The United Kingdom has surrendered its ability to ensure its own security, leaving it at the mercy of global events beyond its control, and the nation’s Prime Minister impotently raging against U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin — who he equates — in a rant about energy security.
Falling back on one of his trademark rhetoric devices when faced with public anger, left-wing Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer attempted to invoke pathos and flaunt his empathy over volatile energy prices felt by ordinary Britons in a prominent podcast appearance where he portrayed President Trump and President Putin as villains to the country on a level pegging. Speaking to prominent legacy media journalist Robert Peston on his Talking Politics podcast, Starmer said:
I’m fed up with the fact that families across the country see their bills go up and down on energy, businesses’ bills go up and down on energy because of the actions of Putin or Trump across the world.
Indeed, the United Kingdom has suffered badly from energy price fluctuations caused in the first place by the war in Ukraine and now the war in Iran. British consumers and industrial buyers pay some of the highest electricity prices on earth, further deindustrialising what little the country has left in what was in living memory one of the world’s premier manufacturing and engineering economies.
Yet despite the Ukraine war having started well over a decade ago and the transition to a full invasion by Russia over four years ago, the British government remains extremely resistant to improving its own energy security and appears content to, as Prime Minister Starmer has done, making a show of appearing concerned for the benefit of voters. As reported, Britain’s Foreign Secretary said on Thursday that the oil-critical Strait of Hormuz “must not” be anything but totally open and free, yet decades of government cuts to defence has left the government unable to actually do anything about that beyond make demands.
Britain is leading efforts to put together an international coalition of countries to police the strait but after weeks of war progress has got nowhere beyond talk at a time where the ceasefire has arrived and President Trump is asking allies to actually live up to their promises within days.
On resilience more broadly, the United Kingdom is very energy rich: the domestic production of coal ended before known reserves were exhausted, there are considerable reserves of oil and gas under the North Sea, and its potential for shale gas has never been touched. Yet the position of the government remains that generating traditional energy at home is a moral failing, and that oil and gas should be sourced abroad.
While fracking has allowed an energy revolution to cut prices in the United States, the British government was so certain domestic supply would not be beneficial to Britain it banned fracking at home and cemented the experimental exploratory wells. Meanwhile, even as an energy crisis rages, the final remaining coal-burning power plants — kept on standby for emergencies — were decommissioned and quickly demolished.
Even the most prudent backups like having a strategic reserve of natural gas is neglected, leaving the UK with one of the lowest stockpiles of any European country. An open goal like the former gas storage site — vast underground caverns where gas can be pumped in, holding 100 billion cubic feet — at Rough in the North Sea is ignored. Having extensive storage means a country can buy gas when markets are cheap and ride out spikes by using the banked supply, but Britain doesn’t do this because of government choices, leaving it at the mercy of markets.
The extremism of Sir Keir Starmer’s energy minister Ed Miliband keeps a lot of the answers to the energy crisis that Sir Keir decries and pins on Presidents Trump very much under lock and key, given they don’t fit with his green transition dogma. The official position of the government is that they are investing in resilience by subsidising energy bills to hide the true cost from consumers — and adding the difference onto the tax bill of future Britons — and by building renewables, all too often with Chinese-made solar.
Even Tony Blair is now calling on Miliband to reverse course and to sign off on new North Sea drilling to do anything, absolutely anything to keep the economy alive.
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