James Grundy MP: Coal mine is great news for region

The news that the Cumbrian coal mine just outside Whitehaven has been given approval by the Government is great news for our region.

I am absolutely delighted at this pro-business decision, which will help to cement our industrial energy security for decades to come.

The Cumbrian coal mine will produce metallurgical coal for use in British industry, coal which we currently have to import from abroad, including from Russia.

It is absolutely right that we have prioritised energy security and British jobs by giving permission for this new coal mine to go ahead, the first new coal mine to be given such permission in four decades.

I was shocked to see the Labour Party and a number of other left-wing groups vociferously oppose this decision. Not too long ago, the Labour Party still had within its ranks those who spoke up for British industry and British workers.

This just goes to show how fundamentally the Labour Party changed during the Corbyn years, as true working class representation was driven out in exchange for radical left-wing activists holding every sort of fringe view.

Corbyn may have gone, but the dangerous political radicalism he brought to Labour will remain for some time, perhaps generations.

This is not the Labour Party our grandfathers once regularly voted for and I doubt it ever will be again.

It seems that the Labour Party of today has been fully taken over by left wing intellectuals who oppose coal mining in Britain, and the jobs that it brings, but are still happy to import coal from foreign countries, often from places that have lower environmental safeguards and weaker commitment to workers' rights.

This is the ultimate form of virtue signalling by the intellectual left, to offshore British jobs and wealth to foreign states, shipping the coal we need from halfway around the world and thus doing nothing to actually protect the environment, and engaging in mutual backslapping exercises in southern wine bars about how moral they are whilst doing so.

If it falls to Conservative MPs like I and my 'red wall' colleagues to speak up for British jobs, British industry and British workers, then so be it.

I always believed that Labour would abandon their historic position on these issues when it was convenient to do so, and so it has proved.

I would particularly like to commend my Conservative colleagues Trudy Harrison, the MP for Copeland, and Mark Jenkinson, the MP for Workington, who have tirelessly campaigned on this issue for a number of years now.

We promised to bring jobs, industry and pride back to the North of England when we were elected back in that historic election of 2019. Let the opening of the Cumbrian coal mine be one more step on that path to the restoration of our great nation.

Merry Christmas to all and may all your presents be as good as this one!