Rachel Reeves is making UK poorer – while helping US and Norway get rich

Rachel Reeves’s refusal to put a carbon tax on imported oil and gas is helping countries like Norway and the US get rich during the global energy crisis. Yet, keeping net zero taxes on British industry is making the UK poorer.

This is utter hypocrisy from the Labour Government and will help beggar us all. As the Gulf crisis sends energy prices sky high, it’s a tragic irony that Britain does not, in fact, get much of its oil and gas via the under-attack Strait of Hormuz. Most of our imported energy comes from America and Norway in the form of crude oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG).

The Chancellor doesn’t want to add to the cost-of-living crisis by slapping a carbon tax on these imports – but that means imported energy is getting a free ride compared to our own refineries, which face some of the highest electricity costs in Europe thanks to Ed Miliband’s suicidal obsession with net zero.

Scotland’s last oil refinery at Grangemouth closed last year, while the Lindsey refinery in north Lincolnshire has been mothballed. As a result, Britain is becoming more and more dependent on imported oil and gas.

What sense does this make? How can it be more environmentally friendly to bring in energy by ship from abroad than drilling for new sources of fuel in our own North Sea?

Norway has no such qualms and is selling us oil and gas it taps from its own North Sea fields – right next door to our own declining fields.

Net zero legislation brought in by the Tories and enthusiastically continued by Labour is discouraging the exploration of new British oil and gas fields. This is hampering our own energy companies and starving the exchequer of taxes. Moreover, some 200,000-plus jobs depend directly or indirectly on drilling in the North Sea.

Thanks to North Sea discoveries, Britain became a net exporter of energy in 1981, and this continued into the 1990s. The UK is now a net importer of all fuel types, with imports rising in recent years to 43.8% of all energy used in Britain.

Despite Miliband's most earnest wishes, wind and solar power (whose components largely come from, you guessed it, overseas) are just not meeting all our energy needs and will not do so for many years to come. So when global energy prices go up, we are on the hook and pouring money into the coffers of other countries.

Donald Trump says he doesn’t care if energy prices go high because it means the US is making billions of dollars more in profits. That’s because he has made his country the world’s top exporter of oil and gas by dropping climate change demands foisted on American companies by the Democrats and is exploiting all fuel sources – including shale gas, which Britain recklessly turned its back on thanks to campaigners.

The gap between Brent Crude and West Texas Intermediate oil prices widened this week to $13, whereas it normally trades at a $3 difference. Prices at US gas pumps are also going up, but the divergence in oil costs means Americans are still paying half the price we pay to fill up a tank of petrol.

The same is true of European and UK gas, heading upwards from €60 per megawatt hour (MWh), whereas in the US it is less than €10 per MWh.

When Trump was friendly with Sir Keir Starmer, he was constantly telling the Prime Minister our energy policy was a mess, and we should reopen the North Sea. But Starmer, Miliband and Reeves are all on the net zero express and won’t get off until our economy crashes under the weight of their misguided green madness.

The current energy crisis shows just how close we are to disaster, with an economy linked ever more closely to the rollercoaster of energy prices than other energy-rich states, our industries and businesses are competing against.

Yet again, by waving in cheaper foreign energy, Chancellor Reeves has shown the Labour Government cares more about shoring up its own ideology than protecting the future health of our economy.

Even former Labour leader Sir Tony Blair has called Miliband’s doomed net zero “climate theatre”. It’s time to bring the curtain down on it.