Daily Mail columnists discard journalism for propaganda about Labour Government’s climate and energy policies – part 1
The Daily Mail’s polemics on the new UK Government’s plans for decarbonising power and reaching net zero are ridiculously ignorant and ideological, write Bob Ward and Pallavi Sethi, who show how recent grossly misleading articles amount to propaganda.
As it became apparent that Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Government was not going to survive the General Election of 4 July 2024, its allies in the British press stepped up their partisan attacks on the Labour Party’s policies, particularly on climate change, and have continued their assault on the new Government.
The Daily Mail, in particular, has made space for long rants from its columnists, including Stephen Glover and Andrew Neil, about Labour’s plan to decarbonise the power sector by 2030. These polemics have been filled with fictions and falsehoods, reflecting both deep ignorance and an extreme ideological agenda.
For instance, the newspaper published an article by Stephen Glover on 27 June in print and online, under the headline ‘10 reasons to fear a Starmer Super Majority’. It stated: “Labour plans to achieve Net Zero in Britain at least five years before the rest of Europe” and “Labour is committed to achieving net zero by 2030, at least five years before the rest of Europe”. Both statements are completely untrue. The commitment made by Labour in its manifesto was to decarbonise the power sector by 2030, not the entire economy.
The Daily Mail eventually published a correction in its print edition on 30 July, and amended its online article to state “Labour plans to decarbonise the grid in Britain at least five years before the rest of Europe”. It also inserted the following statement at the bottom of the online article:
“An earlier version of this article reported that the Labour government is committed to achieving net zero by 2030. In fact, Labour has committed to decarbonise the electricity grid by 2030. We apologise for the error.”
However, the rest of the article remains unchanged, even though Glover had completely misunderstood the Labour Party’s commitment. In short, his argument remained the same despite his facts being wrong. His article was propaganda, not journalism.
But the Daily Mail’s chief propagandist on this issue has been Andrew Neil, who has a long history of promoting misinformation about climate change and energy. Neil had two strident polemics about Labour’s energy policies published, on 29 June and 20 July. His articles are long and absolutely stuffed with inaccurate and misleading claims. We examine the first of these below; Part 2 of this commentary takes on the second.
Andrew Neil’s article of 29 June 2024
Accusing Labour of ‘lying’
Neil’s article of 29 June was published online and in print under the headline ‘Labour’s Net Zero policy is fantasy piled upon stupidity’. The article started and ended with falsehoods.
It stated:
“Labour claims it will cut £300 from the average annual household energy bill by investing in supposedly cheaper renewable sources of energy. In the process it will ‘decarbonise’ the electricity grid so that by 2030 we won’t be using fossil fuels to generate electricity.
“Thus the end of this decade is destined to be a milestone on the march to net zero emissions by 2050, when the use of fossil fuels to generate energy will be banished from our islands.
“Even allowing for the tendency of politicians to be economical with the truth in election campaigns, this is quite a litany of bald-faced lies — a veritable wonderland of whoppers in which the truth is the opposite.”
Thus, Neil makes the very serious allegation that Labour’s manifesto commitments are “lies” without offering any substantiation in his article: this is pure rhetoric without any real analysis.
The article continued with further false claims. It stated: “More renewable energy will not mean cheaper bills” and further on: “But the effect of this pointless, destined-to-fail obsession will be to increase your bills for heating and cooking, probably quite substantially”.
Elsewhere in the article, Neil repeated this serious allegation: “It is a Great Green Lie that renewables mean cheaper energy bills. This has been claimed for years yet consumers have yet to see it happen.”
Neil, who has no expertise in energy, offered absolutely no evidence to support these claims. This is unsurprising, given they are untrue. A range of official sources have pointed out that having more renewable energy will reduce electricity prices. For instance, the UK Government published in July 2022 a ‘Review of Electricity Market Arrangements’, which addressed the problem that the design of the current wholesale electricity market means that prices are set by more expensive natural gas, and prevents consumers from benefiting from lower cost renewables. It stated: “Renewables are usually cheaper than fossil fuels: once the infrastructure is built, power from the sun and wind costs (almost) nothing.” Further on it stated:
“The wholesale market is based on marginal pricing, which means the cost of the most expensive generation asset sets the price for the entire market. The marginal price model had been adopted by the majority of liberalised electricity markets. As the market price reflects the value of an additional unit of electricity at all times, this model provides efficiency, transparency, and incentives to keep costs down. However, as gas and carbon-emitting technologies (amongst others) frequently set the wholesale price under current arrangements, the low cost of renewables is not being fully passed on to consumers, leading to excess profits for some generators.”
The review concluded: “Average wholesale prices are likely to fall as the proportion of renewable generation increases.”
Misleading about the scope of Labour’s promised investment
Neil’s article also misrepresented the sums previously pledged by Labour to decarbonise the power grid by 2030, confusing it with additional investment to tackle a range of environmental issues. It stated:
“Labour once promised to invest £28 billion a year between now and 2030 to decarbonise the grid. But that extravagance fell foul of Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s desire to be seen to follow fiscally prudent spending rules (even though she was the one who, pandering to the crowd at a Labour conference, had unveiled the £28 billion figure with a flourish).”
In fact, it was clear when Rachel Reeves announced the £28 billion in additional public investment that it would be invested in more than decarbonisation of the grid. In her speech to the Labour Party Conference in September 2021, Reeves said:
“Labour will meet the challenge head on and seize the opportunities of the green transition. Let me tell you today what I will do as your Chancellor. I will invest in good jobs in the green industries of the future; giga-factories to build batteries for electric vehicles; a thriving hydrogen industry; offshore wind with turbines made in Britain; planting trees and building flood defences; keeping homes warm and getting energy bills down; good new jobs in communities throughout Britain.
“In other words: protecting and strengthening our everyday economy. And to make this a reality, to unlock that potential, and protect our planet for future generations, I can announce today that I am committing the next Labour government to an additional £28 billion of capital investment in our country’s green transition for each and every year of this decade.”
Labour has since abandoned this pledge and Neil went on to misrepresent the party’s new investment plans, writing:
“Labour now says it will invest £24 billion over five years, quite a falling off in scale and ambition.
“Yet Labour still claims it can ‘green’ the grid by 2030. Which is curious, to say the least since, if it can do it with £24 billion over five years, why did it say it needed £28 billion a year for five years?”
In fact, the £23.7 billion in additional public investment over the next five years, like the earlier £28 billion figure, was pledged by Labour for more than just decarbonisation of the power grid: it includes, for instance, green steel and electric vehicles.
Neil also confused the public investment required to decarbonise the power grid with the public and private investments to achieve net zero emissions of greenhouse gases across the economy by 2050. Drawing inaccurately on reporting by The Daily Telegraph, his article states:
“The blunt truth is that both figures are fantasy. Don’t take my word for it. Just listen to Labour’s shadow chief secretary Darren Jones, the man who will be in charge of the money at the Treasury in a Keir Starmer government.
“Asked if even £28 billion a year would be enough he replied, without hesitation (and with unusual honesty since he didn’t know he was being recorded): ‘No it’s tiny… [we need] hundreds of billions of pounds.’”
In fact, the article in The Daily Telegraph about the meeting at which Mr Jones’s comments were recorded made clear that the MP was talking about decarbonisation of the whole economy and not just the power sector. The Telegraph article stated: “When an audience member said some people would say that £28 billion a year was not enough to decarbonise the economy, Mr Jones replied: ‘No, it’s tiny. Hundreds of billions of pounds we need.’”
Inaccuracies about windfarms
Neil’s article also misrepresented the process for securing contracts for the development of new windfarms. He wrote:
“Last year the Government tried to expand offshore wind capacity by offering investors a generous ‘strike price’ of £44 per megawatt hour. There was not a single taker even though it meant investors were offered a guaranteed price — set at 2014 prices so in reality they’d be able to charge a minimum of a third more than £44 — and indexed-linked to inflation regardless of the market price of electricity.
“The Government has come back this year with an improved offer of £74 per megawatt hour, again at 2014 prices. There’s still no rush of fresh investment.”
The strike prices for ‘Contracts for Difference’ auctions are actually quoted in 2012 prices, not 2014 prices. The current auction is still in progress, and the window for submitting bids did not begin until 5 August 2024, with the results due to be announced later this year, so Neil’s claim on 29 June that there was “still no rush of fresh investment” was entirely misleading.
Daft claims about North Sea oil and gas
Neil also made a misleading claim about the potential consequences on the UK’s trade deficit of reducing its reliance on oil and gas while stopping any licences for new development in the North Sea. His article stated: “Our trade deficit, already bad enough, will worsen.” In fact, as UK oil and gas production is in long-term decline, the trade deficit would grow if there is no transition to alternatives. The latest data from the Department for Business and Trade show that the UK spent £67.241 billion on imports of crude oil, refined oil and gas in the 12 months to April 2024, compared with £34.470 billion in export revenue.
Neil’s article also misrepresented the evidence for changes in the number of jobs associated with the oil and gas sector and with offshore renewables in the North Sea. His article stated:
“Yet Labour plans to watch this well-established, profitable national asset go down the Swanee while expensively pursuing its own Net Zero fantasies, which involve ridiculous claims about all the well-paid ‘green’ jobs it will create.”
This is extremely misleading. The number of jobs in the North Sea oil and gas industry has been in long-term decline because it is a mature hydrocarbon basin and production has been decreasing. According to the trade body Offshore Energies UK, production of North Sea oil and gas has fallen by 70 per cent since 2000, from 4.4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day to 1.34 million. The decline is not the result of climate change policies.
Furthermore, Neil’s article misrepresented the results of analysis by Robert Gordon University, stating:
“Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon University says there could be 80,000 new jobs associated with renewables by the end of the decade. But a halt to North Sea development would see 60,000 jobs go, quickly.
“A net rise of 20,000 jobs (if that) is hardly the green jobs cornucopia Labour is promising.”
In fact, the researchers did find that “a halt to new investment and an accelerated production decline, could reduce the oil and gas workforce by 50% to around 60,000 people by 2030”. But they also concluded: “Over the same timeframe and depending on the level of ambition realised, the UK offshore renewables workforce is expected to increase from around 34,000 in 2023 up to 138,000 in 2030.” Hence Neil’s article was wrong to claim that they found that the 60,000 jobs would be lost “quickly”, and he was wrong to state that only 80,000, rather than more than 100,000, new renewables jobs would be created.
The misinformation does not end here
On 20 July 2024 the Daily Mail published a further article by Andrew Neil that attacked the Government on its net zero policies and made untrue allegations against the independent Climate Change Committee – which we describe further in Part 2 of this commentary.