Does Labour believe in beauty? The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, celebrated his arrival in office this summer by permitting three of the largest solar panel arrays in Britain. One, a Suffolk array covering nearly 2,800 acres, was described by a county councillor as “the poorest infrastructure application that I have ever dealt with”.
Now Miliband is demanding a procession of pylons filling the glorious Amber Valley in the Derbyshire uplands. Another parade of 420 pylons, each nearly as tall as Nelson’s column, will run down the east of England from Grimsby to Walpole, near King’s Lynn in Norfolk. The government also wants to allow the return of onshore wind turbines, overriding local objections.
There is no sign in any of these decisions that the new government puts any value in the beauty of the British landscape. Miliband derides its defenders as “blockers”, “delayers” and “obstructionists”. He even adopts the authoritarian’s favourite gimmick, defence. Pylons and turbines are “the economic justice, energy security and national security fight of our time”. As with the location of new housing estates, he and Keir Starmer also revel in........