Month: April 2026

Employees at ESPN, a brand synonymous with sports broadcasting for nearly five decades, face an uncertain future.

According to John Ourand of Puck, an “unexpected revenue dip” will trigger imminent layoffs at ESPN.

“I can now confirm that another round [of layoffs] is approaching,” Ourand wrote.

In June 2023, ESPN announced that it had parted ways with NFL reporter Suzy Kolber, NFL draft analyst Todd McShay, and nearly two dozen other familiar faces.

Unlike its most recent purge, this time, the network will not slash on-air talent.

“I’m told the number will land near 30, with cuts expected in the coming weeks, primarily in off-camera departments,” Ourand added.

Though technically “unexpected,” the recent “revenue dip” did occur at least partly due to ESPN’s own actions.

Last fall, the network found itself in what Ourand called a “brutal carriage dispute” with YouTube TV. As a result, ESPN “went dark on the platform right in the middle of football season.”

In the heady days of the late-20th and early-21st centuries, when ESPN enjoyed a virtual monopoly on cable-sports programming, the network would have had considerable leverage over nearly any negotiating partner.

Even today, ESPN’s rights to college football and the NFL’s “Monday Night Football” make it a formidable name in broadcasting.

Nonetheless, times have changed.

“ESPN has shed 40 percent of its cable and satellite subscribers over the past decade, declining from 100 million households to 60 million,” Ourand wrote.

Moreover, the NFL’s ever-expanding popularity means that any acquiring network will pay handsomely for the next “Monday Night Football” package.

Above all, however, ESPN found itself in a disadvantageous position relative to the digital juggernaut YouTube.

In this case, “YouTube TV had the juice — it was, after all, a privileged shingle of the world’s largest media company, YouTube, which itself was a shingle of Alphabet, a nearly $4 trillion market-cap colossus,” Ourand wrote.

As a result, ESPN went dark on YouTube TV for 15 days. Thus, subscribers lost out on two full weekends of marquee football games, both college and pro.

Disney, ESPN’s parent company, reported $100 million in losses due to that dispute with YouTube TV. Those losses at least partially account for the coming layoffs.

Of course, in recent years, ESPN has also embraced woke ideology. So has the NFL.

Looking forward, if the broadcasting giant hopes to avoid financial losses and another purge of employees, it will rely heavily on its relationship with the NFL, which includes full control of NFL Network for ESPN and a 10 percent equity stake in ESPN for the NFL.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

The post ESPN Set to Begin Layoffs Due to ‘Unexpected Revenue Dip’: Report appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

The post Moroccan Man Arrested After Axe Attack on Three Neighbors in Granada, Spain: “All Christians Must Die” appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

President Donald Trump said Monday that he withheld intelligence from Germany regarding an American strike against Iran because he didn’t trust the country’s leadership not to leak it.

Independent journalist and online personality Nick Sortor shared a clip of Trump discussing the issue on the social media site X.

“How about Germany telling us that, ‘Well, it’s not their war, we had nothing to do with it.’ They wanted me to go and tell them everything I was doing,” Trump said. “If I would have told them, they would have leaked it, and we wouldn’t have been nearly as successful.”

JUST IN: President Trump is LAMBASTING Europe for standing on the sidelines — especially after we REBUILT EUROPE after WWII

“To the victor goes the spoils!”

“We BUILT Germany! How about Germany telling us that, ‘well, it’s not their war, we had nothing to do with it.’

But… pic.twitter.com/1Cp03qlPLK

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) April 6, 2026

Mediaite also covered the comments from Trump’s Monday news conference and called the president’s words “a shocking accusation against Germany.” But is it really all that surprising?

Trump has continuously been critical of NATO, citing their pompous and contemptuous attitude toward America as offense number one.

He’s also called them out for abusing the United States’ benevolence, not paying their fair share when it comes to defense, and for having a short memory regarding the aftermath of World War II. And he’s right!

The U.S. didn’t demand land or money in exchange for all of the suffering caused by the Axis powers, and it didn’t demand reparations from European nations for all of the support we gave them.

Instead, we asked only for land to bury our dead and instituted the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after saving it from total destruction.

“When World War II ended in 1945, Europe lay in ruins: its cities were shattered; its economies were devastated; its people faced famine. In the two years after the war, the Soviet Union’s control of Eastern Europe and the vulnerability of Western European countries to Soviet expansionism heightened the sense of crisis,” according to the National Archives.

“Over the next four years, Congress appropriated $13.3 billion for European recovery,” the National Archives article explained. “This aid provided much needed capital and materials that enabled Europeans to rebuild the continent’s economy.”

When America called on those very same nations to assist in reopening the Strait of Hormuz back in March, to stabilize shipping and bring down oil prices, they curtly replied that it wasn’t their problem.

Lest we forget Trump’s tumultuous relationship with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the president is right not to trust them with sensitive information related to national security.

Furthermore, Europe’s values are not our values. We have shared roots, but are now on totally different paths when it comes to geopolitics.

Many European Union countries have encouraged the mass migration of Islamic refugees and potential terrorists into their biggest cities. They tend to empower weak leaders who love to bash America and have turned their backs on Christianity.

The European Union seeks to employ a global strategy when it comes to governance, whereas the United States prioritizes its own citizens and sovereignty, rejecting the false doctrine of one-world government.

Even the idea of scaling back the welfare state and government bureaucracy would be roundly rejected in European nations today, yet America is embracing it.

Certain European leaders even expressed dismay back in 2025 after Trump was able to reach a new trade agreement with the European Union.

Do these sound like the actions of an ally? It sounds more like a jealous older sibling who was surpassed, and has now chosen to be bitter rather than harmonious.

How many times must Europe disrespect the United States, refuse to help, and continue cashing foreign aid checks before America wakes up and cuts them off completely?

Various European leaders, and even certain citizens, look down on our way of life, yet they benefit from our hard-earned money in the form of taxpayer funding. They also received various freebies through the United Nations.

Guess who gives the most money to the United Nations? That’s right. The United States.

Trump knows all of this. That’s why he’s been pushing tariffs and restructuring trade deals.

If Europe insists on maintaining this adversarial attitude toward American interests, let’s see how far they get without our checkbook, and how long they last without our military might to protect them.

To quote Winston Churchill’s famous 1940 speech as Nazi Germany began advancing on the United Kingdom: “And even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

My oh my, how times have changed.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

The post Trump Says He Withheld Iran Strike Intel from Germany Because ‘They Would Have Leaked It’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Pope Leo XIV has rushed to condemn President Donald Trump for standing up to the bloodthirsty Iranian regime, just hours after Trump issued a stark ultimatum declaring that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Tehran failed to comply with U.S. demands.

As The Gateway Pundit reported yesterday, President Trump took to Truth Social and laid it all on the line:

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.

However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”

The post Pope Leo XIV BLASTS Trump’s Iran Warning as ‘UNACCEPTABLE’ (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

The Radical Left is in a total panic as President Trump moves to finally secure our nation’s broken and fraud-riddled election system!

New Jersey Democrats have fired off a letter demanding the United States Postal Service ignore the President’s executive order aimed at stopping non-citizen voting and cleaning up the mail-in ballot chaos that plagued our election.

The letter, led by far-left Rep. Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon), was signed by the entire New Jersey Democratic congressional delegation – including Senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim, and Reps. Frank Pallone, Donald Norcross, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Josh Gottheimer, Robert Menendez, LaMonica McIver, and Herbert Conaway.

These Democrats are outraged that Trump is finally doing what he promised: protecting the sacred right to vote for American citizens only.

As The Gateway Pundit reported last week when President Trump signed the landmark “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections” executive order on March 31, 2026, the measure directs the Department of Homeland Security to compile verified lists of eligible U.S. citizens, requires USPS to implement secure barcode tracking on mail-in ballots, and bars the Postal Service from delivering ballots to non-citizens. It also directs the DOJ to crack down hard on election officials who knowingly issue ballots to ineligible voters.

But to New Jersey Democrats, an unconstitutional “seizure” of power.

In their letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, the Dems whine that the executive order is “unlawful” and violates states’ rights under Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution. They demand USPS:

1. Refuse to implement any part of Trump’s order that “interferes” with their beloved mail-in ballot machine.
2. Publicly reaffirm “neutrality” (code for: keep delivering ballots no questions asked).
3. Coordinate only with state officials to protect their rigged system.
4. Report back to Congress on any compliance efforts.

The Democrats even quote their own “Voter Protection Initiative” from 2022 as proof their system works. Funny how that “protection” never seems to include checking whether voters are actually American citizens.

President Trump’s order is a direct response to years of documented vulnerabilities in mail-in voting, vulnerabilities Democrats have fought tooth and nail to preserve.

Their letter is nothing less than an open admission that they cannot win clean elections and will fight any attempt to verify citizenship or secure the ballots.

The post NJ Democrats Order USPS to IGNORE President Trump’s Election Integrity Mandate appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Mississippi has just become the latest red state to take immigration enforcement into its own hands.

Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves (R) is expected to sign Senate Bill 2114 (SB 2114), which has passed both chambers of the Mississippi Legislature and is currently heading to his desk.

Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves has adopted a hardline stance on illegal immigration.

He supports making illegal immigration a state crime, has backed the use of bounty hunters for deportations, and signed legislation aimed at tightening voter citizenship verification. 

Under SB 2114, an alien who enters or attempts to enter Mississippi directly from a foreign nation anywhere other than a lawful port of entry now faces state criminal charges, a misdemeanor with a minimum of six months in prison, escalating to felonies with up to two years or more when combined with other offenses.

If these illegal invaders are arrested for additional crimes, they’ll tack on even more serious penalties with no early release, no parole, and no games.

The legislation goes even further:

• Requires full cooperation with federal immigration authorities like ICE
• Mandates agreements under the 287(g) program, deputizing local law enforcement to assist federal agents
• Allows courts to order deportation and coordinate repatriation upon conviction

Predictably, left-wing activist groups and organizations like the ACLU are already attacking the bill, claiming it could lead to profiling and legal conflicts with federal authority.

They argue immigration enforcement is strictly a federal responsibility and warn of constitutional challenges.

The ACLU of Mississippi has issued the following statement:

The effects of a potential law like SB 2114 would be devastating, not only for undocumented immigrants but for all Mississippians. The new felony statute is vague and gives no mention of what a police officer should look for to question someone on how they entered Mississippi and no probable cause standard for an arrest. This will undoubtedly result in racial profiling and the detention of citizens and people with legal status. SB 2114 could even put Mississippians at risk of being required to “show their papers” during routine interactions with law enforcement.

Forcing local law enforcement to work for ICE would be a drain on local resources, resources that are already scarce. In addition, Mississippi taxpayers will be forced to foot the bill when the enforcement of this law leads to constitutional rights violations, including lawsuits for the wrongful detainment of US citizens.

SB 2114 would result in an erosion of public safety. Numerous studies have shown people are less likely to come forward to seek police protection when they know calling 911 could result in their family member or friend being deported. At a time when trust in law enforcement is at an all-time low, this makes communities less safe.

WATCH:

Mississippi just passed a bill that makes illegal immigration a state crime

SB 2114 criminalizes illegal entry into Mississippi under state law with a minimum of six months to two years in prison

The Mississippi Department of Public Safety will work on identifying undocumented… pic.twitter.com/ksIhgItKrw

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) April 7, 2026

The post Mississippi Governor Set to Sign Bill Making Illegal Immigration a STATE CRIME appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Jake Paul, the influencer and sometimes boxer, recently praised the late Charlie Kirk, suggesting that Kirk would have been elected president one day.

Lots of people believe this is true.

It’s one of the most maddening things about Kirk’s murder. It’s not even that he might have been a president. He might have been a White House press secretary, or a senator, or a high ranking cabinet member, or anything.

The point is that the killer robbed Charlie of his life and robbed the rest of us too. We will never get to see what Charlie could have become.

FOX News reports:

Influencer Jake Paul says Charlie Kirk would have been ‘the next president’

Boxer and influencer Jake Paul mourned the death of TPUSA co-founder Charlie Kirk in a new interview, saying that he would have inevitably been elected president someday if he had lived.

Becoming President someday, for Kirk, “was like his job and his purpose and all of that,” Paul told Theo Von, suggesting it would have made more sense than he, a boxer, aiming for the same position. “Charlie Kirk was clearly going to be the next president.”

Paul is an influencer with tens of millions of subscribers, and is noteworthy for having converted his online fame into a boxing career, real-world business ventures, and possibly a future career in politics. Paul has also been a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, and during a March 13 rally in Hebron, Kentucky, Trump offered him a “complete and total endorsement” should Paul choose to pursue political office.

Paul spoke with Von about his concerns about getting involved in politics, noting in today’s environment, assassination is a legitimate concern. Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10.

Nonetheless, he noted that he has been flirting with politics, saying, “I think it goes back to Marcus Aurelius, of, like, helping society and like that’s the number one thing you can do.” Aurelius has numerous quotes about how it is the duty of the powerful to be involved in politics for the public good.

He went on to argue that if there is a “dumb— running and opposing, I will enter the game and risk getting assassinated, but I don’t want to.”

The only good news is that Charlie Kirk will not be forgotten.

He will live on as an inspiration to a whole new generation of conservatives.

The post Influencer and Boxer Jake Paul Praises Charlie Kirk – Says He Would Have Been a President One Day appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

A man in Orange County, California, pleaded guilty to orchestrating a scheme to steal $270 million in bogus Medi-Cal claims in 11 months, the DOJ announced on Tuesday.

“Paul Richard Randall, 66, of Orange, pleaded guilty Monday to one count of wire fraud committed while on release. He has been in federal custody since June 2025,” the DOJ said.

According to federal prosecutors, Randall and others, through a business called Monte Vista Pharmacy, submitted claims for expensive prescription drugs that contained generic ingredients that were “not medically necessary.”

Monte Vista Pharmacy billed Medi-Cal millions of dollars a month after it suspended its requirement that healthcare providers “obtain prior authorization before providing certain health care services or medications as a condition of reimbursement,” the DOJ said.

Medi-Cal suspended the prior authorization as it transitioned to a new payment system.

Of the $270 million that was billed to Medi-Cal, Randall and his co-conspirators received $178 million.

Randall and the other defendants laundered the money by transferring the funds to a third party to pay “kickbacks” to Patricia Anderson, 58, of West Hills.

Randall is facing up to 30 years in federal prison.

“This defendant used a public health program as his personal piggy bank,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli. “This guilty plea should send a message that this administration — consistent with the President’s war on fraud — will not turn a blind eye while criminals fleece taxpayers.”

“Thanks to the leadership of President Donald Trump, the Department, working closely with the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, is supercharging efforts to take down every fraudster and bring them to justice,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

“In one day, the Department prosecuted the theft of a half-billion in taxpayer dollars. All those ripping off the American people are on notice,” Blanche added.

“The defendant was a repeat fraudster who caused Medi-Cal, a program designed to help those in need, to be billed nearly $270 million for expensive and medically unnecessary medications,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.

“He and his co-schemers stole over $178 million through false and fraudulent claims for these medications, lining their own pockets with public funds. The Criminal Division will aggressively prosecute those who defraud Medicaid and exploit taxpayer-funded benefit programs,” he said.

“Schemes that bill Medicaid for costly drugs that patients never needed or received threaten the integrity of the program,” said Acting Deputy Inspector General for Investigations Scott J. Lampert of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG).

“This plea shows our firm resolve, alongside our law enforcement partners, to exposing such fraud operations, ensuring those responsible are held accountable, and safeguarding taxpayer-funded health care programs,” he said.

The post SoCal: Orange County Man Pleads Guilty to Submitting $270 Million in Fraudulent Claims to Medi-Cal in 11 Months: DOJ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Foreign Affairs

Pope Leo, Bishop Robert Barron and the Iran War

When Americans need to hear the Holy Father’s rebukes of the war, a prominent Catholic leader says the pope isn’t really talking about Iran.

I was 28 when the U.S. invaded Iraq. As an antiwar, two-time Pat Buchanan voter, I opposed the war, and unfortunately, for my country and that region, time would prove me right.

As a non-religious South Carolinian, I noticed that many of the evangelical churches I grew up around and their leaders were the most enthusiastic about the war. I thought that seemed not only wrong, but the opposite of my understanding of Jesus Christ. It was also clear at the time that neoconservative politicians and pundits, who defined the Bush-Cheney era, were more than willing to stoke this pro-war religious fervor for their own political purposes.

But Catholics and their leader, Pope John Paul II, were very different. “NO TO WAR!” John Paul said two months before the invasion. “War is not always inevitable,” he said. “It is always a defeat for humanity.” The Holy Father was a prominent voice against the war until his death in 2005. This sounded closer to my understanding of Jesus Christ.

This past Easter, at 51 years old, I was finally confirmed in the Catholic Church for reasons far deeper than my antiwar stance. Still, the Church’s clarity on matters of war and peace was always the original springboard of my journey.

When the first American pope, Pope Leo XIV, recently spoke out against the U.S. war with Iran, I was not the least bit surprised but glad nonetheless.

When President Donald Trump’s Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recently invoked God and vowed the U.S. military would bring “death and destruction from above” to Iran, he was echoing fellow pro-war evangelicals like U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and Senators Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham. It felt like 2003 all over again.

On Palm Sunday, Pope Leo cited Isiah 1:15: “Jesus does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, he rejects them, saying: Even though you make many prayers I will not listen, your hands are full of blood.”

“Jesus is the King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” the pope said. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”

This was a direct rebuke to the Trump administration and it seemed Hegseth in particular. It was the opposite of the neoconservatives and evangelical Zionists who were allowed to shape narratives during the Iraq war and are attempting to do now with Iran.

Ben Shapiro is Jewish and a staunch advocate of the Iran War (as he was of the Iraq War) and thus an ally of neoconservative and evangelical Zionists. On his Daily Wire show, Shapiro said that he didn’t necessarily know whether Pope Leo was criticizing the Iran war.

Shapiro asked his guest, Bishop Robert Barron how should people interpret the pope’s recent comments on the evil of war. Bishop Barron replied (emphasis added), “I furthermore agree with you that… [Pope Leo] is not referring specifically or precisely to the Iran War.” He then explained the Church’s teachings on just war theory.

When I watched this, my heart sank. There was no intellectually honest way that Barron thought the Pope was not talking about Iran. As CNN reported Saturday about later remarks by the pope, “It’s rare for popes to cite world leaders by name, and this is one of the first times Leo has cited Trump publicly. His answer pointed to how the war is weighing heavily on him, and he spoke in a language that would be heard and understood in the White House.”

Clearly Pope Leo is sending messages to this White House.

Shapiro wanted to assure his largely neoconservative audience that the most powerful leader in the Catholic Church was not talking about Iran or condemning the war, which the Holy Father most surely was.

Barron gave aid and comfort to the neoconservative position, while dismissing the Catholic one. Why?

Many Catholics were disappointed with Barron, some aggressively so. Other Catholic leaders are instead reiterating the Pope’s message in slightly different language.

Bishop Barron responded Monday, “I feel obligated to respond to this grossly unfair attack on my character.”

If anyone attacked Barron’s actual character, I don’t agree with that, and am certainly not doing that here.

“I never discussed the morality of the Iran War with Ben Shapiro,” the Bishop wrote. “He asked me to comment on the pope’s remarks to the effect that all those who wage war have ‘blood on their hands.”

Shapiro also asked Barron whether he thought the pope was talking about Iran, and the bishop replied no, which is untrue.

Bishop Barron added, “I simply made the distinction, completely consistent with Catholic social teaching, between just and unjust wars and suggested that the pope meant that those who wage unjust wars are to be condemned morally.”

Again, he never addressed that he told Shapiro that he didn’t think Pope Leo was talking about Iran. That was the falsehood Shapiro needed his audience to hear from a Catholic leader and Bishop Barron gave it to him.

With Iran, Pope Leo appears to be following Pope John Paul II, who confronted U.S. leaders on Iraq. Sohrab Ahmari told CNN “The last time a pope inveighed so urgently against a war, it was Saint John Paul II in the lead-up to Iraq. Once more, Peter’s warnings are being ignored, while Trump’s Catholic apologists obfuscate Pope Leo’s teaching or oppose him outright.”

I write this as an admirer, still, of Bishop Barron. A big part of my Catholic journey has included social media influencers like Matt Fradd of Pints with Aquinas (now also part of the Daily Wire), Father Mike Schmitz, the apologist Scott Hahn of the St. Paul Center, the apologist Joe Heschmyer and the team at Catholic Answers Live, but probably longer than any of them, it has been Bishop Barron. I’ve watched more of his YouTube videos than I can count, and thoroughly enjoyed and felt enriched by his “Catholicism” series from almost 20 years ago. I learned a lot. I still look forward to meeting him one day.

But at precisely a time in which there is an intra-Christian debate happening regarding American foreign policy and what Christianity should have to say about, Barron seemed to diminish or even mislead about what the pope was truly saying.

Ben Shapiro needed to be told that Pope Leo was talking about Iran—or even just probably talking about Iran—instead of comforting pro–Iran War neoconservatives and evangelical leaders of the type who Pope Leo appears to be condemning.

If I were a 28-year-old, non-religious antiwar conservative today and heard how Bishop Barron misrepresented Pope Leo’s Iran position to Ben Shapiro, I might have scoffed, shook my head, and gone in a different direction than the Catholic Church. Maybe a Pat Buchanan or another Catholic could have steered me back, but it shouldn’t be this much work.

At a minimum, I have always expected prominent Catholics, whether in Rome and my own country, to generally get war and peace right. That has long been my experience, and it was my earliest experience with the Church, one I have come to rely on, without much concern, until now.

In the future, I hope I can have that assurance again. I know what John Paul II said about war and those who wage it in his time. Today, he is a saint. I know what Pope Leo XIV is saying about war and know precisely who “those who wage war” are.

Bishop Robert Barron knows too.

The post Pope Leo, Bishop Robert Barron and the Iran War appeared first on The American Conservative.

UK Special Coverage

British Energy Policy Is Self-Defeating and Suicidal

Destroying the UK’s economy won’t even advance the climate goals notionally being pursued.

UK Special Coverage

It is sometimes called “suicidal empathy”: a compulsion to damage one’s own wellbeing in pursuit of an ideal or a moral dogma. The UK government’s response to what is being called by the International Energy Agency the “worst energy crisis in history” is perhaps a textbook example.

Rather than compromise its schedule to achieve net zero, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is prepared to accelerate economic decline and impoverish UK voters by refusing, on essentially moral grounds, to develop substantial energy resources in the British sector of the North Sea. 

Rather than give the go-ahead to recently discovered oil and gas fields like Rosebank off Shetland and Jackdaw off Aberdeen, as even Starmer’s predecessor Tony Blair has advised, the UK prefers to import oil and gas from abroad at great cost to the UK balance of payments and to domestic consumers.

Yet Britain contributes little more than 1 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.  That is a rounding error in the emissions of the great fossil fuel behemoths, China, India, and the United States. Reducing this further will have a nugatory impact on climate change and is largely performative. Indeed, UK energy policy is actually increasing Britain’s carbon footprint.

This is because the UK is importing millions of tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from America and the Middle East at great cost, not just to British industry but to the environment. The emissions from the tankers crossing the Atlantic Ocean contribute thousands of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere. Moreover, American hydrocarbons are mostly produced by hydraulic fracking, a process banned in the UK.

The Labour government seems unable to appreciate the grim irony of an energy-rich country, Britain, choosing not to exploit its own natural resources even though they are greener. Nor does it seem to recognize the contradiction involved in importing much of the UK’s gas from Norway—gas extracted from the very North Sea basin that the UK has elected to abandon. 

Norway never stopped exploring and extracting oil and gas, and is even drilling in the Arctic. The state-owned energy company, Equinor, is discovering new commercial oil and gas deposits in the supposedly “depleted” North Sea almost by the month. Yet Norway is also committed to net zero.

A range of specious arguments have been deployed to mask the British government’s irrational approach to energy security. The first is that there is no point in reopening North Sea oil and gas fields because there is nothing there. It is a mature field and has been in decline for over 20 years. Well, Norway has put that argument to bed. 

Of course the UK sector is largely depleted and no longer has the extractive potential of the 1970s and 1980s. Nevertheless, according to analysts Wood Mackenzie, there is still up to 14 billion barrels of oil equivalent in the British sector, enough to meet UK demand until 2050.

The second argument, deployed most recently by the Labour Environment Secretary Ed Miliband, is that extracting oil and gas will not bring down the price at the petrol pump or on home heating bills because it is bought and sold on the world market. Britain would still be buying UK hydrocarbons from the same energy companies at the same high prices. This is partially true but irrelevant. All the gas extracted from the North Sea is piped directly to the UK, where it is used. Oil has always been sold on the world market. This doesn’t mean it is valueless or that domestic energy prices cannot be lowered.   

The oil and gas extracted from the North Sea by energy companies and sold on the world market is taxed at a marginal rate of 78 percent. This means that it generates billions in revenues for the UK Exchequer, especially when the price is as high as $100 plus per barrel. These revenues can be used to subsidize petrol or gas prices, just as wind energy is subsidized by taxpayers at present.

A variant of this argument is the claim that the UK produces the “wrong kind” of oil and gas, which has to be exported abroad, mostly to Rotterdam, to be processed into fuels and other products. This is one of the most specious arguments of all. The main reason the UK has not been refining North Sea crude is that it has been closing down its oil refineries.

The Grangemouth refinery in Scotland, which closed last year, used to refine crude from the Forties Field in the North Sea and produced some 60 percent of the petrol, diesel, and jet fuel used in Scotland, according to Petroineos. It closed last year and is being converted into a receiving depot for LNG imported from abroad. But the plant is only mothballed and could be brought back on stream were there the political will.

In any case, the destination of the oil and gas extracted from the North Sea is a diversion. In the 1970s, when the UK first discovered vast reserves of North Sea oil, no one said, “let’s just leave it in the ground and import it from the Middle East because we have to buy it at world market prices.” North Sea oil was what saved the UK from the last “greatest” oil shock—the quadrupling of prices after the Yom Kippur War in 1973. 

The many billions in revenues generated by the oil were used to transform the UK economy from manufacturing to services. That policy may have been a mistake, but the point is that fossil fuel revenues give governments the ability to make such choices. It could equally have used the money to lower fuel taxation or gas prices. The fossil fuel industry generates as many as 200,000 jobs in the UK.  Moreover, the oil extracted contributed to the UK balance of payments, which helped lower interest rates on government debt.

Miliband claims that renewable energy is a cheaper and more reliable source of energy than fossil fuels, as well as being better for the environment. But it clearly is not. According to the Office for National Statistics, British industry has been paying up to four times the cost of electricity compared to firms in the U.S.  Renewable energy is in theory cheaper watt for watt than fossil fuel, but in practice it is expensive because of network costs and because it requires gas power plants as backup. 

We are told that renewables now produce 60 percent of British electricity generation. This is only because of the contribution of nuclear power and supposedly “renewable” power stations like Drax, which uses wood pellets and is far from emission-free. The system relies on gas when the wind does not blow.

But electricity generation accounts for only around a quarter of the energy used by the UK each year. More than  75 percent of the energy used in domestic heating, transport, manufacturing, construction and pharmaceuticals comes from fossil fuels. This is not going to change any time soon. The UK is sacrificing industrial competitiveness on the altar of net zero—an arbitrary target set by some climate scientists, which takes no account of changing circumstances or the impact on ordinary people.

Oil and gas are strategic resources, as we have just relearned following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. It is clearly reckless to rely on international sources of energy when supply is vulnerable to such shocks. Security of supply is an essential component of any industrial economy, and only having substantial domestic resources can ensure this.

Miliband is endangering the economic wellbeing of the UK population to no purpose except scoring brownie points at international climate conferences. Destroying the UK’s economy will not save the planet; it will not bring net zero one day earlier. It will only destroy public support for green energy and defeat the very moral purpose. The UK is actually one of the leading countries on the planet as far as emissions reductions are concerned. Britain today emits less than half of the emissions it generated in 1990. 

The use of sophistry to deny the obvious—that it is better to use domestic sources of energy than import it from abroad—is similar to the arguments used by many progressives in the gender debate to dispute the reality of binary sex differences.  It is reinforced by elite politicians and environmental academics who like to indulge their intellectual vanity by demeaning common sense. George Orwell famously wrote in 1984 that “freedom is the right to say that two and two make four.”  The UK government is trying to persuade skeptical voters that, as far as energy is concerned,  two and two make five.

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