support – and money – more than ever before. And then there is the personal backing: GMB and Unite represent nearly two million workers – and their votes. On the other hand, Labour also receives big money from British businessman Dale Vince, who is also a key backer of climate activist group Just Stop Oil. Vince, the founder of green energy firm Ecotricity, has given around £1.5 million to Labour over the past decade.

Starmer may be feeling hot under the collar over such fierce criticism but so far he is playing it cool. On a visit to a nuclear plant in Somerset yesterday he sought to calm down union fears by claiming that North Sea oil jobs would be around for “many years to come.”

He repeated the promise again that “oil and gas jobs” will be around for decades this morning when talking to the GMB conference in Brighton when the issue was raised by members. He also promised that there would be thousands of jobs to come from renewables. 

Yet if you take on board the depth of feeling – and the evidence – behind what Smith, Graham and other critics – are saying, these are weasel words. And Starmer knows this. He also knows he has a tricky balancing act to manage if he wants to win as many votes as possible: Should he be appeasing Edinburgh students with their net zero billboards or protecting the jobs of Aberdeen and Tyneside rig workers?  

On side with the students are another 100 or so groups ranging from the Women’s Institute to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, all of which are backing him not to give up on his plan to ban new North Sea oil fields. 

The numbers speak for themselves, and they support Smith and Graham’s analysis. Offshore Energies UK, which represents the main oil companies, reckons blocking all new development in the North Sea will lead to thousands of industry workers losing their jobs before the transition to green energy can be made. 

More worryingly, the ban would mean that the UK is even more dependent on energy imports, thus undermining energy security (as Russia’s war on Ukraine has shown) at a fragile time. As well as costing future jobs, there will not be any significant reduction in carbon emissions because of the need for more imports. The most conservative estimates suggest that up to 45,000 jobs will be lost by the end of this decade if new investment in oil and gas is prohibited around the UK’s Continental Shelf. 

Stopping investment would lead to the UK depending on oil and gas imports from 50 per cent today to 80 per cent over the next decade, leaving us even more dependent on overseas markets. A ban on new developments is roughly equal to a 60 per cent drop in production to current levels: levels that would have to be compensated by imports. 

Yet perhaps the most interesting question raised by GMB’s Smith is his point about why the UK has been so incapable of creating jobs in the renewables industry, and that includes nuclear. Indeed, GMB has been one of the biggest supporters of rebuilding the UK’s nuclear base, not only because of the huge number of jobs new nuclear would bring but because it’s one of the few energy sources that can provide a secure base-load. 

Smith quite rightly asks – see the interview – why it is that the energy sector has been promised tens of thousands of new jobs in the so-called renewables industry over the last few decades. As yet, they have simply not emerged and that’s because wherever you look – to nuclear plant building or making wind turbines – most of the machinery and equipment is made overseas. That’s the second failure – after failing to provide energy security – of past Labour governments and the last 13 years of the Conservatives in power.

How will Starmer handle these latest grenades from the unions? We shall see when he reveals more of Labour’s net zero energy strategy in Scotland next week aimed at making the UK a “clean energy superpower.” As well as the ban on all new development licenses, he is due to pledge that all new investment in UK energy must be green, whatever that means. If he is smart, he will listen more closely to Smith and Graham than worry about those gluing themselves to the roads. 

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