By Andrew Newbery, AN67 | October 2026

In May I warned that Britain was closing the front door on its own sovereign resources while paying the bill at the back. This autumn the bill arrived. On 6 October the RAC's UK average price for diesel passed £2 a litre for the first time, at 200.20p. In Hull, INEOS has idled its Acetyls plants at Saltend, blaming gas and carbon costs.

And in Birmingham, the Conservative Party began to sound like it understands.

What Birmingham Got Right

Kemi Badenoch's *The Right Way* opens its energy chapter with three words I would happily have written myself: "Energy is growth." Prosper UK's *The Price of Power* makes the same point: "Energy policy is growth policy." Launching it, Ruth Davidson said its recommendations "are about growth as much as it's about energy".

That is common ground I welcome. Resource Realism has always been a growth strategy: keep our molecules for British industry, rather than simply burning or exporting them, and we re-industrialise with secure domestic feedstocks, rebuild skilled jobs and repair the national balance sheet through what we make.

The Right Way sets three tests for energy policy - global emissions, deliverability and security of supply - and the first describes exactly what is happening at Saltend: "A policy that closes a British factory only for its output to be replaced by higher-carbon imports has failed the test of improving the environment." It warns against swapping dependence on foreign oil and gas for dependence on Chinese panels and batteries. And it commits to reverse the ban on new North Sea licences, giving the regulator a mandate "to maximise extraction rather than manage decline".

Better still is a passage outside the energy chapter. Recounting the closure and hurried reopening of Rough gas storage, it asks: "Who factors in the time required to rebuild a factory once it has closed?" And it concludes that interdependence is a strength when it is reciprocal, "but vulnerability disguised as efficiency is not."

That is the heart of Resource Realism, now in a Conservative text. Prosper UK adds a practical step: an independent assessment of the minimum refining and fuel storage capacity Britain should keep - something it notes no one in government has done. The centre right is converging on the right questions.

A Programme Within Reach

Birmingham has done the hard part: it has set out first principles. Here is how to apply them to the molecules:

1. Back the North Sea with licences, a stable tax regime and decisions on Rosebank and Jackdaw.
2. Treat refining, chemicals and fertiliser as critical national infrastructure, and commission the independent assessment of the minimum capacity Britain should keep.
3. Fix the carbon border charge: none on inputs we cannot make, such as iron ore and ammonia; a level playing field on carbon and gas costs for the producers we still have.
4. Hold strategic stocks of diesel, jet fuel and fertiliser on British soil, with food production and distribution confirmed as priority users.
5. Stand behind the Falkland Islanders' right to develop their own resources.
6. Build nuclear, renewables, storage and grid in step, and complete the decoupling of electricity from gas.*

The Choice, Again

In April I asked Britain's politicians to make a choice. In Birmingham, one of them began to make it. The Right Way says that energy is growth, and that resilience is not inefficiency. Apply both to the molecules - from wellhead to refinery to farm gate - and the Conservatives will have something no party yet offers: a plan for energy independence and growth that is physically real.

Andrew Newbery | AN67 | www.an67.co.uk

Previous articles: "The Electron Delusion & Resource Realism" (April 2026); "Closing the Front Door on Sovereign Resources, While Paying the Bill at the Back" (May 2026).

* The enemy is not renewables, and it is not hydrocarbons. The enemy is dependence. Resource Realism means using every tool to end it:

“We should have an energy mix that uses all available supply. Renewables should expand where they make power cheaper and more secure; nuclear energy should be treated as a strategic asset rather than a perennial planning problem, and gas as essential even if just for reliability while the system changes. The objective is not to maximise any one of wind, gas, solar or nuclear. It is to build electricity that is cheap, clean, abundant and secure. That means pricing the whole system and using markets and competition wherever they can discover cheaper solutions. Government should intervene where national security, monopoly or genuine external costs require it.”, 

The Right Way