Kemi demands Andy Burnham stop bowing to 'Net Zero zealots' like Ed Miliband and back North Sea oil and gas drilling

By TOM GORDON, SCOTTISH DAILY MAIL DEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR Published: 21:03, 16 July 2026 | Updated: 21:03, 16 July 2026 Kemi Badenoch has demanded Andy Burnham stop bowing to ‘Net Zero zealots’ like Ed Miliband and back oil and gas drilling in the North Sea. After a roundtable discussion with industry leaders near Aberdeen, the Conservative leader said the incoming Prime Minister must not give in on those ‘hell bent’ on opposing new fields. Looming decisions on whether to approve the game-changing Rosebank and Jackdaw projects would be an early ‘litmus test’ for his administration, she said. Labour’s policy is to oppose new oil and gas drilling licences to help protect the climate. Mrs Badenoch was speaking at NHV Helicopters in Dyce, near Aberdeen, which specialises in flying to and from offshore energy operations. It was a swift return to the North East after her party’s historic win in the Aberdeen South byelection last month, which the Tories made into a referendum on North Sea jobs. Kemi Badenoch was back in Aberdeen, meeting with industry leaders and being shown how to work a helicopter Accompanied by new MP Douglas Lumsden, she said: ‘If Andy Burnham has any common sense he will allow drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea. Perhaps if Keir Starmer had overruled Ed Miliband and done the right thing he might be in the job today.’ She urged Mr Burnham, who formally replaces Sir Keir as PM on Monday, to sack Mr Miliband as energy secretary as part of a day one reshuffle and drop the licence ban. She said: ’It would send a signal to business, to the oil and gas sector and to the country that Andy Burnham was actually serious about growth. Ed Miliband’s policies are killing growth.’ But she warned many other Labour MPs were equally blinkered in their pursuit of Net Zero targets, despite lower domestic production leading to more polluting imports. ‘Unfortunately, they still have the same Labour MPs. Some of them are hell-bent on this, but quite a lot of them don’t really know what to do. They just follow and go with the herd. ‘If you have a strong leader, who’s got some common sense, he should be able to deal with it. Andy Burnham can show us how strong he is by allowing those new oil and gas licences. ‘If he’s just going to carry on as Keir Starmer did, then what’s the point of him being there?’ Asked if Mr Burnham must stop listening to ‘Net Zero zealots’, she said: ‘Yes, he should. ‘We all want to fix the climate change issue. We want a better environment. ‘But these net zero plans are not working. We have a lower carbon footprint by drilling here than by importing oil and gas from other places. So we are actually making the environmental problem worse. ‘But because we’re just running around saying net zero all the time, we’re congratulating ourselves for actually making climate change worse. ‘I don’t think they understand that, but Conservatives do. That’s why we want to get Britain drilling, allow new licences, lift the energy profits levy.’ A Government regulator has just opened a public consultation on the Rosebank oil and Jackdaw oil fields which could jointly supply 10 per cent of UK needs if approved. Given consent before the general election, they were delayed by legal action and more scrutiny, and a final decision on a go-ahead ultimately lies with the energy secretary. Asked if they would be the first litmus test on oil and gas for a Bunham Government, Mrs Badenoch said: ‘Yes. They will be about whether this man is serious about growth or not. ‘There is £4 billion of tax revenue that’s sitting in the North Sea from Jackdaw and Rosebank alone in this parliament. How can you say no to that? It doesn’t make any sense to me.’ Mrs Badenoch also damned the SNP’s new private jet tax, while finance secretary Jenny Gilruth plans to start in 2028, with the charges set out later this year. The tax, which could cost firms £30 million a year, was promoted by the Scottish Greens. Mrs Badenoch said it showed the SNP were ‘a party that’s run out of ideas’. She said: ‘Where are the growth policies? Where are the things that are going to generate an income for Scotland? They don’t know what to do. ‘So they keep going back to people saying, “We’ll tax this. We’ll tax that.” ‘Many people assume that private jets are just something fanciful that very wealthy people have. Actually, they can be very essential for a lot of unusual businesses where you have to fly to places that don’t have airports, fly to places where it’s impossible to to get a connection. ‘If you tax those into the ground, then you lose another type of business. ‘I want to see business thrive, not just being taxed endlessly. ‘Of course we need to tax in order to get money for public services. But if you tax the wrong things, or tax too much or tax in the wrong way, and you actually kill growth and you get less money. I don’t think that the SNP or the Greens understand that, but we do.’ Among those taking part in the round table were Offshore Energies UK, Adura, which is behind Rosebank and Jackdaw, Well-Safe, Baker Hughes and Harbour Energy. Mrs Badenoch said she had returned to Aberdeen because she wanted local people to know that her party would ‘keep championing their issues’. She said it was her second most visited city after London, adding: ‘That is because I care about what happens here. ‘Every time I come to Aberdeen people tell me it is not the city it once was. ‘And I want to champion these people, I want them to know I care about them and their jobs. ‘It’s not just at election time we turn up, we are here all the time, that is because we care about the city, we care about the jobs, we care about the livelihoods.’