LEADING progressive economists have written to a top Labour-linked union boss to back Ed Miliband for chancellor after she said he would be a “noose around the neck” of the North Sea.
The Energy Secretary, and onetime Labour leader, is among those Andy Burnham is thought to be considering installing at the Exchequer if he becomes prime minister.
But Miliband is a controversial figure, with Unite general secretary Sharon Graham blasting his focus on the environment earlier this week.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, the union leader said his commitment would strangle job creation in the declining oil and gas sector.
She added: “Ed only seems to be interested in one side of the equation, rushing Britain to net zero with almost no thought for jobs, skills and national security.”
Unite, as well as another of Labour’s big union backers the GMB, are in favour of new oil and gas licences. Miliband has banned licences for exploration of new North Sea oil and gas but extraction is ongoing.
In an open letter, first reported in The Guardian, academics including Kate Pickett, the author of The Spirit Level; Danny Dorling, a geographer; Daniela Gabor, a professor of economics at Soas University of London; and James Meadway from Verdant, a thinktank, urged Graham to withdraw the remarks.
he climate transition is one of the largest drivers of industrial job creation in the UK economy. The net zero economy generates output worth over £100 billion and employs over a million workers. As the sector expands, these numbers will grow further. The workers driving the green transition need union representation, good wages and champions in government.”
They added: “There is no alternative to the green transition. The effects of climate change are with us now. Miliband is right to oppose further expansion of North Sea oil and gas.”
Other signatories include Howard Reed, the director of Landman Economics; Ann Pettifor, an author and campaigner; and Jo Michell, a professor of economics at the University of the West of England.
The SNP have said that Miliband must not become chancellor and that if Burnham appointed him to the role, it would “prove to people in Aberdeen and across Scotland that he is just another Westminster politician intent on killing off Scotland’s world class energy industry”.
Kirsty Blackman, the MP for Aberdeen North, said: “On Ed Miliband’s watch, 1000 energy jobs a month have been lost in Aberdeen and across Scotland. Now Andy Burnham looks set to reward him for his attempts to put Scotland’s energy workers out of their jobs by making him chancellor and giving him control over the vast revenue that Westminster draws from Scotland’s resources.
“Ed Miliband has destroyed 1000 energy jobs a month and the Labour Party looks set to make him chancellor. That’s the Westminster way – control of our energy and contempt for our workers.
“The promotion of Miliband to the Treasury would be the ultimate betrayal of the energy workers of Aberdeen who Miliband has been hellbent on putting out of work, but it would also be typical of a UK system that has only ever treated Scotland’s energy industry as a cash cow for the Treasury in London.”
Miliband has previously defended his commitment to net zero, using a speech at London Climate Week on Tuesday to claim: “The UK’s clean economy is booming.”
The former Labour leader, who is seen as being further to the left than many in Keir Starmer’s Cabinet, is among those being talked about as a potential future chancellor.
Other names in the mix include Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, who was a Treasury minister in the last Labour government and John Healey, the former defence secretary who quit over funding for the military.
