There’s zero common sense from Labour’s Budget or in Baku

Last week Rachel Reeves delivered an Old Labour Budget designed to deliver record tax increases through stealth, together with massive public spending commitments, with a resulting debt burden that will impoverish us all. The numbers were even bigger than Labour’s opponents in the general election dared warn us about; the tax rises (£40 billion), spending (£76bn) and additional borrowing (336bn) only being surpassed by the scale of the deception used to justify the Government’s smash and grab.

There is no £22bn black hole, the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) was unable to justify the Chancellor’s claim. Tax rises will impact on all working people, no matter how narrowly “working” is defined. The promise to protect pensioners had already been broken, the pledge to be on the side of farmers lasted no more than four months, and the “top priority” of delivering economic growth has been murdered at birth by a budget that has led the OBR to downgrade its growth forecasts for the next five years.

Surprisingly, the OBR the Opposition feared would do Labour’s bidding has shown it has an independent streak – arguing that three-quarters of employers national insurance contributions will, as this column has argued, be funded by unaware workers via lower wages.

Labour appears to be on a political mission to self-immolate and shall reap what it has sown in arising by-elections, next year’s English council elections and the 2026 Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd elections. Who knows where it will lead by the next general election, but the odds on a second Labour term will lengthen considerably.

We live in a world in too much of a hurry, where big decisions that democracies have not considered carefully are rushed through without anything like a shared consensus. Tomorrow we have the US Presidential elections which, whether you like the outcome or not, will define where the world will head over the next four years. Then next week the world’s climate politicians, zealots, hustlers and grifters will be converging on Baku in Azerbaijan for COP29.

Expect more empty promises made at the expense of ordinary people where western democracies resolve to kill their industries, commit to absurd schemes that harm the environment in the name of saving it and impoverish all except those who frequent such exclusive events in Doha or Baku.

That the latest climate con-trick in Azerbaijan has been declared “The COP of Peace” introduces an element of Orwellian newspeak equivalent to framing North Korea as the land of feasting or Cuba as a destination for light shows.

The moniker is cringe-inducing because Azerbaijan invaded a disputed territory called Nagorno-Karabakh, displacing 100,000 ethnic Armenians and imprisoning many others as political prisoners, including several ministers of the former Armenian government of Nagorno-Karabakh who are now being unlawfully held hostage. Prior to giving away the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, a Chinese ally, UK foreign secretary David Lammy, who will be attending the Baku bash, suggested Azerbaijan had “liberated” the disputed Caucasus territory, earning him informed criticism of effectively endorsing the ethnic cleansing of Armenian Christians.

Whichever way one looks at it, Azerbaijan is an autocratic petro-state ruled with an iron fist by Ilham Aliyev, who took over from his father as the president of Azerbaijan in 2003, and then appointed his wife vice-president. In Freedom House’s 2024 human rights index, Azerbaijan scored only 7 out of 100 – by comparison North Korea scored 3, Cuba 12, Russia 13 and the UK 91. Yet Azerbaijan cloaks itself in the virtuous fight against climate change, which means its oligarchs can rub shoulders with the great and the good while making big money on the side by doing the bidding of dictators like Vladimir Putin.

After Europe abandoned Russian gas due to Putin’s war in Ukraine, the European Parliament approved sanctions against President Aliyev and other Azeri government officials over their offensive against the Armenians – but the European Commission refused to implement them. Instead, Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, flew to Baku, hailing the country as “a crucial energy partner”. The reason is obvious; the FT and Sunday Times report Azerbaijan has increased imports of Russian gas specifically to meet obligations made to EU countries looking for “non-Russian” sources of gas in the wake of the Ukraine invasion.

All this bodes ill for Armenia, landlocked and of no strategic significance, sandwiched between Turkey and Azerbaijan, with Iran at one end of the Caspian and Russia at the other. Armenia, a Christian nation whose people are not unfamiliar with suffering genocide, is pivoting towards the West and looking for friends. Yet as long as politicians in the UK, Europe and the US are happy to cavort with despots throwing their petrodollars around, then Armenia will be waiting a long time.

Azerbaijan’s posturing as a peacemaker fools nobody. If Western leaders had any gumption they would ensure Azerbaijan is serious about COP29 being a celebration of peace by insisting President Aliyev signs a peace deal with Armenia and releases the remaining Armenian PoWs being held in Baku.

Unfortunately our Western leaders would rather posture on peace while closing their own industries, exporting their own energy-intensive jobs to China (and India) and importing competitors’ products that are dependent on new coal powered power stations – currently opening in China at the rate of two a week.

Rachel Reeves’ Halloween Budget preferred to commit £28bn of taxpayers’ money to the, as yet, unproven science of carbon capture and saddle our domestic energy bills with yet more levies to subsidise unreliable solar and wind generation.

Whatever one thinks about the role of man in creating a climate catastrophe, the West’s pursuit of Net Zero economies will achieve no impact against Asia’s drive to accelerate its use of carbon-reliant energy and industrial output. COP 29 is no festival of peace – nor will it save the planet.

Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments