Sir Keir Starmer

Sir Keir Starmer

Labour — Holborn and St Pancras

Speaking in the House of Commons on 25 March 2026

Debate

Engagements

Contribution

I am going to have one more go. The legislation, the statute—[Interruption.] The law prescribes the decision maker. The Opposition know that; they should be embarrassed. The Leader of the Opposition is attacking me without having read the legislation. The legislation sets out who the decision maker is: it is the Secretary of State, not the Prime Minister. It has to be the Secretary of State, and it is a quasi-judicial process—exactly the process that they ran for many years. Oil and gas will be part of the mix for many years to come, but we do need to get on to renewables. We are discussing this because of the war. We need to de-escalate—[Interruption.] Yes, we are. That is why I stuck to my principles not to join the war and to act in collective self-defence. I appreciate that the Leader of the Opposition does not get that. She wanted to jump into the war without regard for the consequences, and now she has done the mother of all U-turns and is stranded without a thought-through position. When she was asked at the weekend whether she approved of the war, she said, “Oh, that’s a difficult one.” It certainly is if you have absolutely no judgment.

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