To Scotland, where the closure of the country’s only oil refinery has been announced today. The site will shut next year – resulting in the loss of 400 jobs – after refining company Petroineos said it was unable to continue to compete with similar organisations around the world. With the news comes a wave of frustration across both Scotland and the UK. First Minister John Swinney has admitted he is ‘deeply disappointed’ by the development, while the leader of the Scottish Tories Douglas Ross has slammed the move as a ‘devastating blow to the workforce’. Quite.
And Sir Keir’s Labour government has also expressed regret at the decision. After the news broke, Starmer’s Energy Secretary Ed Miliband took to Twitter to write that the call was ‘deeply disappointing’ and lamented the ‘difficult times’ facing refinery workers, pledging to ‘stand with the workforce’ in its time of need. How noble. But Mr S is rather interested in the lefty lot’s show of surprise…
If readers cast their minds back to July, they might recall Starmer’s Energy Secretary rather brazenly ordered a ban on new North Sea oil and gas licenses – despite union fears that the policy could cause workers to ‘suffer the equivalent of the coal closures’. It seems rather odd, then, that the onetime Labour leader is acting quite so shocked about the Grangemouth news, given the Labour lot are hardly incentivising energy companies to remain in the UK. In fact, some have even gone so far as to suggest the Energy Secretary should bear some responsibility for the unfolding fiasco…
Miliband has only been in office two months – Mr S can only imagine what he’ll have done in two years…