“I DON’T think we should get hung up about a specific number,” insisted Rachel Reeves with the faintest hint of a smirk, as she put the final nail in the coffin of Labour’s £28billion annual green splurge.
Despite being the one to unveil the figure at the party’s conference in 2021, the Shadow Chancellor yesterday finally won her battle to shoot the eye-wateringly expensive green albatross.
The day Reeves unveiled the doomed plan, The Sun branded it a green bombshell, an explosive avocado grenade that would blow up in the party’s face.
Despite promises to the contrary, we warned “the spending plans will mean even higher taxes”.
And so it came to pass.
Flanked by Sir Keir Starmer yesterday, Reeves took a machete to the flagship policy, paring it back to just £4.7billion a year — funded by expanding and hiking the windfall tax on energy firms.
I can’t think why they banned the cameras from this moment
In 15 years’ reporting from the corridors of power, I don’t think I have been to a weirder political event.
A gaggle of hacks were invited to a dusty old room in the bowels of Parliament to be told nothing has changed.
I can’t think why they banned the cameras from this moment.
Rictus grins were fixed, there definitely was no fall-out. Everyone was happy, there was no need to worry about missing Ed Miliband. The party’s voter-repellent green guru was conspicuously absent after insisting six months ago that “Keir, Rachel and I will never let” the plans be scaled back.
Yesterday, Sir Keir felt the need to insist: “We are in lockstep, and obviously I am the leader of the party.”
“Ed will be out, Rachel will be out and I will be out over the next 24 hours or so with all of our smiling faces.”
So was there really no rift?
“Rachel thinks I talk about football too much,” chortled the handbrake-turning knight, who just days ago said the £28billion figure was “desperately needed”.
“I don’t think you could honestly say this looks like two people haven’t agreed on this,” he insisted, “or I am somehow reluctant.”
To have to publicly deny a rift between the two most powerful people in the party before even crossing the threshold of No 10 does not exactly bode well
Unfortunately he was trying to smile so hard while he spoke, that’s exactly how it looked.
All that was missing were the ice creams and this could have been the good old days of the TB-GBs, with Blair and Brown pretending they got on just famously.
To have to publicly deny a rift between the two most powerful people in the party before even crossing the threshold of No 10 does not exactly bode well.
So while the price tag has been torn up, in order to keep Miliband in the tent it appears some of his madder pet projects have survived the cull.
The claim that the entire power network for the UK can go green in the next six years is almost as suspect as Keir’s promise that no one has had a barney. And to suggest yesterday morning this would cost £28billion but by the afternoon insist it could be done with less than five billion is just not credible.
But for me the most worrying part of the plan — the apple of Red Ed’s eye — is Great British Energy.
This idea for a state-owned energy firm would get £8.3BILLION in taxpayer start-up cash if Labour win.
The small print of what it would actually do to apparently lower bills states that GB Energy will allocate “resources to support local power in partnership with communities”, with £600million available for town halls to dabble in power supply.
But is this a good idea? The evidence so far would suggest not.
When Labour in Nottingham used £43million to set up Robin Hood Energy, 125,000 customers signed up. Within five years the initiative collapsed, leaving taxpayers on the hook for £38million of debt.
Auditors found that Bristol council missed plenty of chances to cut their losses with a doomed Bristol Energy scheme, again leaving taxpayers on the hook for £43million.
And in Warrington, again Labour-run, the council bought a 50 per cent stake in Together Energy for £18million.
Guess what? Local residents ended up liable for £37million. You get the idea.
And what about the most famous example of a state-owned energy firm, France’s EDF? Well, they published their worst ever results last year, with debts hitting £55billion and an annual £15.4billion loss.
They currently sell electricity to the French public at a massive loss, resulting in the state-owned firm suing the state.
Getting rid of the £28billion figure was only a matter of time for Labour.
How long before they start to ditch the really crackers ideas though?
WHO would be Keir’s king of spin in 10 Downing Street?
After poaching Sue Gray from the heart of Whitehall to be his enforcer, I hear Gray is keen to bring in Simon Enright, one-time press adviser to the King and Queen.
As the election campaign looms and minds turn to who gets what job in government, I hear Starmer’s inner circle isn’t quite a nest of singing birds.
KEMI BADENOCH blocked Jeremy Corbyn-endorsed, pro-IRA rappers from taking part in the taxpayer-funded Music Export Growth Scheme.
But London punk rockers Warmduscher, left, were very happy with their official cash handout, announced yesterday.
They haven’t always been so warm toward the Government, blasting in 2019: “F*** Brexit, the Tories and that bloated sack of s**t, Boris.” And did anyone at the Business Department have a listen to the band before opening up the public purse?
“Standing on the corner with my hands in the air/Loaded gun pointed in my face/I don’t give a f*** ’cos I’m high as a kite.
“My baby’s at home half-naked in the corner/So help me out, boy, pull the trigger, get it done/Cos I’m gonna go get me some.”
A worthy use of our taxes?
THE odds of an India-Brexit trade deal before the election are getting longer by the day.
With the super-state of a billion people going to the polls themselves in two months’ time, negotiators whisper that there is basically four weeks left to get it signed.
But it’s been stalemate for a year over Indian demands for more UK visas to drop the tariffs on imported goods.
Talks are said to be at a “critical point” with one final push coming, but I hear a fudge could be in the offing with a limited accord signed rather than the promised sweeping free trade agreement.
