A key aim in any war is to destroy the enemy’s industrial base.
Ed Miliband is leaving us exposed to our enemies through his recklessness (Image: Getty)
That’s why during the Blitz, the Nazis targeted London’s docks, factories, railways, ports and transport hubs, in a bid to cripple war production and morale. The Allies fought back by bombing industrial regions like the Ruhr Valley, targeting oil production, refineries and manufacturing plants.
Vladimir Putin is following the same grim playbook in Ukraine today. Russian forces have hammered power stations, electricity substations, fuel depots and industrial sites to weaken Ukraine’s economy and break civilian resilience.
War isn’t just about killing enemy soldiers and civilians, it’s about making a country poorer and weaker.
What I didn’t expect was to find the UK’s Energy Secretary adopting similarly brutal tactics against our own industrial base, in peacetime.
But that’s the scale of damage Ed Miliband is inflicting. On his own country.
In a recent article, I jokingly suggested that given the immense damage he’s inflicting on the UK’s industrial base, if he were a foreign demagogue we’d have to declare war on him. The more I examine his record, the less funny that idea seems.
Miliband’s most damaging assault is on domestic energy production. He’s accelerated the rundown of North Sea oil and gas, restricted new licences, hiked windfall taxes and sent a clear signal that long-term investment isn’t welcome.
UK production is being hammered as a result, leaving us more dependent on imports, and poorer and less secure. The North Sea has suffered its worst year since the 1970s as drillers respond by freezing investment, the Financial Times reports today.
Grangemouth, Scotland’s only oil refinery and a major petrochemicals hub, is shutting down. If Putin’s forces had done that, he’d be handing out medals.
Thanks to sky-high energy costs, steel, chemicals and ceramics firms are shutting down or shifting production to friendlier territories, taking crucial jobs, skills and tax revenues with them.
Our food security is under threat too. Miliband is covering productive farmland with solar panels, taking land out of cultivation in the name of green targets. That leaves us more reliant on imports and exposed to volatile global food prices.
Soaring energy bills are shattering civilian morale, with millions shivering on the home front.
Worse still, Miliband’s energy strategy leaves us hooked on Chinese solar panels, batteries and critical minerals. Beijing is not our friend.
Miliband is right in one key respect. Renewables will diversify our energy grid and, in theory, make us less reliant on imported gas that Putin can use as leverage.
In practice, the reckless rush to deliver clean power by 2030 is doing the opposite. As Britain shuts down exploration in its own waters, it becomes more dependent on imports.
The only reason Europe could wean itself off Russian energy was by substituting it with US gas, thanks to the country’s shale revolution. Yet Miliband has banned fracking here.
Britain needs renewables and climate change is real. But his self-imposed 2030 deadline is making Britain poorer, weaker and more vulnerable. Halting it could save us £14billion a year.
We may not be in a shooting war today, but we could be one day. When that happens, we’ll need every scrap of economic strength. Ed Miliband, Rachel Reeves and the rest of this strategically blundering Labour leadership are wiping out our industrial base before we’ve even begun.
