Environment Monday - Rishi Sunak is so scared of Reform that he won't even boast about his green successes

Saturday was an absolutely monumental day in the industrial history of the UK. In any other circumstances, the Prime Minister would be shouting about it from the rooftops, but our Prime Minister is so scared of the Reform vote and 'appearing Woke' that there are only a few mentions of this from rail enthusiasts. What am I talking about? This...

28th June 2024 and the final coal train to Ratcliffe PS(last coal train in the UK)headed by 66781(now named Ratcliffe Power Station)pulls out of Toton Yard and heads for its destination in the background @GBRailfreight @railcamlive @FreightmasterUK @Freightonrail @Clinnick1 @RAIL pic.twitter.com/He0OSs8kH3

— Darren Wetherall (@MrDeltic15) June 29, 2024

That's right. The last ever coal train has run in the UK. When Ratcliffe Power Station burns it all, the power station will shut and that will be the end of coal fired power generation in the UK. This has been a long standing policy of the UK governments, both Tory and Labour and Sunak has achieved it just before the election. If it was the Greens that Sunak felt were the threat, this would be front page news, but as he's more scared of Reform, it's been buried.

I've seen all manner of rather daft comments saying we should have maintained coal fired power stations for days when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. The thing is that coal fired electricity is not an on demand source. You have to keep the furnaces hot at all times. For sporadic demand, gas stations are far more sensible. They can be sparked up at a second's notice. You can check where our energy is coming from in realtime today by clicking here www.energydashboard.co.uk/live

What does concern me is that nearly a quarter of our energy is imported. It doesn't say how it's generated or how green it is. If any of this is coal driven, I personally would prefer it to be UK coal from UK mines. I do not believe the UK should be dependent on imported energy, which we clearly are. If all of this was from green sources on long term contracts, I would be less bothered, but as the purple export line is fairly solid, I suspect that it is either nuclear, gas or coal. We need an energy plan that ensures we generate this in the UK and that we generate it sustainably. That is the secret to not having massive energy bills.

It is clear to me that Rishi Sunak is scared to death of his own shadow. Since 2010, the Tories have actually had a few sensible ideas and good initiatives, but they seem to have rowed back from all of them. When the last fourteen years are picked over, things such as this and the equal marriage act of 2014 will be looked back on as successful implementations of sensible policy. It will also be noted that Rishi Sunak made a name for himself peddling furiously right, only for the right to turn around and eat him. I do wonder whether if Reform win, whether the train in the tweet at the top may not actually turn out to be the last coal train in the UK.