Tory Red Wall MPs unhappy after Boris Johnson’s coal mine gaffe
Boris is accused of ‘spitting in the face’ of Red Wall voters and having a ‘Gerald Ratner moment’ by saying Thatcher’s coal mine closures helped UK go green – as backpedaling No 10 insists PM recognises ‘pain’ caused by shut downs
- Boris Johnson said UK got ‘early start’ on going green because of mine closures
- Remark about Margaret Thatcher sparked immediate backlash from PM’s critics
- Mr Johnson’s remark about mines has also left some Red Wall Tory MPs unhappy
- MPs said not ‘smart’ to say after voters in some seats finally voted Tory in 2019
- No10 tried to dampen anger, saying PM recognises ‘pain’ caused by closures
Downing Street today scrambled to dampen anger over Boris Johnson’s coal mine gaffe after Tory MPs accused the Prime Minister of ‘spitting in the face’ of ‘Red Wall’ voters.
Mr Johnson sparked a furious backlash during a visit to Scotland yesterday after he said the UK got a ‘big early start’ on going green thanks to Margaret Thatcher closing coal mines in the 1980s.
Labour demanded an apology for the ‘shameful’ comment while Conservative MPs expressed fears that the remark could damage support in former mining communities which only voted Tory for the first time in 2019.
Tory backbenchers believe the comment could be viewed in the future as the PM’s ‘Ratner moment’ – a reference to jewellery firm boss Gerald Ratner’s disastrous remark in 1991 when he called one of his own products ‘total cr*p’ and was later axed after profits tumbled.
The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman has now tried to repair the situation, insisting that Mr Johnson ‘recognises the huge impact and pain closing coal mines had in communities across the UK’.
However, the spokesman declined to apologise for the remark.
Mr Johnson, who was visiting an offshore wind farm, said there were ‘massive opportunities’ to increase the use of green technology as he appeared to sound the death knell for the long-term future of North Sea oil and gas.
He acknowledged that North Sea oil had been a ‘huge part of the UK economy for decades now’ and contracts already signed for work in the industry ‘should not just be ripped up’.
He told reporters: ‘We recognise that and there has got to be a smooth and sensible transition. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t massive opportunities to increase the use of green technology.’
Pressed on whether he would set a deadline for ending fossil fuel extraction, Mr Johnson said: ‘Look at what we’ve done already. We’ve transitioned away from coal in my lifetime.
‘Thanks to Margaret Thatcher, who closed so many coal mines across the country, we had a big early start and we’re now moving rapidly away from coal altogether.’
The PM reportedly laughed after making the comment, telling reporters: ‘I thought that would get you going.’
Boris Johnson sparked fury yesterday after he claimed Britain’s transition to green energy had benefitted from a ‘big early start’ thanks to Margaret Thatcher closing coal mines in the 1980s. The PM is pictured today at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
Downing Street said this afternoon that the PM ‘recognises the huge impact and pain closing coal mines had in communities across the UK’
His comments are expected to cause uproar in the old Red Wall mining communities the Tories have won over in recent election, where bitter strikes were held during Ms Thatcher’s time in office in the mid-1980s
Margaret Thatcher, pictured in 1983, was hailed by Mr Johnson for providing a ‘big early start’ on moving to green energy
Demonstrators at Fraserburgh harbour in Aberdeen, following Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s visit to the Moray Offshore Windfarm East
Bitter conflict that split families and let to the decimation of coal
Margaret Thatcher’s decimation of the UK coal industry in the 1980s remains one of her most controversial actions in a decade in power.
Seen by Labour and its supporters as a direct attack on its heartlands, it came to a head in March 1984 with the miners strike.
It was only the latest in a series of strikes by those who went underground for the hazardous work, but it was the biggest, bitterest, and the last.
It started when when National Coal Board chairman, Sir Ian MacGregor, announced that four million tonnes of capacity was to be taken out of the publicly-owned industry, leading to a loss of 20,000 jobs across the North of England, Scotland and Wales.
For many pit towns, this meant they would lose their only major source of employment.
On March 12, 1984, the strike went national, with National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) president, Arthur Scargill, calling for NUM members in all coal fields to down tools.
It was one of the most bitter industrial disputes in the nation’s history and a key part of Margaret Thatcher’s legacy as prime minister.
Within a week, most of the country’s 183,000 miners had downed tools and a daily routine was established in many coal towns, of miners picketing outside collieries.
The protests were often violent, with large numbers of police sent in to restrain picketers, with an estimated 20,000 people injured or admitted to hospital.
During the course of the strike, three men were killed – two on the picket lines and a taxi-driver who was driving a coal miner, who had crossed the picket lines, to work.
Families and communities were riven with division over the dispute and torn apart by the poverty brought about by a year of downed tools.
Scargill, regarded as both a hero and a villain, warned that the government had a long-term plan to destroy the industry, closing more than 70 pits across the country.
The government denied these claims at the time but Cabinet papers released in 2014, under the 30-year rule, indicated that MacGregor, who died in 1998, did wish to close 75 pits over three years.
The strike was ultimately unsuccessful, with miners returning to work in early 1985 due to financial hardship.
The industry was privatised in 1994, by which point there were just 15 deep mines left in operation.
Many of the affected towns are still struggling to recover today.
The fossil fuel has been gradually phased out of use in UK power stations and in May last year the National Grid set a new record by going more 18 days without using coal-sourced power.
Ms Thatcher’s time in Number 10 Downing Street included the bitter miners’ strikes of the mid-1980s.
Tory MPs in ‘Red Wall’ seats have questioned the PM’s wisdom in referencing the pit closures which remain a contentious and emotive issue in former mining communities.
One Tory MP told The Times: ‘It is spitting in the face of communities that still haven’t recovered.
‘If you were at the Oxford student union in the 1980s you might have thought the miners strike was all jolly japes.
‘Boris’s success is that people think he’s one of them. This shows he’s not.’
A Tory MP who represents a former mining area said: ‘It’s not really the smartest thing to say is it? It’s also not right.’
Another Tory MP told The Telegraph: ‘One could potentially look back in a few years on this as his Ratner moment.’
Downing Street attempted to sooth the situation at lunchtime.
Asked if Mr Johnson regretted making the remark, the PM’s Official Spokesman said: ‘The Prime Minister recognises the huge impact and pain closing coal mines had in communities across the UK.
‘This Government has an ambitious plan to tackle the critical issue of climate change which includes reducing reliance on coal and other non-renewable energy sources and during the visit the Prime Minister pointed to the huge progress already made in the UK, transitioning away from coal towards cleaner forms of energy.’
Asked if the PM will apologise, the spokesman repeated: ‘The Prime Minister recognises the huge impact and pain closing coal mines had in communities across the UK.’
The backlash from Mr Johnson’s political opponents continued this morning as Labour First Minister of Wales Mark Drakeford labelled the remark ‘crass and offensive’.
He told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme: ‘I’m afraid that those remarks are both crass and offensive.
‘The damage done to Welsh coal mining areas 30 years ago was incalculable and here we are 30 years later the Tories are still celebrating what they did.’
Labour’s shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy had said the comments were ‘shameful’ and ‘reveal the Conservative party’s utter disregard for the communities still scarred by Thatcher’s closure of the mines and failure to deliver good new jobs in their place’.
She said: ‘Without investment in good, green jobs as we move away from fossil fuels, the Conservatives risk repeating the mistakes of the past. It is vital that the green transition is a fair transition. The Prime Minister should apologise.’
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer added: ‘Boris Johnson’s shameful praising of Margaret Thatcher’s closure of the coal mines, brushing off the devastating impact on those communities with a laugh, shows just how out of touch he is with working people.’
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was also critical of Mr Johnson’s comment.
She wrote on Twitter: ‘Lives & communities in Scotland were utterly devastated by Thatcher’s destruction of the coal industry (which had zero to do with any concern she had for the planet).
‘To treat that as something to laugh about is crass & deeply insensitive to that reality.’
Mr Johnson made the comment as he banged the drum ahead of the COP26 climate change summit which is due to be held in Glasgow in November.
He said tackling climate change – limiting temperature rises to below 1.5 degrees under the terms of the Paris climate deal – was ‘going to be a tough ambition, this is a difficult thing to achieve’.
But he urged other world leaders to rise to that challenge, as he said: ‘What we won’t do, we will not reduce the level of our ambition for Cop, in order to set the target, an ambition that we know we can meet.
‘I’m going to be as ambitious as possible for Cop26 in Glasgow. I want the world to recognise the extent of the challenge, and I want everybody to try to rise to meet it in the way that I just set out with those ambitions.
‘We must, must, must be as ambitious and as tough as possible and that’s what we’re going to do.’
A target of phasing out coal power worldwide by 2040 was ‘doable’, Mr Johnson said.
‘What we are saying to the whole world, as we come forward to Cop in November, we want the whole world to move away from hydrocarbons.
‘We are setting a deadline for the end of coal, we want everybody to give up coal by 2040, that’s one of the targets we are setting at the Cop summit to happen in Glasgow.’
Sir Keir accused Mr Johnson of delivering ‘soundbites’ instead of action on the issue as he also visited Scotland.
He said: ‘We’ve got a UK Prime Minister who bundles around with a cabaret of soundbites, with targets about climate change but doesn’t put in place the action.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson onboard the Esvagt Alba during a visit to the Moray Offshore Windfarm East, off the Aberdeenshire coast
‘We all know that hydrogen and wind are part of the future, we haven’t got an industrial strategy, we haven’t got a hydrogen strategy.
‘Get your head out of the sand, stop the soundbites, let’s have some action.’
Sir Keir has called for ‘rapid green investment’ across the UK as new figures reveal more than 75,000 green jobs have been lost over the past five years.
The Labour leader said the UK had to ‘lead by example’ on the climate crisis and invest more in jobs in renewable energy and technology via a ‘Green New Deal’.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics cited by Labour show a loss of 33,800 ‘direct’ jobs and a further 41,400 jobs in the supply chain for low-carbon and renewable sectors between 2014 and 2019.
This includes thousands of fewer jobs in solar power, onshore wind, renewable electricity and bioenergy.
Sir Keir said: ‘Tackling the climate crisis must be at the heart of everything we do. We are at a critical moment. In less than 100 days, Cop26 will be over and our chance to keep the planet’s warming below 1.5 degrees will have either been grasped or abandoned.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Mr Johnson’s coal mine remark was ‘deeply insensitive’
Sir Keir Starmer also criticised Mr Johnson and said the comment ‘shows just how out of touch he is with working people’
‘The UK must rise to this moment and lead by example. That means rapid action to create good, green jobs across the country. And it means a proper strategy to buy, make and sell more in Britain, to create good, unionised jobs in clean energy and through supply chains.
He added: ‘Nobody here in the UK can afford for this issue to be yet another example of Boris Johnson bluster. We need real action, now. It is time for a Green New Deal.’
The Labour leader also criticised the Scottish Government’s record on green jobs, claiming the SNP ‘broke its pledge to create 130,000 green jobs by 2020’.
A Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy spokesman said: ‘As we build back better and greener from the pandemic, this Government is firmly committed to seizing the economic opportunities presented by the transition to a green economy.
‘The data from 2019 and 2014 cannot be compared as there was a change in how the survey was conducted. In fact, ONS has concluded that the low-carbon and renewable energy economy has remained stable.’
