Politics: devils and details

By Richard North - February 9, 2024

I have long hated PMQs – and I do mean “hate” with every fibre of my being. What little practical purpose they serve could be achieved by other means.

On the other hand, the sight of our political leaders engaging in verbal sparring, against the background of mocking, braying and jeering MPs, is a distinctly unedifying sight. It demeans the institution of parliament and invites nothing but contempt for those who take part in the charade.

Those MPs with whom I have been sufficiently acquainted to be able to discuss such matters – and that’s quite a few – have been fully aware of the impression PMQs leave with the watching public – and foreign visitors, for that matter. Some told me they would be happy if they were abolished.

Yet, all MPs with their leaders continue with their weekly ritual, evidently content disregard the corrosive effect on public sentiment – event though it might ultimately be damaging to the cause of democracy and the standing of those who seek to uphold it.

That said, within the context of the bear garden that PMQs has become, it was entirely legitimate for Sunak last Wednesday to respond to Starmer’s attack, telling him:

It is a bit rich to hear about promises from someone who has broken every single promise he was elected on. I have counted almost 30 in the last year: pensions, planning, peerages, public sector pay, tuition fees, childcare, second referendums, defining a woman—although, in fairness, that was only 99% of a U-turn. The list goes on, but the theme is the same: empty words, broken promises and absolutely no plan.

What was not at all legitimate was Starmer’s reply as he adopted faux outrage to say: “Of all the weeks to say that, when Brianna’s mother is in this Chamber—shame! Parading as a man of integrity when he has got absolutely no responsibility, it is absolute…”.

Purely on a factual note, Mrs Ghey was not in the chamber. She was, apparently in the building, but was not present to hear the exchange. But that is not the point. The bible of parliamentary procedure, Erskin May, pronounces on the issue of visitors, clearly stating: “No reference should be made to visitors, whether in the public gallery or in any other part of the Chamber (Paragraph 25.73).*

Starmer was entirely wrong to pull the stunt he did and, had the Speaker been on the ball, he would have intervened, rather than just attempting to calm what he called “organised barracking”.

At the time of the exchange, there was, of course, immediate relevance to Sunak’s jibe about defining a woman. Where that definition has legal and practical relevance, it is entirely legitimate for the prime minster to challenge a leader of the opposition who, apparently, has been uncertain of biological realities.

Even days later, though, the jibe about U-turns is even more relevant as, dominating the UK political news is yet another policy reversal by Starmer, this time as he formally drops his £28 billion “green investment” pledge, binning it along with all the other pledges he has made while leader of the opposition.

Purely on the subject of U-turns, Politico is having great fun listing all of Starmer’s reversals in one place, identifying 26 (and counting), jocularly referring the Conservative website which is selling “Kier Starmer Flip Flops” as a tribute to “three years of rudderless leadership”.

Yet, backing away from the £28 billion pledge is not one of Starmer’s common and garden U-turns. The greening of Labour is one of his flagship policies, embedded in its missions for Britain, one of five which will form “the backbone of Labour’s election manifesto and will drive forward a Labour government”.

Set out in detail, Starmer’s Labour aims to “make Britain a clean energy superpower”, rather in the manner of the fool Johnson wanting to turn the UK into the Saudi Arabia of wind.

Starmer’s ambitions, however, were even more extreme as he pledged to “cut bills, create jobs and deliver security with cheaper, zero-carbon electricity by 2030, accelerating to net-zero” – a testimony to the complete detachment from reality of the political classes.

Within that grandiose ambition was Labour’s “Warm Homes Plan”, upgrading “millions of homes, installing energy saving measures such as loft and cavity wall insulation”, cutting household bills by up to £500 each year.

Now, the Tories have eaten his homework, damaging the economy so much that the pledges are unaffordable. According to the BBC, Starmer will stick to other green commitments, including: battery factories, wind farms with British-made turbines, more environmentally-friendly steel production and the creation of a clean energy company, to be called GB Energy.

Furthermore, the party has retained its pledge to “decarbonise” electricity generation by 2030, but the one aspect which would have a direct impact on the costs of ordinary members of the public – the “Warm Homes Plan” – is to be slowed down.

Writing in the Guardian, Starmer – with his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves – talks of his “green prosperity plan” remaining “central to our mission”.

In so doing, he confirms the funding for Great British Energy, “a new publicly owned champion in clean energy generation, that will deliver long-term energy security from foreign dictators by investing in floating offshore wind, nuclear and tidal”.

And this is where the detail really does drag him down. For instance, not only is floating offshore wind unproven technology, the extreme costs make it a non-starter without massive subsidies. And, in top of the league in the power generation stakes is tidal energy which has yet to contribute to the UK power supply.

Then, with the delays and cost over-runs to EDF’s Hinkley C project, the chances of the nuclear programme coming to the rescue of a failing power system is looking increasingly remote.

While this cements in the unrealistic nature of Starmer’s plan, The Times seems to be suggesting that he wasn’t really serious about it anyway, having planned to dump the party’s green commitments since last autumn.

What we’re seeing at the moment, The Times is suggesting, is a tactical move devised by party strategists aimed at preventing the Tories “weaponising” the change of heart.

There is even a suggestion that Starmer was to use his New Year’s speech formally to announce that he was abandoning the pledge. In the end, we are told, the party strategists decided to hold fire, with aides arguing it was better to use the cover of Jeremy Hunt’s budget in March to deflect from the climb-down. The plan, it seems, “was to blame it all on the Tories”, saying that Hunt’s decisions had forced a reassessment.

Amid growing speculation that the policy was to be dropped, though, with the plan becoming the subject of almost daily Tory attacks, Starmer accepted he needed to move faster. The decision to dump it came at the start of this week, in a meeting between Starmer, Reeves and Ed Miliband ― whose idea the £28 billion had been in the first place.

“We knew we had to lance the boil because it was becoming a big distraction”, says one party source, cited by The Times, who adds: “We couldn’t get across what our green mission actually was about because all anyone wanted to talk about was the money”.

If the devil is in the detail, this is the detail that matters. It doesn’t really matter that the Labour version of the net-zero policy is impossible to achieve. As the first sign of trouble, they would have ditched it – and that “trouble” has already arrived.

Net-zero is just another cynical game, to be played for political advantage and dumped when it gets to be inconvenient.