2025 October 24 « nuclear-news

A Genuinely Just Transition: Kill Off Sizewell C – Shaft Reform UK

the insanity of Labour’s nuclear obsession

Jonathon Porritt. 23 Oct 25,
https://jonathonporritt.com/just-transition-uk-sizewell-c-reform/

I’ve been more than a little mean about Ed Miliband in my last two blogs – which is somewhat ungenerous given that he would appear to be the last sensible, caring person standing in this misbegotten Labour Government.

So, let me big him up for a bit!

Last Saturday, he gave what is probably his most important speech since becoming Secretary of State at DESNZ – on what (in my opinion) is probably the single most important policy area within the sprawling DESNZ portfolio: the green economy, skills, energy efficiency, retrofit etc.

He was unveiling details of the Government’s latest scheme to create an extra 400,000 ‘green jobs’ over the course of the next few years. Thirty one skilled trades have been identified as priority areas, with HVAC (heating and ventilation engineers) and plumbing at the top of the list, with carpenters, electricians and welders next in line.

The Government won’t just be targeting those particular skills, but those who they hope will end up in the new jobs: school leavers, NEETS, veterans, ex-offenders – and those exiting the once safe embrace of fossil fuel jobs (the package includes a designated fund of £20 million to upskill workers from the oil and gas industries). Miliband indicated that any companies benefiting from Government money will have to demonstrate the contribution they can make to those goals.

There wasn’t anything like enough in the speech about ramping up the current retrofitting programmes to reduce still chronic levels of fuel poverty here in the UK, let alone about opportunities to support energy efficiency schemes across the economy – including the highly effective SALIX scheme which is allocated a miserly £32 million a year.

As we all need to keep reminding people, overall energy consumption here in the UK has actually declined by a massive 28% over the last 20 years – one of the reasons why our greenhouse gas emissions have declined by 40% during that time. As the indefatigable Andrew Warren points out:

“There is no good reason why this trend should not continue. There are still approaching nine million homes on the gas network running gas-guzzling boilers, and many of these could readily switch to electric heating. There are still some fifteen million homes with grossly inadequate insulation. And still a majority without energy efficient glazing”.

So let’s hope we hear more about these critical areas in the future. But for the time being, let’s celebrate what looks like Labour’s most substantive attempt yet to set about a genuinely ‘just transition’ away from fossil fuels.

And that’s why Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves should go on backing Ed Miliband every step of this politically contested way! The two of them still seem to have not the first idea of how to combat the surging success of Reform UK in the polls – other than to claim (pretty idiotically) that they will deliver Nigel Farage’s agenda in a rather nicer and less aggressive way.

By contrast, Miliband gets the true threat from Reform to Labour. His interview on Sunday with Laura Kunzberg was splendidly combative, providing Labour with its strongest strapline yet: that Reform UK “is waging war on jobs”.

“Obviously, this is a massive fight with Reform. Reformers say they will wage war on clean energy. Well, that’s waging war on these jobs….. it’s all part of its attempt at a culture war, but I actually think they’re out of tune with the British people because I think people recognise that we need the jobs from clean energy”.

If I wasn’t somewhat suspicious of the whole idea of ‘eco-populism’, I’d say this is a very clear signal of Miliband taking the fight directly to the climate-denying neanderthals in both Reform and Badenoch’s Tory party – and, in the process, reminding Zack Polanski, the Green Party’s new leader, that he shouldn’t expect to command this territory unchallenged!

Which is precisely why my blog yesterday – about the insanity of Labour’s nuclear obsession – highlighted the scale of the challenge Ed Miliband faces. This whole ‘green economy’ commitment has been allocated £880 million in the DESNZ budget – 50% of what Sizewell C will get in direct subsidy! And that’s before we all start paying through the nose for Sizewell C on our electricity bills. It’s abundantly clear that this newly unveiled strategy is going to need a whole lot more backing than that.

Which is why Miliband has a very strong signal to send to Rachel Reeves: kill off Sizewell C – shaft Reform.

October 24, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, UK | Leave a comment

The Palestinian Authority may become a casualty of the Trump plan and the new Western consensus

Western support for a two-state solution was never intended to create Palestinian statehood — it was meant to justify the existence of the Palestinian Authority. Now that the Western consensus is shifting, so are thoughts about the need for the PA.

Monodoweiss, By Qassam Muaddi October 17, 2025

Total and lasting “forever” peace. Not just for Palestine, but the entire Middle East.

That’s what U.S. President Donald Trump promised at the signing of the Gaza ceasefire deal in Egypt last week. One way the plan differs from previous incarnations of the “peace process” is that it abandons the framework of the two-state solution as the accepted way of resolving the Palestine question.

Historically, the U.S. model for integrating Israel into the region was the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1994 after the Oslo Accords, which was given limited governing responsibilities over the West Bank and Gaza with the nominal assumption that it would be the precursor to a Palestinian state.

Trump’s plan tries to bypass all of this, putting Gaza under the administration of a U.S.-led board of “peace” headed by Trump himself. The PA has no clear role in running the Strip — at least not according to Trump’s 20 points, which mentions that the PA would have to undergo a series of “reforms” that could, in some unspecified future, establish “a path” toward Palestinian self-determination. During the reconstruction phase, the West Bank and Gaza would be politically split.

Israel has made its rejection of a Palestinian state official policy. But it is also a matter of national consensus across the Israeli political spectrum, as recently articulated by Benny Gantz, a member of the opposition, in the New York Times.

It goes back to well before October 7…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza two years ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted that the PA will have no role in governing the Strip in the future. Yet the calls by Ben-Gvir and the Israeli far right to abolish the PA altogether are not so easy to implement.

The PA runs civil affairs in the West Bank, responsibilities that would otherwise fall to Israel. It also sustains the image of a peace process on which most Western countries and the UN base their official positions, anchored in the rhetoric of a “two-state solution.”

But nominal Western support for a two-state solution was never meant to actually implement it. Rather, the function this support has ended up performing has been to maintain the political rationale for supporting the continued existence of the PA. The demands of the maximalist Israeli far right have placed this in jeopardy.

If Trump’s “peace” plan, if one can call it that, is to have a chance, it would need some European buy-in, especially in funding and bankrolling the so-called “reforms.” That puts it at odds with the maximalist Israeli position.

Last Monday, as the leaders of 20 countries met in Egypt’s Sharm al-Sheikh to sign the Gaza ceasefire deal, the President of the European Council, Antonio Costa, told the media that the EU would increase its aid to the PA by 1.6 billion euros. He added that European intervention will focus on humanitarian aid, police training, governance, border control, and PA reforms, to ensure that “in the future, Palestine will be a democratic state, free of terrorism.”

The new global consensus

The PA has already adopted a political platform that recognizes Israel, rejects armed resistance, and commits to security cooperation. But the PA is also part of a larger Palestinian political spectrum. Even if there aren’t elections, the PA is still bound to operate in relation to other Palestinian political forces. This sets a bare minimum “floor” that the PA is obliged to maintain, which is the rhetorical insistence on a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and perhaps as an afterthought, paying some lip service to the right of return. Decades of Palestinian struggle since the Nakba have made it impossible for the PA to rhetorically sidestep this political ethos, even though it has done virtually everything on the ground to render it materially meaningless.

In other words, the PA cannot abandon its pretenses to being Palestinian and representing some notion of Palestinian nationhood. This is what Palestinians fear the “reforms” are about — turning the PA into a self-governing and apolitical body shorn of any remnants of Palestinian national culture and memory………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/10/the-trump-plan-the-palestinian-authority-and-the-new-western-consensus/

October 24, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | MIDDLE EAST, politics | Leave a comment