The SNP, Climate Denial, and Apartheid Complicity
Middleton’s argument rests on four claims: that Jackdaw and Rosebank would protect jobs, improve energy security, reduce emissions by replacing imported LNG, and raise tax revenues that could be invested in renewables. Each claim sounds plausible only if you make that bizarre choice of separating it from climate science, energy economics, and the political ownership of the North Sea. So let’s break down where he goes wrong.
The jobs argument is the emotional core of Middleton’s case. He says Westminster is “throwing North Sea workers on the scrapheap” and that Jackdaw and Rosebank would create thousands of jobs. But this completely ignores the fact that the North Sea is a declining basin. The North Sea Transition Authority predicts that oil and gas production will decline by two-thirds in the coming decade. This is in large part because accessible North Sea reserves are dwindling, and drilling is becoming increasingly expensive and technically challenging. When combined with increasing safety costs, the OGV Energy reports:
You could employ every single living adult in Scotland to the North Sea, and yet it would not change the geological reality that the North Sea basin is simply becoming an expensive headache to drill from.
Energy Security Mythology
The energy security argument is also misleading. Middleton says Scotland should reduce reliance on “countries in the Middle East” and “friends of Vladimir Putin” by increasing domestic production. But oil and gas is traded through international markets, and Rosebank oil is not automatically reserved for Scottish households. More domestic extraction does not mean cheaper bills for people in Aberdeen, Dundee, or Glasgow. The Climate Change Committee has been clear that increasing UK oil and gas extraction would have, “at most, a marginal effect” on consumer prices. The real route to energy security is reducing fossil fuel demand through expanding our renewable potential.
We can see the clear benefits of moving away from oil and gas in Spain, where wholesale electricity prices have fallen sharply because wind and solar have increasingly displaced gas in the power mix. In the first four months of 2026, Spain’s average wholesale price was €44/MWh, compared with €127 in Italy, €103 in the UK and €96 in Germany. The key mechanism is the merit order: gas used to set the market price in many hours, but its role as the marginal price-setting source has collapsed from around 55% of hours in 2022 to 9% in early 2026, as wind and solar reached 44% of generation while fossil fuels fell to 17%.
Another question worth asking Jack and his SNP colleagues is that if it truly is “Scotland’s energy”, then why don’t they advocate taking it into public and community ownership?
The IPPR have previously modelled the benefits of publicly owned energy company for the UK, arguing that it can reduce financing costs for renewable projects that require large upfront investment. Unlike private developers, a publicly owned energy company would face less pressure to maximise short-term profits at the level of individual projects. Instead of prioritising only the highest-return investments, it could use a portfolio approach, funding strategically important projects with varying rates of return as long as the overall portfolio remains financially sustainable. This would allow a publicly owned energy company to invest in projects that are socially and economically valuable but may be overlooked by private investors seeking faster or higher profits. They also not another important detail in their report 2030 And Beyond:
“A publicly owned entity, benefitting from lower financing costs and a less stringent profit imperative, can undertake additional investments in clean energy generation and pass on the resulting lower costs by selling electricity directly to end consumers via long-term contracts, bypassing the wholesale market.”
You can also find similar proposals made by Common Weal (Powering Our Ambition), the ERA (Assessing the case for public ownership), the TUC (Public Ownership of Clean Energy), Common Wealth (Power to the People), Transition Economics (Public Ownership of Energy Generation in the North East Scotland) and once-upon-a-time the UK Labour Party (Bringing Energy Home).
So despite all the above proposals, why does the SNP not advocate public ownership of energy as part of their independence vision? If it is “Scotland’s energy”, then why not put ownership of that energy into the hands of Scottish communities? We’ll come to that in just a second.
Denying Climate Reality
Middleton claims Jackdaw and Rosebank would reduce Scotland’s carbon footprint because domestic gas is less carbon-intensive than imported LNG shipped from abroad. There is a narrow point here: imported LNG can have higher production and transport emissions than some domestic gas. But that does not prove that new North Sea oil and gas is compatible with climate targets. It simply compares one fossil fuel supply chain with another. The scientific test is not whether one barrel or unit of gas is marginally cleaner than another; the test is whether approving new fossil fuel production is compatible with limiting warming and reaching net zero.
On that question, the evidence is devastating for Middleton’s argument. The International Energy Agency’s net zero pathway states that beyond projects already committed as of 2021, new oil and gas fields are not needed and should not be approved for development. The UK courts have also forced decision-makers to stop pretending that emissions disappear once oil and gas leave the platform. In the Finch ruling, the UK Supreme Court held that emissions from burning extracted oil must be included in environmental impact assessment. Following that logic, the Court of Session ruled the previous Rosebank and Jackdaw consents unlawful because they had failed to assess downstream emissions from the burning of the oil and gas produced.
So Middleton’s claim that Jackdaw and Rosebank would help meet Scotland’s 2045 net zero target is not just wrong; it reverses the reality. New fossil fuel developments lock in emissions, delay investments, and create political pressure to keep extracting for decades. The Climate Change Committee concluded in 2024 that Scotland’s 2030 climate goal was “no longer credible” because of delays, missed policies, and the absence of a comprehensive decarbonisation strategy. In that context, defending new oil and gas is simply climate denial.
We then turn back to our previous question: if it is truly “Scotland’s energy”, then why won’t the SNP advocate for public and community ownership as part of their independence vision?
BlackCore, Ithaca Energy and the Delek Group
Rosebank is not simply a Scottish jobs story. It also sits within a wider story about corporate ownership, Israel, and Scottish democratic accountability. French authorities have accused an Israeli tech firm, BlackCore, of interfering in recent Scottish elections by targeting John Swinney, the SNP and the Scottish Government, although Viginum said it had not identified who commissioned the operation and Israel denied any interest in interfering in other countries’ elections.
The Ferret has reported that Ithaca Energy, which owns a stake in Rosebank, has paid more than $1bn in dividends since 2020 to its largest shareholder, Delek Group, an Israeli energy conglomerate named in a United Nations database of companies whose activities in the occupied West Bank raise “particular human rights concerns”.
The Ferret’s analysis states that Ithaca paid $569m in dividends to Delek across 2024 and 2025, with another $101m distributed in April, taking the total since 2020 to more than $1bn. Delek has described Ithaca’s North Sea operations as a “growth engine” for its wider business. The same report notes that campaigners have warned that approving Rosebank could allow further profit to flow from the North Sea to Delek, and that WWF Norway previously estimated a further $300m could flow to Delek if Rosebank goes ahead.
This exposes the emptiness of Middleton’s “Scotland’s energy” framing. If Rosebank proceeds, part of the financial reward does not stay in Scotland. It flows through corporate ownership structures, including to a company linked by the UN to activities in the occupied West Bank, which is within Israel’s occupation and apartheid system. Supporting Rosebank is therefore not merely a position on jobs or energy security, but whether those profits should be allowed to flow to companies connected to a state that a UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry has concluded is committing genocide in Gaza.
Some would call this a stretch, and that Middleton is not actively supporting more oil and gas profits from the North Sea to continue into apartheid Israel. Yet the SNP’s softening on oil and gas has not happened in a vacuum, and it is not the first time the SNP has been weak in its opposition to apartheid Israel.
The Ferret’s investigation into lobbying shows how deeply corporate interests shape Holyrood politics. It found more than 29,000 lobbying meetings recorded in the last parliamentary term, with private-sector organisations making up more than 40% of logged meetings and PR firms or consultants another 8%. Energy, renewables, and oil and gas companies logged more than 2,500 meetings.
The same investigation detailed high-end dinners involving senior politicians, former SNP insiders, PR firms, and energy interests. True North Advisors, run by former SNP staffers, hosted dinners involving senior political figures and energy interests. In September 2023, True North hosted a dinner at the five-star Marcliffe Hotel in Aberdeen with then First Minister Humza Yousaf, Ian Wood, Shell, and BP representatives in attendance. The Ferret also reported that fossil fuel companies have lobbied against the energy profits levy (which the SNP previously spread misinformation about), with Harbour Energy seeking “ongoing support from the SNP and Scottish Government” for removing it, while BP recorded 132 lobbying meetings over the parliamentary term.
When an SNP MSP repeats the central arguments of the oil and gas lobby, jobs, energy security, domestic production, lower-carbon gas, tax revenue, we should ask why those arguments have become so comfortable inside a party that once claimed to be serious about climate leadership. The answer is the successful reshaping of Scotland’s political conversation by fossil fuel corporate power. The corporate power of billionaires is the driving force that stops SNP MSPs backing public and community ownership of energy.
The SNP’s relationship with apartheid Israel follows a similar pattern. Angus Robertson’s meeting with Israeli deputy ambassador Daniela Grudsky Ekstein in August 2024 became a major controversy because it took place while apartheid Israel faced international condemnation over its genocide in Gaza. The official note of the meeting records that Robertson referred to value in dialogue between Scotland and apartheid Israel as “critical friends”. It also records discussion of potential cooperation around business, culture, climate change, renewable energy, Israeli technology for NHS Scotland, and tourism from Israel.
A government cannot present itself as a principled opponent of war crimes, genocide, and apartheid while exploring warmer friendlier with the state carrying them out. The SNP Government later tried to withhold parts of the record, arguing disclosure could damage relations with Israel and affect the effective conduct of public affairs. The Scottish Information Commissioner ordered hidden details to be released after concluding they had been wrongly withheld and that the material was not particularly sensitive.
The SNP’s conduct reveals a gap between rhetoric and action. Publicly, it speaks of ceasefire, human rights, and Palestinian self-determination. Privately, it considered cooperation with apartheid Israel in business, technology, culture, renewables, tourism, diaspora links, and no objection to North Sea profits flowing into their pockets.
That gap has widened further with the Scottish Government’s wholesale bond programme. On 25 June 2026, the Scottish Government announced that nine banks had been appointed to support its £1.5bn bond programme, including Barclays, HSBC, Merrill Lynch International, NatWest Markets, RBC Europe, Santander, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, and Standard Chartered. HSBC, Merrill Lynch, NatWest, and RBC were selected as joint bookrunners for the inaugural issue.
The Scottish Greens accused the SNP government of breaching Holyrood’s Israel boycott position by including Barclays in the bond framework. Their argument is straightforward: the Scottish Parliament backed a motion calling on the Scottish and UK governments to impose boycotts, divestment, and sanctions targeted at the state of Israel and companies complicit in its military operations and occupation of Palestine. Barclays should clearly fall within any meaningful boycott because of its financial links to companies arming Israel.
BDS campaigners have also made Barclays a named target, arguing that it has financial ties to companies producing weapons and military technology used by Israel. Barclays disputes some of these claims and has previously said it does not make direct investments in defence firms supplying Israel, instead describing its role as providing financial services and trading shares at clients’ requests. But even that defence does not resolve the political question for the Scottish Government. If a bank is sufficiently controversial to be a major BDS target, why is an SNP government that backed a BDS motion choosing to include it in a flagship public finance programme?
Then there is the point of consistency when comparing apartheid Israel to other countries. In March 2022, the Scottish Government urged businesses in Scotland to withdraw from trading with Russia, review links to Russia, and sever them. It also said the Scottish Government and its agencies would use all available powers not to support trade and investment activity with Russia. Yet as of writing this article, the SNP completely refuses to issue the same equivalent guidance on Israel.
And then there is the question of Scottish Enterprise. The Ferret reported in 2024 that Scottish Enterprise had given grants to arms companies supplying Israel after the genocide of Gaza began. Amnesty International had also pointed in August 2024 that no company applying to Scottish Enterprise had failed a human-rights check, despite arms companies receiving grants.
In June 2025, The Ferret reported that the Government had tightened checks, but Amnesty called the review “light on detail” and criticised ministers for publishing it just before recess, limiting scrutiny. Then, after Swinney announced a pause on new public funding for arms firms linked to Israel, Amnesty then pointed out that Scottish Enterprise was refusing to publish key information on how the ban was being enforced.
You can see the pattern of the modern SNP machine: they will cry social justice for our climate and Palestinians, but meet with corporate billionaires and apartheid politicians in secret. They will cry injustice in one moment, only to sit back and do little in the next. It is here that Middleton’s video matters because it is the gradual start of SNP MSPs to push a fresh vision for independence that denies climate science, ignores energy economics, and is silent when oil and gas profits flow into apartheid Israel.
This is the SNP in 2026. Its members can either choose to fight back, or find an alternative political party that seriously tackles the challenges of contemporary Scotland.