Chris Skidmore’s hissy-fit by-election

A new year brings with it fresh headaches for Rishi Sunak. Chris Skidmore, a former energy minister, has announced he will stand down as an MP in protest at plans to issue more oil and gas licences. Parliament is expected to vote on Monday on the government’s flagship bill to guarantee annual licensing rounds in the North Sea.

Tory strategists had hoped that the legislation would exploit Labour divisions on green issues. But it seems to have prompted the opposite effect, with Skidmore taking the very rare step of not just resigning the party whip but quitting his seat in protest – triggering a contest in his soon-to-be-abolished Kingswood seat. Skidmore did not find another seat, so he was anyway leaving parliament. He has now bolted early.

In a statement on Twitter/X he declared that Monday’s bill would ‘send a global signal that the UK is rowing ever further back from its climate change commitments’. That’s the same UK has just become the first country in the G20 to halve its carbon emissions. And what about the fairly basic point that using domestic gas will actually speed up the journey NetZero? Official studies show it’s 73 per cent less carbon intensive than the LNG gas imports – and we are, after all, a country still dependent on imports for 37 per cent of energy supplies.

Does Skidmore think the UK will stop needing to import oil or gas any time in the next decade or so? If not, does he seriously argue that it’s better to import Qatari or American LNG rather than use what’s left of the North Sea? His article in the Guardian didn’t say, his resignation letter doesn’t say and nor does his book on Net Zero that was published last January.

But the Tories are actually doing what he purports to want. If you’re serious about the Net Zero agenda you have to admit that this goal is more effectively pursued by moving away from LNG imports and using remaining local resources which have a quarter of the carbon intensity (see graph, below). So why the hissy fit? Skidmore seems to be one of these Tory environmentalists who is not only unable to take “yes” for an answer but regards “yes” as a resignation issue.

Perhaps his trigger wasn’t really the policy but Sunak’s declaration that the election would not come until the end of the year – tying poor Skidmore to the drudgery of constituency work for several more months. This will have clashed with his career plans. He had already climbed on board the green gravy train with a professorship at Bath University focusing on green policy. Such a sinecure will, of course, tee him up nicely for other consultancies and green directorships. He has already been selling his, ahem, expertise at £135/hour – alongside various other advisory, directorships and side-hustles. He has even set up a one-man company, Bosworth Limited, presumably to warehouse all that green gold.

Only politics can turn a former Tory Spad with a history degree into a professor of environmentalism by the age of 42, a subject in which he has zero professional qualifications. Westminster can be quite the career ladder! And what of those constituents he had pledged to serve? Kingswood has a majority of 11,220 and looks eminently winnable for Labour, given the current polls.

When he said he would not stand again, Skidmore claimed “there has been no greater honour in my life” than to serve his constituents and “looked forward to serving my community for the rest of my term in office.” We now see that he cannot bear to serve them even for another year, what with all green consultancy work rolling in. With candidates already sorted for the general election in nearby seats, “Professor” Skidmore’s final act to his constituents will be to force them all out to vote for an interim MP who can only last a few months – just to save him the indignity of carrying out the promise he made to them just 14 months ago.

By all means, Skidmore can resign the whip. Stay on the back benches and make the case he feels so passionately about, serve the community he says he cared about, lambast the Tories every day -but to actually quit parliament because he can’t be bothered to finish his last year serving constituents? It’s up there with Nadine Dorries’s hissy-fit by-election in terms of putting ego before constituents. Skidmore received an OBE recently, nominally for public service. Sad to see this once-promising MP leave Westminster as a case study in how not to serve.

PS The below, from the North Sea Transition Authority (pdf), sums up the case: the “carbon intensity” is shown by the height and the width shows the volume of gas used. It’s for 2022 when the UK imported almost two-thirds of its natural gas supply. That year, we upped LNG imports by 74pc (there was a scramble given the Ukraine invasion) and then exported the surplus back to Europe through pipelines. Putin’s invasion, the energy bill surge and cost-of-living crisis underlined how dangerous it can be to have to rely on LNG supplies (especially when the whole world is scrambling for them) and the case for making better use of North Sea resources.