Harry Cole and Brendan O’Neill, chief political writer of Spiked, discuss the leaked government report which reveals that Net Zero targets could lead to plummeting economic growth for the UK.
Brendan O’Neill says Net Zero is a “project of national suicide” which will sacrifice industry, infrastructure, and economic growth.
They also discuss how the vote of “sensible people” will be split by the Tories and Reform.
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#netzero #tories #reform
Brendan O’Neill says Net Zero is a “project of national suicide” which will sacrifice industry, infrastructure, and economic growth.
They also discuss how the vote of “sensible people” will be split by the Tories and Reform.
Click here for more from Talk https://talk.tv
If you need any help visit: https://talk.tv/helplines
#netzero #tories #reform
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NewsTranscript
00:00Brendan O'Neill, a man I read regularly at Spike, their chief political writer, a pleasure to see
00:05you. Net zero could crash the economy, the poorest will be hit hardest, it could wipe GDP off, send
00:12debt soaring, the sort of thing you've been saying for years and yet here we have it now, in black
00:17and white, the civil service admitting it. Can I get your reaction to that? Yeah, I'm glad they finally
00:22come around to common sense. You know, net zero is a suicidal policy, it's the project of national
00:28suicide to sacrifice industry, infrastructure, economic growth and pretty much everything else
00:34at the altar of this religious hysteria, this idea that we have to appease the gods of climate
00:40and sacrifice as much as possible so they don't get angry with us. There's something very medieval
00:44about this ideology and I think it's very clear that it's going to hurt the most, the poorest
00:50people in society and working class people by getting rid of loads of good jobs, getting rid
00:56of whatever manufacturing we have left, making it less likely that we'll open coal-fired stations
01:01or dig for oil or have nuclear power. This is all disastrous and I think we need to prioritise
01:06growth rather than shrinking carbon emissions. How would you prioritise growth though?
01:12It doesn't seem the government have been able to pull any lever yet, they're finally now realising
01:16and I think hopefully realising that getting out the way might be a good start. Do you think
01:22they'll be doing it in time? You've got Keir Starmer there giving speeches about abolishing
01:26quangos and regulators and red tape and an unshackling enterprise, are you buying it?
01:34Isn't it interesting that Keir Starmer is now saying the kinds of things that you guys at
01:37The Sun have been saying for years and years, which you guys got a lot of flack for saying,
01:42not least from the Labour Party, that we need to cut red tape and we need to cut green tape and
01:48we need to strip out all these quangocracies and do something about the blob in Whitehall and so on,
01:53although he's not going far enough down that road in my life. He's finally realising, I think once
01:59you get into power in this country you do finally twig that actually there's a lot of quicksand
02:05style government infrastructure that just prevents you from moving forward, prevents you from doing
02:11what you want to do and even Labour's fairly limited agenda is difficult to realise when you've
02:16got all this stuff up against you, so I think he's finally realising that. I think it's too late and
02:22also I just don't trust that the Labour Party, which is the party of the public sector and the bloated
02:27state and the unions and the party that doesn't trust ordinary people, I don't think that's
02:33the party that's going to cut the state in the way that we need a government. I do think
02:37you're right though that they could have spent the opposition thinking, oh it'll all be fine because
02:42the public sector love us because we're basically our voters and we'll pay them off and give them
02:45nice pay rises. The civil service will come round because we're fluffy Labour, we're not those evil
02:52Tories, we can come in and just say we'll be nicer and say we'll do things and it'll just happen
02:57and they're hitting the same problem that every administration comes in, be it Boris Johnson, David
03:01Cameron, Theresa May, whoever it is, Rishi Sunak, is that you've got all these levers in front of you
03:06and they're made of chocolate, you pull them and nothing happens. I've got a little bit more
03:12sympathy I think than perhaps you do in the fact that I genuinely think they actually do
03:16want to do stuff, they do want to change and actually this is all born out of frustration
03:19and acceptance that they got that first six months badly wrong, talked the country into recession
03:23almost as we discussed earlier in the show and now actually they realise they've got to move very
03:28quickly if they are of any chance of getting re-elected and actually they accept that people
03:33like Dominic Cummings were right when they said you know the complete Whitehall needs a complete
03:40rat rewiring, easy for me to say. Yeah, the civil service in this country is a disaster at the
03:46moment, I mean they're not a civil service at all, the clue is in the name, you're supposed to be
03:50civil, you're supposed to be a neutral objective body that just does the things that the electorate
03:56and the government of the day wants you to do, the civil service hasn't been doing that for quite
04:00some time and they were even worse when the Tories were in power, do you remember they said they were
04:04being bullied by Priti Patel because she asked them to do their jobs and they tried to block
04:08Brexit and all the rest of it, they were real wreckers during the Tory administration and it
04:13seems that some of that is happening with Labour as well, you know I don't disagree with you,
04:17I actually think that Labour, you know power is a real eye-opener and once you get into Downing
04:23Street and you see the books and what's in the coffers and what's not in the coffers,
04:28it's probably a real dose of cold water on the face and I think Labour is realising they need
04:34to take action, you're absolutely right, when they first came into government they were talking
04:38this country down, they kept going about the economic black hole, they talked us into an even
04:43worse recession by discouraging businesses from coming here because we're apparently such an
04:48economic basket case, I think they've now twigged that they need a much more positive pro-growth
04:52agenda, absolutely and they need it for the, you know we might not, you might not, we might not,
04:58listeners might not agree with what they want to do in their agendas but all of that is reliant
05:02on investment and money and growth, they need the money to pay for it, even in this net zero
05:07leaked report, the whole thing, the whole premise of this is that because of our anemic growth,
05:12because of our overburdened regulatory environment, the very investors that the net zero dream,
05:18the religion that you call it, requires to actually even have a chance of getting off the ground
05:23because you can't just borrow the money and you can't just tax it because we've already taxed the
05:27country out of existence, they're going to put it off so they kind of need to do the stuff that
05:31they've taxed everyone else for doing for years. Yeah exactly right and you know at the same time
05:37that they're realising that we need to grow and we need to create more wealth rather than just
05:42redistributing whatever little we have left, they also need to, I think they need to challenge the
05:47apocalyptic world view of the climate change lobby, now I'm not a climate change denier but
05:52I am an apocalypse denier, I believe that billions of people will die in the next 20 years unless we
05:58shut down every factory in the north of England, that's poppycock, it's nonsense, that's religious
06:02end of times religious hysteria, they need to challenge that, they need to have more confidence
06:07in the country, we are the birthplace of the industrial revolution which to my mind is the
06:12best thing humankind has done so far, we transformed the entire fortunes of humanity with the industrial
06:19revolution that started in this country, we should take more pride in how industrious we have been
06:26over the past couple of centuries and really try and push that spirit forward, as I say though
06:30whether Labour can do that, huge question mark. Let's look at how the others are doing, obviously
06:35Kemi Badenox has come out and said this week that you know net zero isn't viable by 2050
06:43and then obviously you've got reform who've been saying that for a very long time and then
06:47I don't know if you caught earlier in the show we had Greg Smith the shadow business secretary
06:51on who said there should be a pact between, well he all but said, in fact he pretty much said it,
06:58we're going to go with he said it, a pact between reform and the Tories, the furthest anyone on the
07:02front bench has gone on that, I know you like to talk about the big issues and you're a big thinker
07:08but the nitty-gritty dirty politics of Britain, if everyone can see that Greg's right.
07:14Yes, you know I'm so worried about reform at the moment, all that infighting they've got going on
07:19and they're getting a lot of flack and I think Nigel Farage is a brilliant politician, he's got
07:24so much going for him, he really connects with ordinary people, he could really do well in the
07:29next election, they did brilliantly in the last election considering they're a relatively new party
07:34I think you know I guess the problem looking forward to the next time we go to the polls,
07:40the problem is that if it's the Conservative versus Reform for the votes of sensible people
07:46or people who want a bit of change, then that will split that vote and it will weaken that vote
07:51and it might mean that Labour gets in on another lacklustre. Well they got in with what 32, 33%
07:57of the vote last year, I mean if you look at the polls now with everyone basically everyone
08:03bumping somewhere around between 24 and 27 and the Lib Dems down on 12, you know that's
08:1010 years of Starmer right there. Yes, so something needs to change but you know let's not forget that
08:16the Conservative Party, I think Kemi Badenoch's doing a good job, she was definitely my favourite
08:21choice for leader, I think she's got a lot of a lot in her and we'll see how she performs over the
08:26next few years but don't forget that the Conservative Party has got so many wets in it
08:30as Thatcher famously called them, you know and so many Ramonas and so many dull people who would
08:36run a mile rather than rub shoulders with Nigel Farage so it will be difficult for the Conservatives
08:42to make a link up with reform but something does need to happen otherwise we could be a one-party
08:47state for the next 10 years. I mean if you look at how the Lib Dems and Labour played it last
08:51last election, they never said there's a sort of pact between Labour and the Lib Dems but
08:57there was very obviously some seats in the country where Labour pulled all their resources out and
09:02let the Lib Dems have a crack at the Tories and the same where
09:07you know seats in the south east, in the rural south of England and you know nice
09:12fluffy clouds and green bits of England where suddenly the Tories were
09:15absolutely wiped out in their heartlands, it was clear that Labour were holding off and letting the
09:20Lib Dems have a crack on it, can you see that maybe sort of non-aggression pact sort of shape rather
09:26than a formal deal, would that not be the way to do it? Yes, I can see that happening and I can see
09:31that working in fact and you know the thing is there are so many people in this country especially
09:36working class voters who still haven't decided which party they're going to plumb for, I mean for
09:41decades they voted for the Labour party of course until they realised that the Labour was continually
09:46stabbing them in the back, I think the real end point was when Labour tried to betray their vote
09:52on Brexit and tried to overthrow the largest democratic vote in the history of this country
09:57which millions of working people voted for, they were so disgusted by that that they all went for
10:02Boris Johnson in 2019 which was essentially a second Brexit referendum, so those voters are
10:08still crying out for someone who has got sensible policies on the economy, sensible policies
10:14on culture and wokeness and all that idiocy we have to put up with and sensible policies on borders
10:19and immigration, if there was a party that could go to those working class constituencies with good
10:24policies on all of those things they would clean up in this country, so I think some non-aggression
10:29pact between parties that generally share those views would be a good thing. Yeah I currently
10:34agree that Boris and Brexit were a gateway drug to millions of voters for
10:38looking at parties they'd never even you know considered voting for, for Labour voters across
10:43the country, so you could see how it worked really couldn't you, you could have the sort of
10:46Tories pulling off in what we used to call the you know what was once called the red wall, then there
10:51was you know then it was sort of it went blue and now it's sort of back to Labour but only with
10:55very slim majorities in large parts of it, so allow what reform would have a run at that while the
11:00while the Tories try and claw back the shires off the Lib Dems, you can see how it works right?
11:05Yeah you can absolutely and you know the Lib Dems have become, there's been so much political
11:09realignment over the past 10 years, the voters are so fluid, yeah the Lib Dems have become the party
11:15of the kind of leafy upper middle classes, they've stolen a lot of Tory seats on that front, Labour is
11:20now the party of the public sector workers, has been for some time and also the kind of urban
11:24middle classes, the young and migrant voters and reform has the potential, and the Tories almost
11:30became the new working class party, I think they've fluffed it, I think Covid blew that up,
11:36yeah Covid wrecked all of that, poor Boris got Covid, you know the whole Covid issue just
11:41months after getting into power, but I think you know there is room for a new party to come in and
11:47speak to working people, that's working class, lower middle class people who really graft for a
11:52living and really entice them into a new alignment and if reform and Tory can agree to do that in
11:59some way, they could really shake up this. Well it is fascinating to see Kemi Badenoch essentially
12:03moving the Tory party away from those wishy-washy Lib Dems, sort of left centre Tories as you
12:09point out, to you know saying what they're starting to slay some sacred cows like net zero,
12:15putting them into position where reform were. Just while I've got your last question Bretton,
12:20do you feel in a way that you know Nigel Farage at the last election said there's something
12:23happening out there, and we had the Women's Matters spokesperson on earlier who was talking
12:29about the trans issue, the backlash to that is happening, you've got reform heading the
12:33polls in a way you wouldn't think, you've got Donald Trump abolishing DEI and all of that
12:39woke stuff, you've got companies ditching the woke stuff, Britain seems to be lagging a bit but
12:46is the great battle to save the West slowly being won? It's definitely starting in earnest,
12:52that's what I would say, I think it's for the winning and what Trump has done is extraordinary,
12:57he said drill baby drill, get men out of women's sports, control the border, dismantle the bloated
13:04bureaucratic state and let's make America rich and wealthy and happy and sensible again and
13:09I think that's going to ripple effect around the Western world. I'm gonna leave it there.
13:15you