Introducing Norway-level taxes without the accompanying investment incentives proves Labour’s energy policy is driven by ideology – not security, says Andy Mayer

The day before the new Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves sounded the death knell for Britain’s North Sea oil industry and put up to 200,000 workers on notice the ‘I’ newspaper led with the headline “Starfish and other seabed species plummet near oil and gas rigs off UK coast”. Thereby capturing the relative priorities of the British left: energy security and growth? No, bottom feeders clinging to the infrastructure of power.

Changes announced yesterday – a 3 per cent November increase in the top rate of the energy profits levy (a North Sea windfall tax by any other name) to 78 per cent, extending it one year to 2030, and withdrawing investment allowances, were signposted for two years and again during the election campaign. But that signalling, alongside Rishi Sunak introducing,........

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