WESTMINSTER politicians are reportedly at “breaking point” with Keir Starmer over the potential of approving a new oil and gas field in the North Sea.
The Prime Minister is facing a growing internal backlash from Labour MPs after Treasury sources indicated Rachel Reeves is likely to give her backing for the proposed Rosebank development.
MPs have reportedly called for Starmer to reiterate his own commitments to no further oil and gas licences.
Last week a judge ruled the Rosebank development, which was given the green light by the previous Tory administration, as unlawful following a legal challenge brought by Greenpeace and Uplift.
Previously the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, described the licence issued to Rosebank as “climate vandalism”.
Reeves is reportedly supportive of a new application for environmental consent for the North Sea development, despite Labour’s manifesto promising not to issue any new exploration licences.
MPs who are concerned about the climate emergency are reported to be likely to make their appeals directly to Keir Starmer about the importance of being seen to stand by the party’s manifesto commitment of no new oil and gas licences.
It was also reported that MPs said more criticism would be forthcoming if the approval was being pushed by the Treasury.
“This is absolutely a line in the sand for almost everyone in the PLP. This goes specifically against what we said we were about,” one MP told the Guardian.
Another MP said: “This would be a breaking point for a lot of us.”
A third said: “We have to send a signal to workers, not just oil giants, that we know what [energy] transition really means. If we don’t build up domestic supply chains and manufacturing for renewables, oil workers will have nowhere to go.
“They won’t thank us for that.”
A fourth Labour MP told the Guardian it was important to make the case that new oil fields should not be seen as an automatic growth advantage.
They said: “You’re banking on what could potentially very quickly become stranded assets, and the profits go to private companies but it’s the public sector that will end up clearing up the mess.
“That is not a good investment and I think there are some of my colleagues that sort of think that all growth is good and that’s actually economically illiterate.
“The new intake are very clear. If Trump is closing his door on green investment, we should be opening the door to green investment. The Americans are going to miss out. We don’t want to.”
The backlash against Rosebank would be “much much bigger” than on Heathrow, another MP told the paper.
“It says a worrying thing about our political strategy,” they said.
“There was a quite clear line on all of this stuff. And then if you get panicked just by a couple of headlines in the Daily Mail, then that as a narrative feels a bit worrying.”
“They can hold the line that you can make electric planes but digging up a tonne of oil really isn’t anything other than environmental vandalism,” another MP agreed.
“Rosebank is fundamentally a disaster.”
Five Labour MPs, including three who chair different all-party parliamentary groups on climate and renewable energy, criticised the link made between new oil fields and economic growth in a letter to the Times on Monday.
“Labour’s mandate is clear: the country wants a decisive shift toward a future with cleaner, more secure energy,” it said, signed by Luke Murphy, Polly Billington and Alex Sobel, Peter Swallow and Abtisam Mohamed.
