Steve Yemm column: Mansfield can't be an afterthought in the net zero debate

When the pits closed, we lost more than jobs.

We lost apprenticeships, local businesses, supply chains, and a settled sense of what a working life here could look like.

What followed wasn't enough, and it took too long to arrive.

Decades on, the effects are still visible.

That history is part of why the debate about net zero by 2050 feels different in Mansfield than it might in Westminster.

I agree with Andy Burnham that the move to cleaner energy can create jobs, attract investment, and reduce Britain's reliance on imported energy.

But I think we also need to be honest about the harder question: what happens if meeting a particular target date starts to work against keeping industry in Britain, keeping energy affordable, and giving British manufacturers a genuine chance to compete?

My view is that Mansfield shouldn't be asked to let an industry go on the assumption that something better will eventually appear.

Ideally, the replacement should be in place, or well underway, before the old industry goes.

There's also a question of substance behind the target.

If we close a British factory and end up importing the same product from China, it's worth asking whether that counts as progress.

If British steel is displaced by steel made elsewhere with higher emissions, the environmental case becomes harder to make.

Buying greener products manufactured abroad doesn't, on its own, build a stronger British economy.

Countries around the world are going to need more steel, nuclear technology, grid equipment, batteries and similar products as they decarbonise.

I'd like to see more of that made in Britain — and I think Mansfield, with its industrial history, has a reasonable claim to be part of that supply chain, rather than simply a place the transition happens to.

The skills and experience built up here over generations don't have to belong only to the past.

With the right investment, they could support new engineering and manufacturing jobs that let young people build a career without leaving the area.

A reasonable test, I think, is this – make it here, use it here, sell it abroad.

That's why I'd like to see Labour weigh production alongside prohibition when it comes to net zero policy.

Before closing something down, what's replacing it?

Before industrial jobs are lost, where are the new ones coming from?

Before making something costlier to produce here, are we confident that won't just shift the work overseas?

These aren't objections to decarbonising.

They're practical questions about how we do it – and I think they're consistent with Labour values.

Mansfield has already been through one industrial transition where the old economy ended well before a new one arrived.

I don't think we should risk that happening again.