Donald Trump has taken aim at Sir Keir Starmer’s government just weeks after the two leaders appeared to put the ‘special relationship’ back on track with a much-lauded trade deal.
The US president hit out at one of the Labour leader’s flagship strategies, on net zero, telling him to “stop with the costly and unsightly windmills” and instead forge ahead with more drilling for oil in the North Sea.
President Trump, who has been vocal in his opposition to wind turbines for many years, used a post on his social media platform Truth Social to say: “Our negotiated deal with the United Kingdom is working out well for all.
“I strongly recommend to them, however, that in order to get their Energy Costs down, they stop with the costly and unsightly windmills, and incentivize modernized drilling in the North Sea, where large amounts of oil lay waiting to be taken.”
Trump, who owns a golf course in Aberdeenshire, added that there was a “century of drilling left, with Aberdeen as the hub”.
He said: “The old-fashioned tax system disincentivizes drilling, rather than the opposite. U.K.’s Energy Costs would go WAY DOWN, and fast!”
Trump has previously ranted about “big windmills” that “destroy everybody’s property values, kill all the birds.”
He has also claimed they are unreliable energy sources, once bizzarely saying “and then, all of a sudden, it stops; the wind and the televisions go off. And your wives and husbands say, ‘Darling, I want to watch Donald Trump on television tonight. But the wind stopped blowing and I can’t watch. There’s no electricity in the house, darling.’ ”
In 2019, his golf course company was ordered to pay almost £250,000 to the Scottish government following a bitter dispute over an 11-turbine wind farm scheme off the Aberdeenshire coast, which he claimed would spoil the view from his Balmedie golf course.
Almost four years after his case was dismissed at the UK Supreme Court, Trump International Golf Club Scotland Ltd was told to pay £225,000 in legal fees to Scottish ministers.
Labour wants to end North Sea oil and gas production, with a focus on wind and solar farms instead.
But oil and gas workers in Aberdeen recently told a commission into how the transition can be done justly they fear a “cliff edge” for their livelihoods.
Before President Trump’s latest intervention energy regulator Ofgem confirmed that household energy bills will fall by around 7 per cent from July, bringing a typical bill down £129 to £1,720 a year, after President Trump’s aggressive tariff plans led to a significant slump in gas and oil prices.
The new will come as a relief for many households, who suffered through an “awful April” of bill rises, including Ofgem’s last 6.4 per cent price cap increase.
Earlier this month Downing Street rejected Sir Tony Blair’s claim that “hysteria” was playing a part in the international debate on climate change after the former prime minister criticised efforts to limit fossil fuels.
In a foreword to a report by his think tank the Tony Blair Institute (TBI), the New Labour prime minister had argued the current climate approach “isn’t working”.
The intervention was seized on by political opponents as an attack on Sir Keir’s plans to cut carbon emissions and achieve net zero by 2050.
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