Last week the UK’s new Labour government made a bold decision. The new minister for local government, Angela Rayner, announced that the government would withdraw its support for a new coal mine near Whitehaven in Cumbria, which had been approved two years ago by the then Conservative government.
Rayner’s intervention follows a recent landmark Supreme Court ruling making it harder for new sites of fossil fuel extraction to be approved. Pointing to the implications of the court’s decision, she argued that there had been an “error in law” when Michael Gove, the minister at the time, had given the coal mine the go ahead in 2022.
The mine’s developers still want to go ahead, and a legal challenge by environmental campaigners is being heard in the High Court, with a ruling expected later this summer. But, with its decision to withdraw its defence, the government has confirmed that it understands the need to decisively turn away from new fossil fuel extraction. This is good news.
