Drill, Baby, Drill

Richard Tice has dusted off the old shale gas fantasy and is waving it around as if he’s discovered El Dorado under Lancashire. He calls it “grossly financially negligent to a criminal degree” to leave shale in the ground. Strong words. But words are all it is. Britain has been down this road before. Cameron promised a shale boom. Truss tried to force it through. Both ended in bans, protests and earthquakes.

Tice now wants to revive the zombie with his slogan “drill, baby, drill”. It sounds like energy policy written on the back of a beer mat. Even if you got the stuff out, it would not make gas bills cheaper. The geology is difficult, the extraction expensive, and imports will always undercut it. The idea that Britain will become Texas with hedgerows is absurd.

The jobs bribe is being dangled again. Egdon Resources claim 250,000 jobs and a £140bn windfall. Deloitte have apparently signed it off, but no one is allowed to see the report. When numbers are hidden, it usually means they don’t stand up to scrutiny. Job creation is the flimsiest defence of all. Asbestos once created jobs for whole towns – until the deaths started mounting. A toxic legacy, still costing billions to clean up. Fracking has the same stink of short-term gain and long-term regret.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is racing towards clean energy. Labour talks about a 2030 grid powered by renewables. Reform wants to lash us to an idea that failed ten years ago. It is like turning up at a Formula E race in a Marina and insisting it is the future.

Fracking in Britain has already been tried, tested and rejected. What Tice is selling isn’t a plan – it is a gimmick. A showy promise to sound tough while ignoring the obvious. It won’t cut bills. It won’t provide security. It won’t last longer than the first tremor under a terraced street. It will just give Reform UK another headline while the cracks run through the brickwork.

And if it all sounds familiar, it should. Across the Atlantic Trump is bellowing the same “drill” mantra while the world moves on. Reform aren’t offering British answers – they’re importing American slogans and hoping no one notices the cracks beneath their feet.

And we don’t have to look far to see why Reform is flogging this dead horse. Follow the money. Since 2019, more than two million quid of their funding has come from fossil fuel investors and climate change deniers. Forty percent of their 2024 war chest was bankrolled by people with their fortunes tied to oil, gas and mining. When your donors are betting against the planet, you don’t get to call it patriotism. You’re just doing their bidding, while the rest of us are left with the cracks in the walls and the clean-up bill.