I’m not sure just how quickly the Labour government is actually moving Britain towards being ‘net zero’, but it is certainly speeding us on our way to becoming ‘mug zero’. Or more precisely, to being a zero creator not just of mugs, but also of plates, bowls and teapots, too. In fact, anything made of pottery or porcelain that we eat or drink from. This is all thanks to Ed Miliband’s hard-line net zero ideological zealotry, because of which another venerable name in British crockery could be about to go pop.

This time the Labour bottle of doom has stopped spinning on the 217-year-old potter Denby. The firm has gone into administration – blaming energy prices and increased labour costs – with some 600 jobs now hanging in the balance. There can scarcely be a single person in Britain who hasn’t at some point raised a heavily glazed Denby stoneware mug to their lips. But it could all soon be a distant memory.

The potential collapse of the Derbyshire pottery, a going concern since 1809, comes hot on the heels of the failure of Royal Stafford, based in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. Royal Stafford had been making china tableware since 1845 – although the site it occupied had been manufacturing crockery items since 1787. The company went bust with the loss of 80 jobs in February last year.

What does it say about us that we can’t even........

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