It’s very fashionable these days to observe sagely that some politicians are not very good at politics. Our current Prime Minister and his predecessor are often mentioned in this regard. Nigel Farage is not. But this might be about to change as he discovers the problem with moving from being a single-issue political campaigner to asking voters to make him Prime Minister.
Today, Farage’s energy and foreign affairs spokesman, Richard Tice MP, announced Reform UK’s new energy policy. The policy is indescribably bad to the point that, if you are tempted to vote for Reform, this should make you think twice and then think again. How is it possible that such terrible ideas could ever have been put together and then signed off by Tice and Farage?
In short, Reform wants to scrap Net Zero by doing four things: implementing a windfall tax on renewable power, taxing farmers who have taken a subsidy to use their land for solar farms, banning Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) and legislating to force National Grid to put all its cables underground.
These are all awful ideas that demonstrate that Reform is only capable, at this point in its evolution, of seeing policy through ideology. And even under those terms, it’s surprising to see a party that most people assume is in favour of lower taxes and less government using the hammer of the state to achieve its policy aims.
In this vein, let’s start with Reform’s last idea which is also its worst idea. Forcing National Grid to bury all its cables, both current and future, underground will obviously cost a fortune. National Grid will have to find that money from somewhere. Reform suggests that the company won’t be allowed to pay a dividend while this work is implemented and, while this might cover some of the cost, it will also see pension funds miss out payments from a steady supplier of dividends – and there aren’t too many of those left on the London Stock Exchange. And if the state-sponsored cancellation of the dividend doesn’t cover the cost (and it won’t), who will end up paying for this pointless programme of burying cables? That’s right, the poor bloody consumer. So up go those bills.
A windfall tax on renewable energy will have the same effect. In the winter months of dunkelflaute – grey skies and low wind – it’s easy to forget that for much of the year, renewable power is the leading provider of power in the UK: 36% over the past year vs 28% from natural gas. You can hate Net Zero all you like but renewable power in the UK is a fact of life; a part of the energy mix that can’t be wished away. It’s exactly the same as proposing restrictions on immigration the year after you’ve had net migration of 700,000. You’re shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, gone to live on a different farm and, after years of fruitful labour, has gone out to pasture. You’re too late! If you start taxing a third of the energy sector, what will happen next? The consumer will bear the brunt through rising bills. Of course, Reform could renationalise all our energy providers and keep the bills down that way but EDF, E.ON and Iberdrola – to name but a few – will take some persuading. And cash too.
Let’s move on to the next turkey. Now that we have so much renewable energy in our energy mix, we can make it longer-lasting, more efficient and cheaper by using the latest Battery Energy Storage Systems in which there is thriving global competition. Look at those bills fall as BESS takes the strain. But not if Reform gets into power: they want to ban them.
So, under Reform, we would have an energy mix we’re stuck with and no ability to improve the system with technology that’s getting cheaper and better by the day. Another triumph for Farage and Tice.
Finally, they want to tax farmers who have taken cash to install solar panels on their farms. Again, weren’t Farage and Tice the geniuses that brought us the Brexit vote? Didn’t farmers vote in favour of this? Don’t they have lots of lovely fields next to motorways to place placards and banners to be imbibed by drivers across the country? Do they really think the farming community would welcome another tax – and this case, a retrospective tax? No, they won’t.
It’s very difficult to know what’s going on here. If Farage and Tice want to end Net Zero in the UK all they need to do is first, withdraw subsidies from renewables and force them to compete in an even market against fossil fuels and second, open up the North Sea for new oil and gas exploration.
Instead, they are putting forward unserious, unrealistic and heavy-handed government-driven bans and taxes that, if Labour or the Tories proposed anything similar, they would denounce as power-mad Stalinism.
It’s tempting to think that there’s a method in this madness but it’s much more likely that Reform is finding out the hard way that building credible, durable domestic policy is really, really tough.