UK vision for clean energy to collide with Trump’s fossil fuel frenzy
Two worlds will collide in London today as the UK and the US lobby other countries with very different visions for the future of energy security.
Labour will tell ministers from 60 countries gathered for its Energy Security Summit that the transition from fossil fuels to clean power will make energy more secure because it’s produced at home – as well as being a win for the climate.
The stakes are high: just the small matter of stabilising the climate for years to come, as well as our energy bills.
But hopes for the summit are modest, due to, unsurprisingly, Donald Trump.
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The US president peddles a very different view of energy security: he wants to “drill baby drill” for as much oil and gas as possible and pull America out of the global climate fight.
He isn’t sending his energy secretary Chris Wright to attend, but acting assistant secretary Tommy Joyce.
The more junior official will still espouse Trump’s vision to “unleash US energy dominance”, which basically means keeping the world hooked on US fossil fuels – good news for the world’s biggest oil and gas producer.
This idea that the energy transition threatens energy security is taking root in the UK’s Reform party, but is at odds with the view of the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, who is also attending, and the United Nations.
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No China
The UK government wants to work with America on a trade deal and some parts of the energy industry, like nuclear power.
But underneath it will be hoping that the 60 other countries attending the summit will hold the line on ditching fossil fuels as fast as possible and boosting clean tech supply.
That’s even more urgent as the UK tries to reduce its reliance on China, which currently dominates manufacturing of clean power infrastructure like solar panels and critical minerals.
That’s also why the prime minister is today announcing £300m to help build wind turbines in the UK to reduce imports.
But China itself is not attending – good news for rival America but a setback for the summit, given China’s outsized role in the clean industries of the future.
The elephant in the room
Then there’s the real elephant in the room, which is Trump’s erratic tariffs and trade wars. No one knows how this will play out in the extremely complicated energy sector.
Trump has ordered Europe to buy more of its liquefied natural gas as a way to avoid tariffs. Europe needs it: it’s running low on storage and Russian pipeline supplies are dwindling.
But on the flipside, his policies could paradoxically hurt both Europe’s gas demand and America’s gas producers, caught between fears of a recession and shaky global demand.
The UK’s reputation as a climate saint is not unblemished though, as it expands airports and moots further North Sea oil and gas after all.
All this complexity and uncertainty forms the backdrop for the summit. Little concrete is expected to come from it – though the UK may use it to court investment.
Other than that, we can expect little more than a paper summary on what energy security really means.
But this is all about a fight for the narrative.
And so if the IEA and other countries hold the line on clean power meaning energy security, the UK government will count that as a win.
The UK-US trade deal has been signed and is “done”, US President Donald Trump has said as he met Sir Keir Starmer at the G7 summit.
The US president told reporters in Canada: “We signed it, and it’s done. It’s a fair deal for both. It’ll produce a lot of jobs, a lot of income.”
Sir Keir said the document “implements” the deal to cut tariffs on cars and aerospace, describing it as a “really important agreement”.
“So this is a very good day for both of our countries – a real sign of strength,” the prime minister added.
Mr Trump added that the UK was “very well protected” against any future tariffs, saying: “You know why? Because I like them”.
However, he did not say whether levies on British steel exports to the US would be set to 0%, saying “we’re gonna let you have that information in a little while”.
Mr Trump also praised Sir Keir as a “great” prime minister, adding: “We’ve been talking about this deal for six years, and he’s done what they haven’t been able to do.”
He added: “We’re very longtime partners and allies and friends and we’ve become friends in a short period of time.
“He’s slightly more liberal than me to put it mildly… but we get along.”
Sir Keir added that “we make it work”.
As the pair exited a mountain lodge in the Canadian Rockies where the summit is being held, Mr Trump held up a physical copy of the trade agreement to show reporters.
Several leaves of paper fell from the binding, and Sir Keir quickly stooped to pick them up, saying: “A very important document.”
Sir Keir Starmer picks up paper from the UK-US trade deal after Donald Trump dropped it at the G7 summit. Pic: Reuters
The US president also appeared to mistakenly refer to a “trade agreement with the European Union” at one point as he stood alongside the British prime minister.
Mr Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on countries in April. At the time, he announced 10% “reciprocal” rates on all UK exports – as well as separately announced 25% levies on cars and steel.
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In a joint televised phone call in May, Sir Keir and Mr Trump announced the UK and US had agreed on a trade deal – but added the details were being finalised.
Ahead of the G7 summit, the prime minister said he would meet Mr Trump for “one-on-one” talks, and added the agreement “really matters for the vital sectors that are safeguarded under our deal, and we’ve got to implement that”.
Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.
Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.
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The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.
In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.
The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.
Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.
Education Secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.
“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’
“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…
“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”
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Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.
A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.
One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.
There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.
Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.
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Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.
He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”
He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.
Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.
“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.
The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.
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