English Labour's GB Energy con
Don't fall for it, Scotland
Published in The National, June 4th, 2024, and in the Edinburgh Evening News, June 10th.
The mainstream media isn’t unmasking English Labour’s GB Energy scam. Great British Energy, to be headquartered in Scotland, is a cynical sop to Scottish voters who English Labour thinks will be too thick to figure out it’s just a brass plate on a door.
That’s because GB Energy won’t generate any energy but invest public money in offshore wind and solar projects to be owned and operated by private energy companies. It’s PFI all over again, Labour’s ‘big idea’ that allows private corporations to ‘invest’ in public infrastructure and earn profits without bearing any risk. Like NHS hospitals that were subjected to PFI schemes, GB Energy’s projects will carry crippling new debt they’ll be forced to pay back over decades from public funds.
Jonathan Reynolds, English Labour’s Shadow Business Secretary, confirmed this saying GB Energy’s purpose will be the
“management of the investments, which we believe are essential to unlock these markets and opportunities.”
So Starmer’s lying when he declares that GB Energy will lower bills. Scots will continue to pay some of the highest energy prices in the failing UK when their nation produces the lion share of renewables. If anything, GB Energy will make things worse by extending the privatisation of an irretrievably broken sector that only renationalisation can fix.
But Starmer’s against renationalising energy despite pledging to do so in the English Labour manifesto. At the 2023 party conference, members overwhelmingly voted to bring energy and rail back into public ownership, which the leadership ignored.
Adding insult to injury, Starmer unveiled the GB Energy logo which one observer remarked looks like a lightbulb farting. That’s because English Labour bought it off the internet for less than a quid.
English Labour’s contempt for Scotland is clear. Let’s not fall for this con but get on with ending this failing union.
Scotland should reject anything with a GB label straight off. In the run up to the independence referendum 'GB', 'Britain', 'British', were just never used as part of the English governments' narrative, we were all 'one big family' in the UK. There's nothing 'great' about their 'Britain', or their UK. I find the whole current brand of GB quite sinister, it's purpose is to undermine the nation status of Scotland in particular. What's Scotland's is England's, that's what GB means.
Nothing should surprise me about the gullibility of the populace especially when I consider the popularity of religion. But it does depress me.