Insiders say a drawn-out fight over the future of drilling in the U.K.’s Scottish oil and gas heartlands is finally reaching its conclusion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is a row which has split the governing Labour Party, pitted Miliband against the all-powerful Treasury, and will, some of Labour\u2019s own MPs fear, undermine the\u00a0government\u2019s climate credentials and expose the party to even more political pain.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a progressive government with a big majority, in the country that started the Industrial Revolution, can\u2019t hold firm on new fossil fuel drilling,\u201d worried one Labour MP, \u201chow can we expect developing countries to do what\u2019s needed to tackle climate change?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The MP, along with other officials and experts in this piece, was granted anonymity to give a frank view on sensitive political planning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The decisions follow months of full-throated lobbying by fossil fuel companies, who argue tough action against high-polluting oil and gas firms will hit jobs and derail the wider economy \u2014 but also by green campaigners, desperate to hold Labour to its promises to make the U.K. a global climate leader.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And there is a growing risk for ministers that, as the government searches for a compromise to satisfy the party and balance fiscal demands with net-zero ambitions, it will land on a solution which pleases no one at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Insiders say a drawn-out fight over the future of drilling in the U.K.’s Scottish oil and gas heartlands…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[27565,151177,2106,748,1194,34064,145937,2437,6659,17790,33,35,3975,393,728,7159,4884,806,1197,807,11582,186431,2452,384,517,1144,2661,5111,47,619,712,811,6647,2824,1200,27005,16,15,1764,6507],"class_list":{"0":"post-592274","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-andrew-bowie","10":"tag-barry-gardiner","11":"tag-brazil","12":"tag-britain","13":"tag-budget","14":"tag-climate-leadership","15":"tag-clive-lewis","16":"tag-companies","17":"tag-crisis","18":"tag-ed-miliband","19":"tag-elections","20":"tag-energy","21":"tag-energy-security","22":"tag-england","23":"tag-environment","24":"tag-fossil-fuels","25":"tag-great-britain","26":"tag-industry","27":"tag-investment","28":"tag-keir-starmer","29":"tag-lobbying","30":"tag-mary-glindon","31":"tag-media","32":"tag-nigel-farage","33":"tag-north-sea","34":"tag-northern-ireland","35":"tag-oil","36":"tag-parliament","37":"tag-poll","38":"tag-rachel-reeves","39":"tag-scotland","40":"tag-security","41":"tag-stability","42":"tag-tanks","43":"tag-tax","44":"tag-tony-blair","45":"tag-uk","46":"tag-united-kingdom","47":"tag-wales","48":"tag-water"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592274","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=592274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}