GREEN JOBS – PUFFERY AND PROMISE

If anyone can be relied upon to turn a crowd-pleasing photo opportunity into a row about Britain’s industrial demise, it is surely Boris Johnson. Visiting a wind farm off Scotland’s east coast in August, on a promotional jaunt for his plan to upgrade ports and factories, build a wave of new wind turbines and support the creation of 60,000 jobs in the process, the UK’s prime minister called for a ‘smooth and sensible’ transition from oil and gas to green energy. ‘Thanks to Margaret Thatcher, who closed so many coal mines across the country, we had a big early start,’ he added.

Johnson’s throwaway comment prompted a furious backlash, including from within his own party. Tory MPs representing so-called ‘red wall’ constituencies (traditionally held by Labour incumbents) in England’s former industrial heartlands immediately recognized the offence he had caused, with one saying the PM was ‘spitting in the face of communities that still haven’t recovered’. Ewan Gibbs, a historian at Glasgow University, pointedly noted that ‘Thatcher’s government cut funding for an innovative renewables research programme in the late 1980s’.