THE government’s regulator for the electricity and downstream natural gas markets in Britain, excluding Northern Ireland, Ofgem has given the go-ahead to the construction of a £3.4 billion so-called electrical superhighway between Scotland and England.

Running from Aberdeenshire to North Yorkshire the connection will allow for the transportation of enormous amounts of Scottish generated renewable electricity to England. Most of the 311-mile-long cable will be under the North Sea, the remainder will be buried on shore, avoiding the need for large and visually intrusive pylons.

Announcing the project, Ofgem's chief executive Jonathan Brearley said: "Ofgem is fully committed to supporting the Government to meet its aims of getting clean power by 2030.

"Today's announcement is a further step in putting the regulatory systems and processes in place to speed up network regulation to achieve its aim."

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The massive new interconnector cable will be able to move two gigawatts of electricity between Scotland and England, enough to power 2 million homes, thus enabling England to benefit from offshore wind energy generated by offshore wind farms in the North Sea off the Scottish coast.

Over the coming years Scotland is expected to produce over five times as much electricity from offshore wind alone than the country needs itself.

Although the link will be able to carry electricity in both directions, it is clear that the primary purpose of the link will be to take Scottish renewable energy to markets in England. Construction is planned to start later this year, with the new connection due to be put into operation by 2029.

Doubtless, this new project will be hailed by the Labour Party and BBC Scotland as a Union benefit, investing in Scotland's infrastructure. There's no doubt that Scotland needs improved means of transporting the country's vast surplus of renewable energy to markets in England and further afield, the question however, is how much benefit and revenue Scotland will derive from this. Realistically, probably not very much.

In a normal independent country with a chronic surplus of a commodity, five times more than the domestic market can consume, a surplus so huge that it becomes worth spending £3.4bn just to get rid of it, you'd see rock bottom domestic prices and a very healthy income from exports that would support investment in public services.

However, that is not what we are going to get. Under the current setup of the UK National Grid, which financially penalises energy producers more distant from the main centres of energy consumption - the enormous conurbations concentrated in the South East and Midlands of England - the result is that Scotland ends up supplying cheap energy to England while itself experiencing the highest energy bills in the UK, even though Scotland produces most of the UK's energy.

The CEO of Octopus Energy Greg Jackson said recently that with market reform and regional pricing "Scotland would have the cheapest electricity in Europe". That is not going to happen with Keir Starmer's GB Energy.

As long as Scotland remains a part of the UK it will never have the cheapest electricity in Europe for the same reasons that Scottish domestic consumers never got the cheapest gas. It will be taken from us and given virtually tax-free to the private sector who will then sell it back to us at hugely inflated rates.

This new project could more realistically be described as a £3.4 billion siphon draining Scotland's national wealth for the benefit of private interests outwith Scotland.

If Scotland was independent this electricity would be sold to England at market rates thus producing valuable revenues which the Scottish Government could use to invest in infrastructure and public services in Scotland, instead, Scotland would reap very little benefit from the exploitation of an unlimited natural resource which rightly belongs to the people of Scotland.

(Image: Jane Barlow/PA Wire)

We saw the same sorry story with Scotland's oil in the 20th century, the proceeds of which funded massive investments in infrastructure and public transport - in the London Docklands.

In the early decades of the 21st century, it's looking more and more like a case of the cheviot, the stag, and the tall wind turbine. At least this time they won't be able to tell us that the wind is running out when Scotland starts to become restive about independence. They'll have to come up with a new scare story, and no doubt that will be dutifully parroted by BBC Scotland and the anti-independence press.

Polling amongst Conservative party members has found that the hard right candidate Kemi Badenoch is the most popular shadow cabinet minister. She enjoys a strong lead over other Tory shadow cabinet ministers enjoying a net satisfaction rating of 45.1% amongst Tories with runner-up Jeremy Hunt, who is not a leadership candidate, on 27.3%.

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Badenoch is popular among Tory members, who get the ultimate say after a series of votes by MPs to whittle down the full list of candidates to two finalists, though she is thought to be less so among parliamentarians. She has campaigned strongly on right-wing culture war issues and if chosen as leader would shift an already very right-wing Conservative party even further to the right.

The SNP is facing calls to apologise after a Scottish Government minister held a “secret meeting” with an Israeli diplomat. External Affairs Secretary Angus Robertson met with Daniela Grudsky Ekstein, Israel’s deputy ambassador to the UK on Thursday – but details of the meeting were kept secret until Monday.

The four-day delay in publicising the meeting reportedly came at the request of the Israeli embassy, which cited security concerns. An official Scottish Government readout from the meeting said they discussed “areas of mutual interest, including culture, renewable energy, and engaging the country’s respective diasporas”.

The Scottish Greens have said the SNP must “apologise for this underhand attempt to build closer ties with Israel”. There is considerable anger in Scotland at the scale of the Israeli devastation and death being wrought on the Palestinian population of Gaza as well as continuing Israeli settler land grabs on the West Bank.

This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.

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