Ed Miliband hold firm! North sea oil and gas drilling won’t help anyone other than Nigel Farage

## Summary
Energy secretary Ed Miliband arrived at the Cabinet Office in London for a Cobra meeting on the Middle East crisis, 31 March 2026. Photograph: Alishia Abodunde/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Energy secretary Ed Miliband arrived at the Cabinet Office in London for a Cobra meeting on the Middle East crisis, 31 March 2026. North sea oil and gas drilling won’t help anyone other than Nigel Farage Zoe Williams It’s worrying to watch Labour entertain Reform’s fantasies about fossil fuels. Close Miliband watchers are tracking his every move, trying to divine his red lines: his decision not to attend the renewables transition conference in Colombia later this month, which the UK has always strongly supported, has worried campaigners , but not as much as the idea that he might row back on his opposition to North Sea drilling ahead of it, which would be catastrophic for the optics.

## Article Content
Energy secretary Ed Miliband arrived at the Cabinet Office in London for a Cobra meeting on the Middle East crisis, 31 March 2026.
Photograph: Alishia Abodunde/Getty Images
View image in fullscreen
Energy secretary Ed Miliband arrived at the Cabinet Office in London for a Cobra meeting on the Middle East crisis, 31 March 2026.
Photograph: Alishia Abodunde/Getty Images
Ed Miliband hold firm! North sea oil and gas drilling won’t help anyone other than Nigel Farage
Zoe Williams
It’s worrying to watch Labour entertain Reform’s fantasies about fossil fuels. Only renewables will bring lower bills and higher energy security
E
d Miliband is facing a dilemma, apparently. Reform UK is suggesting new oil and gas licences in the North Sea as a way to cut fuel bills and they’re steadily gaining cheerleaders – not just in the media, but
also in some
trade unions
.
Labour – having swept into power on a
green-friendly manifesto
, much of which has already been abandoned, but the kernel of which was to prioritise green over fossil energy – is in a bind. It’s plain that fresh exploration of the North Sea would run counter to the party’s every principle, and particularly those of Miliband, whose legacy will be his career-long commitment to the scrappy, dogged, surely often tedious and dispiriting legislative fight against climate breakdown. And yet, equally plainly, the pressure from Nigel Farage is only going to get more intense: he has framed the issue of North Sea oil and gas versus renewables as an elemental fight between the common man and the elites. The wokerati doesn’t care about your cost of living crisis, while the hard right does.
The war in the Middle East is bolstering Reform’s narrative, reinforcing a sense of scarcity and fear, the perception that we’re all being thrown around by elite whim, and the craving for some bordered independence from the world’s chaotic energy markets. The oil crunch hasn’t even hit yet, since most of the world is living off oil that set sail before Donald Trump’s bombardments started. As prices spike and we find ourselves in yet another cost of living crisis, unleashed by yet another autocratic maniac, no amount of rationalisation will gate off the feeling that the government should be doing more, should have prepared better, should have got us out of this mess. Nobody will be blaming Reform and, realistically, nor could they: Farage makes a lot of noise, but his influence on the world stage is limited. But he can have a huge influence on the national narrative.
View image in fullscreen
The Forties Bravo oil platform, located 110 miles east of Aberdeen in the North Sea.
Photograph: Allan Coutts/Alamy
This plan has already started to work, and it’s showing in bizarre ways: recent polling found that
more Greens
are in favour of North Sea drilling
(38%) than oppose it (33%). Close Miliband watchers are tracking his every move, trying to divine his red lines: his decision not to attend the renewables transition conference in Colombia later this month, which the UK has always strongly supported,
has worried campaigners
, but not as much as the idea that he might row back on his opposition to North Sea drilling ahead of it, which would be catastrophic for the optics.
The secretary of state for energy security and net zero, in other words, finds himself with exactly the same choices as the home secretary: how to respond to the pressure from the right? Do you accept its “legitimate concerns” and meet its proposals with your own watered-down version? How’s that going for
Shabana Mahmood
, anyway? What impact is her anti-migrant rhetoric having on party unity? To what extent can the cratering of Labour’s support in the polls be pinned on her very vocal renunciation of the party’s core values? We can argue about that another day, because as much as the physics of Miliband and Mahmood’s situations resemble one another, the issues of drilling and small boats don’t resemble one another at all, except insofar as they both happen at sea.
The Conservatives opened the
33rd licensing round
in October 2022 – cue absolute outrage from the opposition – and even back then, before any oil crisis, before Reform posed any real threat, this was a posture rather than a practical idea. The North Sea just isn’t that attractive a prospect to investors. It’s the oil bed equivalent of the last people standing when the nightclub closes – only around a quarter of the blocks received
any bid at all
. Free market fundamentalists blamed the windfall tax, also announced in 2022, but we can file this under “turkeys complaining about Christmas”, or more precisely, “allies of turkeys complaining about Christmas”. Energy companies were enjoying record profits due to Russia’s war in Ukraine, and their reluctance to invest in new licences was emphatically not because they were struggling to survive.
So, were Labour to announce a fresh round of licences now, the impact on bills would be
zero in the immediate term and minimal in t

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## Expert Analysis

### Merits
- Read more The constructive way to protect households from price spikes and insulate our body politic from the turbulence of world affairs would be to break the energy market into clean power and fossil power, whereupon investing more heavily in renewables would have an immediate impact on bills, as well as the longer-term benefit of combating climate breakdown.
- There is no mileage even in muting the commitment to renewables and promising energy price caps, the political equivalent of keeping your head down until the crisis passes.

### Areas for Consideration
- And yet, equally plainly, the pressure from Nigel Farage is only going to get more intense: he has framed the issue of North Sea oil and gas versus renewables as an elemental fight between the common man and the elites.
- The Conservatives opened the 33rd licensing round in October 2022 – cue absolute outrage from the opposition – and even back then, before any oil crisis, before Reform posed any real threat, this was a posture rather than a practical idea.
- On Thursday 30 April, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat Labour faces from the Green party and Reform UK – and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader.

### Implications
- North sea oil and gas drilling won’t help anyone other than Nigel Farage Zoe Williams It’s worrying to watch Labour entertain Reform’s fantasies about fossil fuels.
- Only renewables will bring lower bills and higher energy security E d Miliband is facing a dilemma, apparently.
- Reform UK is suggesting new oil and gas licences in the North Sea as a way to cut fuel bills and they’re steadily gaining cheerleaders – not just in the media, but also in some trade unions .
- It’s plain that fresh exploration of the North Sea would run counter to the party’s every principle, and particularly those of Miliband, whose legacy will be his career-long commitment to the scrappy, dogged, surely often tedious and dispiriting legislative fight against climate breakdown.

### Expert Commentary
This article covers energy, sea, north topics. Notable strengths include discussion of energy. Areas of concern are also raised. Readability: Flesch-Kincaid grade 0.0. Word count: 1329.