An industry wrecked by the Net Zero nihilists... and their breathtaking contempt for business, jobs and families

By STEPHEN DAISLEY, SCOTTISH DAILY MAIL SKETCH WRITER Published: 20:01, 2 August 2026 | Updated: 20:01, 2 August 2026 The story of North Sea oil is bound up with that of British Petroleum. The fuel giant has been producing energy from that seabed for 60 years, powering cars and homes and businesses up and down Britain. But now it’s going. BP will remain in the UK, where it is headquartered, but its North Sea arm will be sold, meaning the company will part ways with its five Scottish production hubs and 1,100 workers. While fossil fuel corporations seldom cut sympathetic figures, I can’t bring myself to shake a fist in BP’s direction. It has taken a commercial decision for commercial reasons, and it is doing so in a political context which has made its operations ever more uncertain. The political class, Westminster and Holyrood alike, decided some time ago that oil and gas were the boogeymen of the energy mix. Ministers and backbenchers of all political stripes lined up to demand an abrupt shift from petrochemicals and fossil fuel powered transport, to call for the withdrawal of subsidies and the imposition of yet more regulations, to clamour for pauses and moratoriums and outright bans on development. They promised just transitions and upskillings and the rest, and beyond making their own contributions to global emissions with so much hot air, they produced little to show for their warm words. Truth be told, few if any of them cared. The cause was just and so anything done in the name of the cause was too. These Net Zero nihilists wrecked an industry, not because the climate required it – they continue to import fossil fuels at greater ecological cost – but because the cause did. THE BP logo is set to disappear from the North Sea after 60 years A genuinely just transition, staged to allow industry to reinvest and workers to retrain over a longer time period, would have been the responsible thing to do, but it lacked the urgency that politicians mistake for resolve. When you think only in headlines and hashtags your patience for compromise and complexities is limited. So refineries closed, jobs disappeared, and families scattered in search of work. And from the economic vandals who had willed this came a gush of statements, sniffles and ‘solidarity’. All of it with a straight face, too. There is more brass in their necks than the horn section of the Royal National Orchestra. BP issued its announcement as the Prime Minister made one of his own. Andy Burnham told the Press he would take ‘a pragmatic approach’ on North Sea oil and gas, which at least sounds like a break from the doctrinaire opposition under Keir Starmer and his anti-energy secretary Ed Miliband. In fact, Burnham was responding to comments from Donald Trump, who said the new PM was planning on ‘opening up’ the North Sea ‘all the way’. The President, bless his heart, sometimes gets carried away, so we’ll assume Burnham’s version is closer to the truth. Pragmatism is welcome after years of extremism but words must be matched by actions. The pragmatic course now would be to face up to hard realities. Fossil fuels are going to be part of our energy mix for decades. There is no option to switch off oil and gas any time soon. Politicians and activists who say otherwise are pursuing an estranged relationship with the facts. The question, then, is whether we develop our own natural resources, with licences stipulating domestic use only, at more manageable price points, or whether we continue importing at inflated costs which are then passed on to struggling consumers. The former approach is pro-consumer, pro-worker, and pro-climate, three things any Labour Prime Minister worth his salt ought to support. It would help cut energy prices, keep workers in jobs, and lessen our impact on the planet by removing the need to transport large quantities of fossil fuels from other countries and restricting new production to domestic sales. Andy Burnham needs to remember that he is Labour, and if that still means anything it surely means being against the infliction of needless economic hardship on working families. Andy Burnham has the chance to do a worthy service for the country   The Labour Party is not the Green Party – not yet, anyway – and even if sections of the Labour vote want to see the Government continue creating financial strife for low-and middle-income households, a proper Labour leader would have the guts to say No. Among the many forces hindering any hope of recovery in Britain is the burgeoning segment of the population insulated from the general economic conditions by employment in the public sector and the overly-subsidised and tax-exempted third sector. Here you will encounter some of the lustiest champions of Net Zero and other policies that inhibit growth and productivity. When your generous salary and pension are provided by the taxpayer, spikes in household, fuel and other costs aren’t as troubling. The government will be along soon to boost your remuneration – and buy your vote. If Britain is to stand a chance, it must break the twin strangleholds of ideology and complacency on its economy. The pendulum has swung too far from human welfare towards ecological purity, and a recalibration is keenly needed. We must work to moderate our destructive impact on the climate until science produces a comprehensive solution, as it surely will in time, but we must not do so at the expense of human flourishing and liveable lives. Governments ought to prioritise economic growth over the Net Zero fetish of the political and cultural elites. Get men on rigs, get crude flowing, get people’s bills down. What do I mean by complacency? I have in mind the self-indulgent indifference to the material concerns of ordinary people, be they oil and gas workers or bill-payers, but there is another complacency that worries me. Job-killing Net Zero fundamentalism is yet another area in which the elites who govern us openly scorn public opinion and sneeringly refuse to consider the interests of the people who pay their salaries. This page has become, quite unintentionally, a weekly chronicle of establishment contempt for the masses. Gender ideology. ‘Refugees welcome’. Cash for Palestine. The Hate Crime Act. Scottish Government secrecy. Delaying upgrades to the A96 for political reasons. The too-chummy relationship between the Crown Office and Scottish ministers. Too many people who hold positions of power and influence in this country look down on the general public, while some actively disdain them. They regard the electorate as narrow, provincial, unsophisticated, bigoted, and susceptible to the dreaded far-Right, a force which Scotland’s ruling junta sees with the fervid regularity that Joe McCarthy saw communists inside the US government. The ideological zealotry on Net Zero is the latest example of this mindset. The public refuses to hold the correct views and so the correct views will be imposed, regardless of the harm done. I worry about the complacency of this attitude because the powerful seem to assume that the voters have nowhere else to turn. But they do. If someone asked me the best way to recruit voters to populist and even more extreme parties, I would point to the political class and say: ‘Follow their lead.’ If Andy Burnham can chip away at this high-handed, politician-knows-best mindset, he will do a worthy service for the country and for democratic politics itself. We need politicians to rediscover pragmatism on oil and gas – and so much more.