MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: A victory for common sense in the battle with eco-zealots

It is very welcome news that – as we report today – Premier Andy Burnham and Chancellor John Healey have decided to give the go-ahead to the Rosebank oil and gas field in the North Sea.

The decision is good in itself. It will reduce our reliance on fuel imports. It will increase tax revenues and generally boost an economy badly in need of growth. 

But it is also a victory in a wider battle between common sense and climate posturing. Interestingly, the unions, whose members need work, have been on the sensible side in this controversy.

It ought to be incredible that green dogma has for so long postponed this decision. 

Britain has for many years sacrificed itself on the altar of green militancy, dismantling a large and powerful coal-fired electricity generating network to please such campaigners, while China and India have been building great fleets of new coal-fired power stations, more than cancelling out any effect on the atmosphere produced by Britain’s efforts.

And Mr Burnham and Mr Healey will undoubtedly face continuing opposition from ideology-driven zealots, who think that any sort of carbon fuel is the work of the devil. 

They will have to be soothed. Substantial sums earned by the new field will be poured into the Energy Wealth Fund, which will be used to invest in wind and solar energy.

But, for the moment, this is a reasonable price to pay for a significant change in the policy climate – a change which, if sustained, will benefit this country for many years to come.

 A boring Budget... or one full of pain?

If the leaks and semi-secret briefings are true, we are promised a shy, unassuming Budget on Wednesday, no big or frightening changes. 

The big banks, apparently, will face some tough times, and it is pretty likely that they will find a way of passing them on to the rest of us. 

But after the disastrous job-killing, business-destroying era of Rachel Reeves, this is a sort of relief. Or is it merely a reprieve, with the real punishment inevitable but a little further away?

The signs are all bad. The Government has borrowed too much and is now having to spend so heavily on interest that even its favourite projects are squeezed. 

Andy Haldane, a former chief economist at the Bank of England, has warned that the Prime Minister could risk a collapse of the sort that Liz Truss experienced if he does not ‘take the knife’ to public spending. Mr Haldane, who should know, says that the Government has still to grasp the depth of the crisis.

It may be that there is about to be an outbreak of sanity in the Labour Party. But alas, it is more likely that Mr Burnham and Mr Healey are hoping to win a surprise general election and then slip back quickly into their old high-spending, high-tax ways. 

Let us say it again. For the sake of the country, its solvency and everything that depends on it, from defence to education and justice, the Right must Unite and be prepared to fight and win such an election at very short notice. 

This is no time for the anti-Labour majority to be squabbling with each other.