Miliband Presses On With ‘Net Zero’ As British Industries Collapse
As 2026 starts, one point is clear: the British government is doubling down on ‘net zero’
We are signing up to the European Union’s internal energy market.
We are launching a £13bn solar power campaign, and most companies are preparing for a looming ‘carbon border tax’.
But hold on. Given the full-scale collapse of our industrial base and with others pausing ‘carbon’ emission reductions, surely this is the worst possible moment to be pressing blindly forward?
Over the Christmas break, while everyone was taking some much-needed time off, the Government was busily accelerating its plans to keep the UK a ‘world leader’ in ‘fighting’ ‘climate change’.
It emerged that the Prime Minister and the Energy Secretary, are negotiating for Britain to join the EU’s internal energy market, which manages the bloc as a single, borderless electricity grid.
While it makes perfect sense to shift power from country to country according to demand and price, there is a catch: it means signing up to the EU’s ‘net zero’ rules – such as requiring 42.5 percent of energy to come from ‘renewable’ sources by 2030 – and we will also be subject to oversight by the European courts.
In effect, we will have to implement whatever rules the bureaucrats in Brussels decide to impose on us.
In the same spirit, Miliband is also planning a £13bn solar panel campaign in an attempt to create “zero bill” homes.
On closer inspection, it looks as if it will be “zero bills” for a few households but not for the taxpayer, who will be providing generous grants and subsidies for anyone who wants to dangle a Chinese-made solar panel out of the window for the rare few hours of January sunshine and plug it straight into their laptop.
Strangely, the Chancellor keeps telling us how taxes have to go up because we are completely broke – but when we need 10 or more billion for a madcap solar scheme, then suddenly the money is magically available.
Meanwhile, the EU has, from this week, started imposing its ‘carbon border tax’ that will, in effect, impose levies on goods from the rest of the world to compensate for any emissions involved in their production.
Oddly, it seems that tariffs are completely wicked when Donald Trump, the US president, imposes them, but absolutely fine when the EU does, especially as they have a ‘green’ label.
The UK is planning its own version from the start of 2027, and manufacturers and importers will have to spend much of the next 12 months figuring out how the tariffs will work and getting the paperwork in place.
Add it all up, and one point is clear. Our government is determined to create the world’s first ‘net-zero’ economy before anyone else. Which actually means net zero industry, a flatlined net zero economy, and net zero continuous electricity.
Yet it is hard to see how anyone can genuinely believe that is the right choice for the British economy at the start of the second half of the 2020s.
There are two big problems. To start with, under the weight of sky-high energy prices and ‘green regulations’, British industry is in full-scale collapse.
Over the last year, we learned that British car production had fallen back to levels last seen in the 1950s, and the Mineral Products Association reported that cement production had fallen to levels from 70 years ago.
Scotland’s Grangemouth oil refinery, the oldest in the UK, stopped production, and half the steel industry had to be rescued by the Government to stop it from closing down completely.
Overall, Britain has fallen out of the top 10 manufacturing nations in the world, overtaken by the likes of Mexico and Russia.
A rational government would be treating that as a national emergency and working out what it could do to rescue what little industry we still have left.
Instead, we will start piling yet more costs, extra levies, and targets on the few companies that have managed to keep operating.
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Header image: Scottish Daily Express