When asked if he wanted to see more renewable jobs in Scotland, he said: “I don’t want to drive up bills, and renewable energy is driving up bills to a huge degree.”<\/p>\n
Tice said the UK should follow the US model by producing and consuming oil and gas domestically.<\/p>\n
Asked if the party would do a deal with the SNP on a second independence referendum in a future general election, he said: “We’re going to win a majority, we don’t need the SNP.”<\/p>\n
Looking ahead to the local elections next year, Tice said his party was “ambitious” and would “compete everywhere”.<\/p>\n
However, he refused to say exactly how many seats it was hoping to win. It currently has 23 out of 1,226 local seats across Scotland.<\/p>\n
The party won 17 out of 129 available seats in the Scottish Parliament elections in May, making it the joint second largest party in Holyrood alongside Scottish Labour.<\/p>\n
He called it a “fantastic result” and said Reform MSPs were “making a real difference in the chamber and the Reform voice is being heard loud and clear”.<\/p>\n
Tice’s call for more drilling in the North Sea is not a surprising position for the party, but what struck me while we spoke is the lack of a plan beyond drilling for oil and gas. <\/p>\n
Instead the party has pinned its hopes on future technology saving the day.<\/p>\n
The UK government is deciding whether to approve Rosebank and the Jackdaw oil and gas field soon, after they were legally challenged by campaigners.<\/p>\n
Environmental group Uplift argued that recent extreme heatwaves and wildfires were evidence that more drilling would “wreck the planet”.<\/p>\n
But in the ideal world of Reform, approving two sites is a long way from draining every last drop in the North Sea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When asked if he wanted to see more renewable jobs in Scotland, he said: “I don’t want to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1185134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":["post-1185133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","category-united-kingdom","tag-britain","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-northern-ireland","tag-scotland","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wales"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117210136425604507","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1185133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1185134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1185133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1185133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1185133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}