Trump Was Right to Skewer Starmer Over Britain's "Windmills Scam"

The meeting was a cringefest worthy of The Office.

This week, Keir Starmer and Donald Trump met at the US President’s golf resort in Turnberry, Scotland. During the televised discussion, a squirming Starmer was put in his place several times by the President’s forthright comments on a number of subjects, including the closure of North Sea oil and gas operations and free speech. Most notably, Trump called wind power a "scam", which was no longer welcome in the USA. Like a scene from The Office, it was as uncomfortable to watch as it must have been for Starmer, who, in the face of the onslaught, looked for all the world like a David Brent figure. Struggling to explain his own position without inducing extreme cringe, but at the same time as signalling his lack of confidence, the PM made clear his inability to understand the criticism in any seriousness.

Trump’s comments that wind farms are ugly, environmentally destructive and expensive need little rehearsal. These are the criticisms of wind power that have been made by critics for the two decades that the UK has been subsidising them. In the 2000s, the claim was that these seemingly nascent technologies needed a 'kickstart' to bring them to the maturity of conventional energy technologies. Yet decades on, as has been reported here recently, the latest auction for renewable energy contracts shows that the costs are, as predicted decades ago, still rising, as are energy bills.