For once, Jeremy Corbyn is right. The government’s announcement of a moratorium in fracking is an election stunt – and attempt to snatch a few leave-voting seats in the North at the expense of damaging Britain’s energy policy for the next couple of decades, as well as causing higher carbon emissions.
Announcing the block on fracking on Radio Four on Saturday morning, business secretary Andrea Leadsom said the government had reached its decision because the Oil and Gas Authority had concluded that it was impossible to predict when ‘earthquakes’ might be caused and what magnitude they might be. This followed a tremor measuring 2.9 on the Richter scale in August.
Let’s pass over Leadsom’s description of fracking-related tremors as ‘earthquakes’. To use that term to describe a tremor of 2.9 on the Richter scale is like calling a ripple on the Serpentine a tsunami.
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