Ross Clark

A few weeks ago it seemed as if some sense was finally creeping into Labour's energy policy. It was reported at one stage that even Ed Miliband himself had changed his mind and come round to the view that it would, after all, make sense to use more of our own oil and gas reserves rather than import the stuff: better economically as well as environmentally, as transporting fossil fuels around the world costs money and involves greater carbon emissions. This is especially true in the case of liquified natural gas (LNG). But it seems we were all deceived. Far from relaxing Ed Miliband's moratorium on new oil and gas extraction, the Energy Independence Bill announced in the King's Speech seeks to convert it into a permanent ban.

The thing about white working-class voters, as Boris Johnson discovered in 2019 and Nigel Farage is finding out now, is that there are a lot of them. They way outnumber the other voting blocs who often grab more attention, such as students, middle class muesli munchers, Muslims and so on. Tap into the white working class and you enter a fast track to power. But having won over such voters, Farage now has the same problem as Johnson had in 2019. His voters have an expectation of high public spending, at a time when fiscal reality is demanding a sharp contraction in the size of the state. On many issues Farage and those surrounding him see absolutely eye to eye with his voters.

Just what were business leaders expecting when so many of them sucked up to Labour before the 2024 general election? Only Keir Starmer's party, 121 of them declared in an open letter, could deliver Britain's full economic potential. They swarmed around Rachel Reeves like drones around a queen bee. Richard Walker of Iceland even turned up to the party's manifesto launch to praise it for its economic plans. They are not cheering now. Only 17 of the 121 who signed the 2024 letter are currently prepared to restate their support for Labour. The rest are moaning – many of them anonymously – that they are being killed off by hikes in employers' National Insurance and business rates, as well as the rise in the minimum wage and the Employment Rights Act.

The worst thing about the government’s plans to force pension providers to invest their money in particular assets is that ministers and MPs themselves don’t have to worry about it. They, of course, are members of a gold-plated pension scheme that is underwritten by the taxpayer. They will receive their index-linked pensions whatever the economic performance of the country or of any particular assets. As for the rest of us, how well we do in retirement very much depends on how investments perform. That is why it is so obnoxious that the government is trying to force pension funds to invest some of their funds in UK assets and in particular public sector ventures.

Never let a good crisis go to waste, as they say. And Rachel Reeves has made it quite clear that she is going to milk the Iran war for all it is worth. It was Iran wot pushed inflation up to 3.3 per cent, she has hinted (ignoring that the Consumer Prices Index was already above 3 per cent, and has been well above the Bank of England's target for most of her time in office). It will be Iran (or rather Donald Trump) which destroys British jobs (ignoring that her hike in employers' National Insurance had already cost tens of thousands of jobs), and it won't be anything to do with her when the economic growth figures turn sour. 'Just look at that thundering growth of 0.5 per cent I created in February,' she will say (ignoring that growth in the year to February was just 0.8 per cent).

Donald Trump's second presidency began with a blaze of executive orders which horrified and impressed in equal measure. It also begged the question: if it really were so easy for a president to circumvent the legal obstacles and assert his will, how come none had behaved in this way before? A year on, we are learning the truth: no, a president can't just do what he likes, and there is a horrible price to pay if he tries. In the case of Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs the notional bill is $166 billion. That is the sum that US Customs believes it will have to refund to importers who paid tariffs which were ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court in February. A computer portal to handle the refunds was set up this week, the administration of which adds more cost.

What have North Sea oil and gas production and grammar school education got in common? Both are subject to a fiddle by which they can be expanded while the government pretends they are not expanding. After David Cameron changed his mind on grammar schools and said he wouldn’t allow new ones to be created, a deal was done whereby existing schools could open a ‘satellite’ on another site in another town. Hence Tunbridge Wells Grammar School opened a new site in Sevenoaks – a separate school in all but name, and yet the government could claim that it had stuck to its promise of no new grammars. The cabinet battle over the energy crisis is still far from resolved Rachel Reeves has suggested that the present government may take the same approach to North Sea oil.

First the good news. Some commercial users may be enjoying free electricity at some point this summer – or better still, they may even be paid to consume it. Now the not so good news: at other times it will mean us all having to pay even more for our electricity than we already do. The National Energy System Operator (NESO) – the nationalised body which manages the grid in Britain – is reported to be drawing up emergency plans in case it becomes too sunny. Thanks to Ed Miliband, there is now so much installed wind and solar capacity that in sunny and windy conditions it threatens to overload the grid. Here is the problem. Currently, the UK has 32 gigawatts of installed wind capacity and 22 gigawatts of installed solar capacity.

At first sight it might seem like the triumph of reason over ideology. The Times is reporting that Ed Miliband has given way and is poised to announce that he will, after all, grant a licence for extraction from the Jackdaw gas field 250 miles east of Aberdeen. It has been a long time coming. For weeks, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero has been holding out, insisting that more oil and gas drilling in the North Sea won’t make any difference to Britain’s energy security or energy prices. Meanwhile, even RenewableUK, the trade body for wind and solar, has been backing more drilling. On Wednesday, Rachel Reeves made it quite clear that she was in favour of approving new licences for the North Sea.

Reform UK has just made what could turn out to be an enormous error. Its Treasury spokesman, Robert Jenrick, has committed the party to retaining the ‘triple lock’ on pensions, whereby the state pension rises each year by either inflation, average earnings or 2.5 per cent, whichever is greater. This follows a period in which Nigel Farage had suggested that the policy was ‘up for discussion’. It is easy to see the attraction of committing yourself to the triple lock. A recent poll by Lord Ashcroft suggested that six in 10 voters support the policy. What’s more, pensioners tend to be enthusiastic voters.