In a Monday address to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) at the Port of Tyne in South Shields, British prime minister Boris Johnson evoked the words of Soviet Communist dictator Vladimir Lenin to push his “green industrial revolution.”
In promoting his own version of the “Build Back Better” agenda being pushed by the United Nations and U.S. president Joe Biden, the supposedly conservative Johnson told leaders of British industry that a phrase coined by the communist leader really described his new agenda quite well.
“Lenin once said that the communist revolution was Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country,” Johnson said.
“Well, I hesitate to quote Lenin at the Confederation of British Industry, but the coming industrial revolution is green power plus the electrification of the whole country,” Johnson said.
Johnson explained to industry leaders that the nation’s new “net zero” plan was a “moral mission.”
“It’s a moral thing but it’s also an economic imperative. Because if this country could achieve the same kind of geographical balance and dispersion of growth and wealth that you find in most of our most successful economic comparators … then there would be absolutely no stopping us and what we would achieve,” Johnson told the delegates.
Johnson said that the supply-chain issues largely caused by government lockdowns and vaccine mandates offered an “opportunity” to radically transform the U.K.’s economy into a “green” one.
Johnson strongly suggested that fossil-fuel shaming would be a prime motivator in the new “green” economy.
“I confidently predict that, in just a few years’ time, it will be as noisome, offensive to the global consumer to open a new coal-fired power station as it is to get on a plane and light up a cigar,” the prime minister said.
Somewhere, Chinese leader Xi Jinping is smirking at that comment as his nation has promised to build 43 new coal-fired power plants and several coal-fired blast furnaces just this year. China’s current five-year plan calls for hundreds of new coal-fired plants to be built.
“Today, we are on the brink of another revolution — a green, industrial revolution,” Johnson told the industrial leaders. “We’re now embarked on a new epoch…. We’re going to change radically our cars, our trucks, our buses, our ships, our boats, our planes, our trains, our domestic heating systems, our farming methods,our industrial processes, our power generation and much else besides.”
A Downing Street “senior” source told the BBC that Johnson’s speech was considered “shambolic” (disorganized or chaotic) in some parts of Westminster.
“Business was really looking for leadership today and it was shambolic,” BBC quoted the source, who added that there was, “a lot of concern inside the building.”
“Cabinet needs to wake up and demand serious changes otherwise it’ll keep getting worse. If they don’t insist, he just won’t do anything about it,” BBC’s source concluded.
Indeed, one thing Johnson didn’t bother the industrialists with was the probable increase in taxes that will likely occur as a result of his net-zero emissions plan. Instead, as he closed, the prime minister stroked the ego of those in attendance.
“We are blessed, we are blessed not just with capital markets and the world’s best universities and incredible pools of liquidity in London and the right time zone and the right language and opportunity across the whole country. We’re also blessed with the amazing inventive power and range of British business and that, above all, is what fills me with confidence … for the days ahead.”
Johnson may be putting the cart before the horse with his new plan if a petition begun by the Harrogate Agenda receives enough signatures to force Parliament to consider putting Johnson’s net-zero emissions plan up for a Brexit-like referendum. Should the petition generate 100,000 signatures by April 27 of next year, the petition for a referendum will legally have to be considered for debate by Parliament.
Johnson paints an extremely rosy picture of the brave new “green” world he is envisioning. One has to wonder why he’s doing so. Certainly, a positive outlook is good for anyone to have, but the technology needed to make the leaps the prime minister is counting on doesn’t fully exist yet. And he’s counting on British industry — or somebody, somewhere — to quickly invent it.
