Ed Miliband Wishes Tony Blair Would Flush Off

But all is not as it seems: Blair is just as committed as Mad Ed to Net Zero 2050

Poor Ed Miliband. Like most of us, he probably wishes that Tony Blair would get lost and stop bothering him. But last week, the former Prime Minister again weighed in on Miliband’s policy of bothering us with his ‘Clean Power 2030’ agenda. A new report from the Tony Blair institute for Global Change (TBI), ‘Why Britain Needs an Energy-Strategy Reset‘, argued that “if Clean Power 2030 was ever fit for purpose, that is no longer the case”, and that it “is not climate leadership – it is climate theatre”.

It was a year ago that the TBI last offered its expert wonks’ expertise to the Government. As I argued here, the report was widely viewed – welcomed, even – as a damning indictment of Net Zero. But it seemed to me that Blair’s geeks weren’t so much criticising Net Zero as trying to save it at all costs. Blair’s solution to the obvious flaws in the agenda? Forget trying to resurrect the industries that expensive energy has already killed, buy cheaper steel and other stuff from China and then beg China to “invest” here.

That was no solution to – nor is it even a criticism of – climate and energy policy. The report rightly noted that more jobs would be lost than can feasibly be “created” by existing climate and energy policy. But making Britain an annexe of Chinese manufacturing isn’t reindustrialisation. It’s a perverse way of ameliorating the excesses caused in the first place by abolishing coal and forcing industrial manufacturing overseas, only to make ourselves a low-carbon final-assembly plant for components produced in high-carbon factories in the East. And that would be assuming it worked at all. Many have criticised the security aspects of such a relationship with the Chinese – a fact even acknowledged by Blair’s report. But it’s the UK Government’s good faith (and Blair’s and Miliband’s, for that matter) that demand’s scrutiny.

The TBI’s new report is not so different. It was again well received by some Net Zero policy sceptics as confirmation of Miliband’s madness. Yet for all the criticism of Miliband’s Clean Power 2030 agenda, it states unequivocally that “the Net Zero by 2050 target must stand firm”.