UK's Energy Security Under Threat!

Right, so GB Energy, whilst not the only issue I’m highlighting in this video we’ve heard a lot about that haven’t we? It’s the one Labour love to crow about, the one that was in their manifesto. Presented to us as a nationalised panacea to all of our energy problems, many people still believing it will supply energy to us at a lower rate and outcompete all the other energy companies, lowering our bills and taking back control of our energy. Energy security and no more threats from Putin, even though his influence on our energy was actually pretty minimal, he was a far bigger issue for the continent. The trouble is GB Energy is nothing at all as it has often been presented, it won’t produce any energy at all and it’s not even going to be financed for the most part by the public purse, it is little more than a quango to attract private investment to deliver the projects promised and if that doesn’t materialise, it will completely fail. Meanwhile, back in fossil fuel land and in news you’ll have seen scant coverage about, Labour has just sold off the last remaining bit of the publicly owned gas network to the company that happened to already own all the rest of it, giving one foreign company – a bank at that - a complete monopoly over our gas infrastructure. Starmer is not the answer to our energy security, he’s a massive threat to it.
Right, so energy security. After the last several years of seeing our bills soar, of the government handing out large subsidies to the energy companies, rather than legislating them under control, which they could do, many of them for example exploit our own gas and oil fields on very favourable terms, it seemed that this was a pretty safe territory for Labour to win support by declaring they’d have none of this if they were in government, despite Starmer himself undermining that by declaring he wouldn’t cancel new gas and oil licences that Rishi Sunak created. But now that Labour and Starmer are in power, they’ve got to prove their credentials on that.
Well, it’s got off to a shaky start hasn’t it? As soon as GB Energy was dug into, it readily turned out it wouldn’t be producing any energy at all, and let’s face it, it was already being questioned heavily, when it was announced it wouldn’t be a supplier to us, but to energy distributors and generators, the same companies already scalping us. In point of fact therefore, cheaper energy was it seemed to be produced wholesale for them, to make even larger profit margins on. That is where some of Labour’s supposed growth will come from, even though there was scant sign they’d be taxed any more than the Tories taxed them, which amounted to minimal mates rates, or, not at all in exchange for their investment in the aforementioned oil and gas fields we already own. It is negligent to not use our money to invest in our country, but the Tories wouldn’t do it, kissing backside to the private sector and so GB Energy seems to show Labour under Starmer will be no different either.
GB Energy is supposedly this quango therefore, a government investment body basically, where we put some £8.3bn of seed money in to convince the private sector to come and invest in the green energy infrastructure the country needs, which Labour hopes will mean for every £1 of public money they put in, the private sector will put in £3. Who will own what gets produced in which case? Who will own the new onshore windfarms? Who will employ the supposed 68,000 people in Scotland who would gain employment off the back of all of this, GB Energy based in Scotland as Starmer promised in his big pitch to the Scottish people who subsequently voted in 37 Labour MPs across the 57 parliamentary seats and who have loyally voted as Starmer directed. Seems like you got scammed guys.
Where the transference to green energy is of course necessary, by still not owning it in effect, the refusal to renationalise our energy, a pledge Starmer was elected Labour leader to deliver, but of course he lied about, we leave ourselves open to be scalped for profits to fill shareholders pockets yet again. Will such profits be properly taxed? Well that would remain to be seen. The excuse inevitably will be that they need to keep as much money as possible to keep on investing in better renewables, the research and development will not end any more than the search for new oil and gas fields does now. There is zero sign investors would be taxed any more favourably for the exchequer over renewable energy than over oil and gas today. We get scammed, we pay more than we should, they get off taxation, economic benefit remains minimal. Capitalism in a nutshell and as for energy security, well we’re beholden to the whims of those owning the infrastructure. And if you think this a flight of fancy, that Labour are different, that they won’t go down this same road the Tories did, then I hate to break it to you, but Starmer already has and if you really don’t think he’s continuity Tory still, then you really do need to hear this.
In January of 2023, the national Grid, under the Tories completed the sell off of 60% of the UK’s 7000 kilometres of gas network pipeline. Flogging the family silver as they always do when in power, if you thought there wasn’t much left to sell then they certainly proved they went looking, they certainly didn’t step in to protect our gas infrastructure here. For as much as you can pick and choose, albeit to a much lesser extent than you could before, your gas supplier, the gas infrastructure, the pipes, the meters and all the other physical paraphernalia that connect you to the gas network, was owned by the public, under the name of National Gas. Anyway, 60% of National Gas itself effectively got flogged off under the Tories for £4.2bn to Macquarie, an Australian-Canadian joint investment consortium. If you’ve heard of Macquarie already, you’ll be groaning inwardly I’m sure, if you haven’t I’ll come onto that in a moment. Now I’m sure it hasn’t escaped you that this sell off would have been going on whilst our energy bills were still stupidly high due to the actions of private companies exploiting our privatised energy sector, but the National Grid went on to sell Macquarie a further 20% of National Gas in July of last year for a further £700m, leaving us with just 20% of National Gas. Well not any more. Under Starmer’s Labour, the National Grid just sold Macquarie the last remaining 20%, so they now own 100% of our gas infrastructure. An Australian-Canadian Conglomerate, owns all of our gas pipeline and associated odds and sods.
Now, just to clarify matters here, strictly speaking the sales were all transacted between Macquarie and the National Grid who owned National Gas. You might think we still own the National Grid, why did our government’s not step in, but actually we never have owned it, from the moment the National Grid was created in 1990, it was floated on the stock exchange and one of it’s biggest investors today is notorious bank Black Rock, which owns nearly 10% of it, so given this knowledge, perhaps it’s no surprise the National Grid has sold off National Gas to Macquarie in its entirety, our infrastructure might be essential to us, but it’s just business, just an investment to be bought and sold to the corporations, however the government can still step in, for example in 2022, before the Macquarie sales began, the Tories moved to renationalise part of the National Grid to ensure the lights would be kept on via a new public body called the Future Systems Operator, due to begin this year, but with the change in government, things have shifted slightly, this responsibility, in an announcement just this morning actually, is according to Ofgem going to be the remit of a company called Elexon, which is itself owned by…the National Grid. The claim is they are independent from the parent group but that’ll need to be seen to be believed. Labour overseeing the complete acquisition of our gas pipeline infrastructure though, certainly points to them being continuity Tory on one hand, but when they are complaining about the state of our rivers and other watercourses and making a lot of noise, for example over the Thames Water debacle as a sign of what happens when private corporations take control of essential infrastructure, which inevitably lead to public money being needed to bail them out, well, that brings us conveniently back to Macquarie, as this excerpt from The Canary explains:
‘The Australian bank that has been dubbed the “vampire kangaroo” by its critics has become the sole owner of Britain’s gas pipeline network after buying the remaining stake it did not already own.
A consortium led by Macquarie Asset Management has bought the remaining 20% holding in National Gas for about £700 million in a deal with National Grid.
Why, might you ask, has Macquarie been dubbed the “vampire kangaroo”? Take a look at Thames Water and you’ll understand why.
The Financial Times wrote:
Macquarie is the biggest private sector owner of infrastructure assets in the world and one of the largest in the UK, with stakes in everything from wind farms to airports and telecoms networks.
It is best known for its former ownership of crisis-hit Thames Water…
Macquarie’s ownership of Thames Water has been widely criticised after the utility’s debt increased from £3.4bn in 2006, when it bought into the business, to £10.8bn when it sold its final stake in 2017, according to Financial Times research.
About £2.7bn was taken out in dividends and £2.2bn in loans during that period, although Macquarie has said it spent £11bn from customer bills on infrastructure.’
Yeah, Macquarie are called blood-sucking vampires, because they bleed services dry and then dump them on someone else. They screwed Thames Water over, making it one of the biggest infrastructure crises the incoming Labour government was tasked to deal with, upon which point Starmer promptly went to Ukraine instead, and now, on Starmer’s watch, they can do the same to the provision of gas supply to all of our homes and if you think that isn’t true, the Canary also expanded on that point too:
‘National Gas runs the main pipelines across the UK. But as the Financial Times noted, gas gets to our homes via smaller networks of pipes that are run by other companies. Guess who owns some of these?
Macquarie already owns a stake in Cadent — which runs half of the eight local gas distribution networks — but has been trying to cut its position, joining forces with another shareholder to sell a combined £1.3bn stake in the company.
It is understood that the sale is part of a “standard portfolio rebalancing” and that Macquarie will still retain a sizeable 20 per cent stake in Cadent, which provides gas to 11mn homes and businesses in England.
So, Macquarie will not only own the whole of the UK’s main gas pipes, but will also own a bit chunk of the smaller pipes too.’
How much might our gas supply be affected by more portfolio rebalancing and who is getting a chance to buy into the sale of Macquarie acquisitions later on?
The question of whether we have a say in any of this as far as I’m concerned is a moot point. This was our property, it was stolen by the Tories, Thatcherism is legalised state theft of property that belongs to all of us and is meant to work in our interests. Legislate it all back under state control, frankly without that, we don’t have energy security and I hope that is becoming more and more obvious to more and more people, and not just in relation to energy either, but water, steel and everything else Thatcher began the theft of. Honestly any government refusing to do this, as Starmer’s lot are, are with those profiting from that decades old theft and against all of us.
For more details on the state of Thames Water and the story behind that check out this video recommendation here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.