𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Knocking VAT off our electricity bills? Not many would complain about that. Capping bus fares at £2? Saving money is nice. Cutting business rates for pubs and music venues? Absolutely. Crackdown on illegal waste sites? About time. It’s hard to argue with any of these measures, although you can question where the money is coming from. Now he faces a much tougher choice. One that will divide the nation, whatever he decides.

And there’s another decision that’s going to give him sleepless nights. Whether to greenlight more drilling in the North Sea by granting production consent for the Jackdaw gas field and Rosebank oil field. The consultation process just closed and the decision is looming. Whatever he chooses, it risks an inglorious end to his honeymoon period with voters.

The decision was a no-brainer for former energy secretary Ed Miliband. He wanted to block new drilling and go flat out on renewables. He took an awful lot of flak for it, including from me.

I don’t question climate change. But Britain still has roughly 25million gas boilers, and we aren’t shifting them out overnight. We’ll need fossil fuels for years. So it makes sense to use our own supply, with the jobs and tax revenues that brings, rather than even more imports. Jackdaw and Rosebank could deliver £28.7billion of economic benefit, explorers calculate

More fossil fuel use is bad for the planet, but Brits will burn them anyway. Better to use our own. We could even use the profits to support the green transition. Now Burnham looks minded to adopt this more pragmatic approach. And this is where his problem begins.

When a politician makes a decision, those who hate it shout louder than those who support it. Hence the chorus of disapproval for Miliband. He even had Donald Trump joining in. But if Burnham takes the opposite view, the response will be just as noisy. And much of it will come from inside his own party, along with Zack Polanski’s Greens.

Green activists, climate campaigners and Labour’s left-wing MPs are already up in arms at suggestions that Jackdaw and Rosebank could go ahead. If they do, they’ll accuse Burnham of burning the planet. The anger will be intensified by this summer’s heatwaves.

Miliband once called opening Rosebank “climate vandalism”. Now Burnham will be the vandal. He won’t like that.

Climate campaigners say the economic damage from the projects will outweigh the benefits. But Britain produces less than 1% of global emissions, so blocking these fields won’t save the planet. It might create jobs and generate money though.

It’s not an easy decision. Once Burnham makes up his mind, those who support drilling will barely thank him, while those who oppose it will be raging. Burnham cannot win. That’s how it is to be PM. For Labour’s Mr Popular, it’s going to come as a shock.