PUT yourself in a Labour minister’s well-polished shoes.
You’ve just attended Cabinet and been told that, next week, you’ll need to defend a bold new policy: confiscating puppies from children to plug the £22 billion black hole. (Apparently the nation’s gone to the dogs – and now it has to repossess them.)
You’re already tired after being outflanked on the left by Nigel Farage, of all people, who has made clear his opposition to the two-child puppy cap and insists that everyone deserves one.
His message is going down great with voters – the focus groups tell you – and so you’ve been asked to come up with something thoroughly Great and British to outflank him right back.
Fortunately, despite promising to crack down on bloated bureaucracy, you’ve just set up a swathe of quangos which fit the brief. Great British Railway. Great British Nuclear. Great British Energy.
The latter is already getting to work, starting with a £200 million plan to kit out schools and hospitals with rooftop solar panels in a bid to cut bills in the long run.
The problem is – and we’ve left the realm of satire here – those solar panels may come from China because No 10 has insisted you cannot “shy away” from the nation’s role in the global market.
So, how can you make them Great and British?
Why not stick a Union flag on them? Or at least, a very close approximation.
A spad whispers in your ear: “Because no one will be able to see them on the rooftops.”
You bat them away. It’s a great idea. And one which the UK Government is, in all seriousness, taking forward.
As Politico reported on Friday, the £200m worth of solar panels that Labour buys will be branded with the “patriotic” GB Energy logo – which looks a lot like a green-and-blue-ish Union flag.
It doesn’t matter if the panels were made in China, so long as they scream “Great British” to anyone coming in to land at Heathrow (maybe one day).
Reform UK have already tried to make solar panels a battleground in the culture war – despite fancying them themselves – so why can’t you?
