The British government is considering reducing allocations for its important program to modernize millions of homes with the aim of improving their energy efficiency, with the aim of saving about two billion pounds ($2.6 billion) from the Ministry of Energy’s allocations to finance the increase in military spending.
Bloomberg News Agency quoted an informed source who requested anonymity as saying that the “Warm Homes” program, whose allocations are estimated at about 15 billion pounds sterling, is among the programs whose expenses the government is considering reducing. It is also considering reducing allocations for the carbon emissions capture and storage program, while auditing spending allocations on hydrogen production projects as a source of clean energy.
The source said that the government has not taken any final decisions on these ideas yet, and they may be changed, while officials are studying the available options before announcing the government budget on October 28, according to the German News Agency.
The government did not announce a plan to improve energy efficiency for up to 5 million homes by 2030 until last January. However, all government departments must allocate 1 percent of their capital spending budgets to finance defense investments as a result of the repercussions of the US war against Iran.
At the same time, the government called on the British Ministry of Energy Security and Zero Neutrality to reduce its spending by an additional two billion pounds sterling by the end of the current decade. This ministry is considered to have one of the largest ministries in terms of budget, which reflects the huge sums allocated to the transformation of the energy sector in Britain. Because many of the department's spending plans span several years, this gives officials room to cut or postpone future spending rather than cancel projects.
It is too early to monitor the final outcome of the student movement in France. Despite the radical measures approved by the authorities, including closing 500 schools and universities, preventing gatherings or demonstrations near them, arresting about 2,000 people on Thursday alone, and Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin’s call on the country’s public prosecutors to be strict in dealing with the perpetrators of various riots, and holding parents responsible for what their children do, the movement continues. Indeed, it may reach its peak on Tuesday, October 6, due to the call for general mobilization and a day of movement throughout French territory. What is striking about what France is currently witnessing is the speed with which the demand movement has expanded, which was launched modestly at the beginning of last week from a high school in a suburb of Paris, whose students complained of a shortage in the educational body and deteriorating school conditions.
Political tension
Since its inception, the concerned authorities did not pay any attention to these movements, before they spread very quickly amid a cloudy political atmosphere due to the presidential election next spring, and against the backdrop of an economic, financial and social crisis headlined by the huge rise in the prices of oil and gas derivatives.
The result was that after one week, 1,027 public secondary schools, out of 3,700 across the country, were affected by the protest movement. Many of them were characterized by dual violence: the violence of demonstrators and rioters on the one hand, and the violence of police and security personnel on the other. Also, thirty universities joined the movement in support of secondary school students.
Edouard Jeffray, Minister of Education, said on Friday that “there is clearly a campaign aimed at attacking and destroying public education facilities,” and that “more than a hundred secondary schools were severely damaged.” The concerned minister stated that 67 educational officials, including 40 principals, were injured in recent days, in addition to 140 students. Given the deteriorating situation, he requested the help of parents and students to curb the protest movement. As an additional measure, Laurent Nunez, Minister of the Interior, called on governors and security officials to be strict and prevent demonstrations, describing what was happening as “unruly violence” that targeted the police and gendarmerie, causing 300 injuries among their ranks.
Two readings of the movement
There are two readings of what is happening in France. The first: reading the authorities, along with the right (traditional and extremist), and the so-called centrist bloc supporting President Emmanuel Macron. This reading is based on denouncing the violence of the demonstrators, fueling the protests, political exploitation of the movement, and pushing towards chaos. This camp holds the “Proud France” party, led by presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, responsible, primarily. On the other hand, there is a different reading of the left, with most of its formations, denouncing the state’s ignoring of the demands of the demonstrators and its resort to violence, and denying its direct relationship to what is happening.
In a press interview on Thursday, Milochon responded to the accusations against him and his party, denying any connection to what is happening and to fueling the movement and violence. He called on the demonstrators to be “disciplined,” saying: “There is no benefit in starting fires.” We are fighters, and we are disciplined. We do not do anything that conflicts with the goal we set for ourselves. We call for peaceful, non-violent methods of struggle.”
Mélenchon warned against disorderly actions and using them as an excuse to target demonstrators, addressing the youth, saying: “I call on you, young people, wherever you are, to be disciplined in the struggle. You must not use any other method than non-violent methods of struggle.” The Melenchon party asserts that the accusations leveled against it are aimed at “diverting attention” from the legitimate demands raised by the students and with them.
The response to Melenchon was not long in coming and came on Monday morning, in an interview with RTL Radio by Interior Minister Darmanin, who considered that “when teachers and public facilities are attacked, it is natural that justice will be present.” There is an active and violent minority. These people must be arrested and brought before the judiciary.”
The Minister of the Interior, who chaired an emergency meeting that included governors, police directors, gendarmerie, and intelligence officials, described what was happening as “no longer having anything to do with the legitimate expression of the demands of high school students, but rather it now bears all the characteristics of a state of violence in urban areas,” that is, cities and their suburbs.
In turn, Education Minister Jeffrey saw that what happened on Thursday constituted a “transformation” from efforts to close secondary schools to widespread acts of violence, stressing that it had become “a project to destroy the public education system” in the country, and that the movement of secondary school students had become hostage to “extremely violent fringe groups.”
Bruno Rutayo, head of the traditional right-wing "Republicans" party and a presidential candidate, denounced the "politicization of the movement" and the role played by Mélenchon and his party, and went so far as to call for it to be banned from existing. In the same context, his deputy, François-Xavier Bellamy, said on Friday, “What is happening is not a movement or mobilization of secondary school students. It is chaos.” Indeed, it is “preparation for the general chaos that the (Proud France) party is preparing for, and therefore the question of dissolving it has now been raised.”
Intelligence report
Sebastien Le Cornu, Prime Minister, seems convinced that Mélenchon and his party are playing a role in the ongoing movement, based on a report prepared by internal intelligence and seen by the right-wing newspaper Le Figaro.
According to its agencies, in a report dating back to last Tuesday, at least twenty elected officials and officials of the “Proud France” party were “involved in the protest movement” in cities such as Lille, Rennes, Toulouse, Albi, Rouen, and Avignon. The intelligence report stated, “It is clear that high school students are being pushed to carry out these movements by elements of the extreme left, who have been monitored whether within student union structures at the University of Paris VIII or at the University of Paris Nanterre, as well as within political organizations such as the Revolutionary Communists, the Permanent Revolution, or the Proud France Party.”
According to the aforementioned report, what characterizes the current movement is “a clear desire to cause chaos, especially by committing acts of urban violence, without specific social demands.” The coordinator of the “Proud France” party responded to Le Cornu, accusing him of “indulging in conspiracy theory,” and referred the movement to the difficulties facing high schools and also the educational body that supports some of the movement.
Government priority
What matters most to the authorities is to contain the movement and not expand it further. Therefore, the government initially decided to withdraw from imposing registration fees on “high-tech certificate” students or on students in university preparatory departments, a step that was included in the draft budget for the year 2027.
Likewise, the Minister of Education hastened the call for expanded consultations with representatives of secondary students, parents, and teachers, in addition to launching an electronic “platform” that students can use to express their demands.
Through their statements, officials tried to distinguish between the students and the perpetrators of the riots, meaning to express understanding to the first and resort to firmness to the others. The movement continued on Friday, although its intensity subsided due to measures to prevent gatherings and demonstrations in front of 400 secondary schools, and the arrest of at least two thousand people.
