0:00
What about Keir Starmer's ability to reset net zero targets
0:06
He laid out his plans yesterday. Now, as the shadow minister of all of this, this comes under your responsibility
0:12
What do you think about what's happening and what direction we're heading in? Well, frankly, I mean, he hasn't reset the party or the government's position on net zero
0:22
They remain rigid in their belief that net zero by 2050 isn't just achievable
0:26
but in the national interest, that is wrong-headed, which is why Kemi Bidnik just two weeks ago announced
0:32
that we were ditching our net zero by 2050 commitment because it is making this country poor, it's driving away investment
0:37
and it's killing our heavy industry. And I think if he was to take a radical approach
0:42
to the tariffs being imposed by the US, he might want to think again about sticking to this plan
0:47
which is doing such damage to the British economy at the same time as the rest of the world is not keeping up
0:53
How do you keep up? How do you do it? what would you do? Well, as I said
1:00
we've got rid of our net zero by 2050 commitment. And as a result of that, we are now looking at
1:04
what the individual policies on energy and the environment will be, should we be lucky enough
1:09
to get back into government. But what we cannot have is the continued situation which we have right now
1:14
where heavy industry manufacturing be that ceramics be that automotives be that whole host steel for example are leaving the United Kingdom because of carbon taxes and rigid arbitrary targets which they are
1:25
expected to meet with no discernible positive impact for the UK or the UK economy. We're seeing
1:30
unemployment in Scotland as a result of their position in oil and gas. And we're going to be
1:34
seeing more of that across the country as a result of these wrongheaded policies. So a radical
1:39
position for the government to take to combat these tariffs might be to look again at whether
1:43
their net zero by 2050 is in the national interest. Yeah, but you may say, well, we can't afford to do it
1:49
There'll be a lot of people screaming at you, screaming at this screen this morning and saying
1:53
we cannot afford not to do it. Well, look, we're not saying we don't believe in decarbonisation
2:00
or that we should do what we can to pass the world on in a better place than in which we found it
2:06
But we just think setting an arbitrary target, a date that was set in legislation with no discussion
2:10
for no reason other than we needed to have a date is not the best way to proceed when we're talking about something of this magnitude
2:17
We're very proud of our record on decarbonisation. We cut our carbon emissions faster than any other G7 nation
2:23
by half in the period in which it is counted. We built the first to fifth largest offshore wind farms in the world
2:28
but we did that while still investing in the UK economy and indeed growing the economy
2:33
So it can be done, but the direction of travel from this government seems to be net zero by 2050 at the expense of everything else
