In the United Kingdom, the ruling Labour party is in a bit of a pickle.
A petition demanding the reviled Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer had 2.7M signatures and counting (2,824,368 right now) after less than three days of being active.
It is abundantly clear that British voters should have the right to recall their MPs and trigger a by-election.
— Turning Point UK 🇬🇧 (@TPointUK) November 25, 2024
We must hold politicians who lie to account.
The British people demand change. pic.twitter.com/NwJIkEUppE
The man truly has been a disaster since the first picture was taken of him smiling outside of 10 Downing Street. People have had enough and this is the first step to removing him.
It's been very popular.
Besides Labour being jack-booted, totalitarian thugs in the literal sense...
The UK has become completely totalitarian. This judge threw a 20 month sentence at someone for posting on social media that they didn’t want to see illegal aliens being given free stuff with their tax dollars.
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) November 19, 2024
“This offense is so serious that an immediate custodial sentence is… pic.twitter.com/pGbe2gpQWX
...“This offense is so serious that an immediate custodial sentence is unavoidable.”
The sentence would’ve been even longer if they pled not guilty.
...and potentially catastrophically ignorant about 'where food comes from' thanks to their dangerously blind ideological devotion to climate cult beliefs...
Blackrock, Bill Gates etc are buying up farmland everywhere.
— Alternative News (@AlternatNews) November 24, 2024
In Ukraine, the US & Europe …
Now they are coming for UK farmland. Therefore, the British government is introducing inheritance tax for farmers.
This way, farmland comes onto the market.
pic.twitter.com/MkMYuZAGcu pic.twitter.com/6egjFVJRGw
...they're finding out their Green schemes are tripping them up in other ways.
For one thing, Labour's climate-related NetZero aspirations and associated arbitrary goals are running against an immutable force known as 'reality.'
For example, their mandated EV sales targets for auto manufacturers to meet to avoid hefty penalties for imperiling the earth do not match up with consumer demand.
This, in turn, is creating quite a conundrum for manufacturers who need something known as a 'profit' in order to stay in business. Sales = 'profit' thing, and sales are sadly lagging behind the ambitious fever dreams officially set by the British government. What EVs they can move off lots they have to practically give away, thanks to incentives.
Something has to give, and automaker Stellantis has been in talks with Labour for months now, trying to work a compromise.
On Oct. 14, [CEO Carlos]Tavares told Bloomberg Television that the government was setting a threshold for battery-electric vehicle sales that is roughly double the “natural” level of demand.
If governments in Europe want Stellantis to sell a mix of EVs that is above natural demand levels, “they need to help to stimulate the demand,” Tavares said, noting that the company has discussed this with the U.K. for several months.
“We are now reaching a point where we have to make a decision, and that will happen in the next few weeks,” he said.
The U.K. introduced a mandate starting this year requiring that 22 percent of each automaker’s new-car sales be zero-emissions, with that threshold rising to 80 percent in 2030.
For vans, 70 percent of new sales have to be electric by the end of the decade.
Automakers face fines of up to 15,000 pounds ($19,550) per vehicle for missing targets, but they can avoid penalties by using a credit-trading program and catch up in later years.
Tavares’ warning coincides with the new U.K. government hosting an investment summit aimed at attracting foreign investors to the country.
Of course, dealing with fanatics and true believers is never easy, and the British government confidently told Stellantis to suck a stone.
This is why the company announced yesterday they'd be shuttering one of their two plants in the UK, as the government had refused any compromise whatsoever. The company can as easily import vehicles to the UK as manufacture them there under hostile circumstances.
Stellantis plans to close its light commercial vehicle plant in Luton, England, and consolidate its U.K. production in its other British factory in Ellesmere Port amid wrangling with the British government over the volume of electric cars and vans it needs to sell in the country.
Stellantis said it will create an all-electric manufacturing hub in Ellesmere Port following an investment of 50 million pounds ($63 million).
The Luton factory builds midsize vans for the Vauxhall, Opel, Citroën, Peugeot and Fiat brands. The automaker produces small all-electric vans for the same brands in Ellesmere Port.
...Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares has been in dispute with the British government over the zero emissions vehicle mandate, which calls for car companies to increase battery-electric sales to 22 percent of their passenger cars and 10 percent of their vans this year. Companies will be fined 15,000 pounds ($18,900) per vehicle for missing the target.
Automakers have protested that the targets are not matched by consumer demand, forcing them to offer profit-sapping big discounts to generate sales.
Tavares has been warning that the automaker could close U.K. plants unless the government softened the mandate.
He said the Labour government and previous Conservative government had refused his request to combine car and van sales, and count each electric vehicle export as an EV credit.
“It’s good for the planet. It doesn’t ask taxpayers in the U.K. for money, it just makes the ZEV mandate more easy,” Tavares told journalists at the Paris auto show in October.
The truism holds once again in this case that the Green schemers are always gobsmacked when their targets push back. Companies are simply refusing to play anymore and multinationals have particular flexibility in being able to walk away from a situation that impacts the bottom line.
In light of the Stellantis move, more manufacturers were speaking out about the dearth of EV customers, strongly suggesting the wild-eyed Greeniacs in government cool their jets a tad before the EV edicts destroy auto manufacturing in Britain itself.
...Alan Johnson vice president of manufacturing at Nissan U.K. tells the BBC: “Customers are not buying EVs as much as had been expect 18 months ago. Things have changed and, because of that, we are going to have to redirect a lot of funding that had been dedicated to these [technology development] projects in the U.K. to subsidize manufacturers who have got no industrial operations in the U.K.”
It suggests the government needs to modify the ZEV mandate by offering increased flexibility for automakers on borrowing credits from future years in the short-term and a two-year monitoring period for 2024 and 2025 in place of potentially devastating fines for the industry.
The company says this would allow companies to plan accordingly and ensure the U.K. can deliver on the 80% target by 2030.
Nissan’s chairperson for Africa, Middle East, India, Europe and Oceania (AMIEO) region, says: “The mandate risks undermining the business case for manufacturing cars in the U.K., and the viability of thousands of jobs and billions of pounds in investment. We now need to see urgent action from the government by the end of the year to avoid a potentially irreversible impact on the U.K. automotive sector.”
Stellantis closing the Luton facility was the first formal shot across the bow when all the polite hints had been ignored.
Members of Parliament rattled the bushes, adding ammunition to the case for common sense instead of fever dreams.
Net Zero Luton job losses:
— Richard Tice MP 🇬🇧 (@TiceRichard) November 27, 2024
Business Secretary is out of touch with reality. Private sales of EVs falling, car manufacturers are pulling back as losing fortunes.
Just beginning of slow destruction of much of UK car industry. pic.twitter.com/YE1gGCF3ua
It seems someone heard the cannonballs whistle overhead because today - not 24 hours later - there's been a bit of a shift in tone from the rabid activists in Whitehall.
Perhaps even a bit of a collective GULP, you might say.
U.K. to review EV sales targets after industry backlash, Vauxhall plant closure
Oh. Do tell. First thing, blame the previous government ( who had been in the process of revising the rules before they were ousted).
And then, there was imagining the bleak economic picture if the car builders walked.
Britain will rethink the rules aiming at forcing carmakers to sell more electric vehicles after Stellantis said it is closing a U.K. plant and the wider auto industry warned that the plan would lead to billions of pounds in extra costs for EV incentives.
As part of its wider net zero goals, Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandates introduced by Britain’s previous Conservative government require carmakers to sell a higher proportion of EVs each year, or face fines.
Public demand for electric vehicles has not kept up, and without an urgent government intervention, both industry jobs and Britain’s appeal as a manufacturing hub are under threat, carmakers have warned.
Finance minister Rachel Reeves said the government had launched a consultation “to look at the plans we inherited from the previous government.”
“It is really important to make sure that we get the balance right and (have) proper support for the automotive sector, the car industry, in Britain,” she told reporters on Nov. 27. “We want people to buy electric vehicles, but we want to keep jobs, we want to keep investment in Britain, and we are determined through the consultation to do just that.”
WE WANT TO KEEP JOBS
Ah, clarity returns like a bolt of lightning.
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