Tony Blair Weighs in on Net Zero Again – and Lets Slip His Real Agenda

His call for energy pragmatism over ideology might sound helpful, but don't be fooled

If there is anything good in the latest report to emerge from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (IGC), it is nothing that wasn’t pointed out many times many years ago by the likes of the Global Warming Policy Foundation and Net Zero Watch, among others. I have reported here on four earlier interventions from Blair’s IGC, each of which have been presented as a “devastating blow” or something similar against Ed Miliband. And this is now a fifth in little over a year. However, the welcomes that these reports receive have seemed to miss what they actually say. And this latest is no exception. Tony Blair remains the problem, not the solution.

The Times picked up the story, running the headline: ‘Tony Blair urges Ed Miliband: Don’t be ideological on Net Zero — drill.’ “On this Tony Blair is right,” said Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch on X. “Labour’s ideological Net Zero dogma is leaving Britain exposed to energy shocks, higher bills and global instability.” The context of the story being of course the fate of the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields, committed to by the previous government, but which are at risk under Labour’s election promise not to allow any further North Sea development. These are promises which are increasing political tensions in the wake of the Iran crisis plunging energy markets into disarray.

But the political maxim that holds in such times is ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’, and Blair and his minions are nothing but a political caste of Machiavellians. The IGC first report to send a shot across Miliband’s bows back in February last year was, I pointed out at the time, largely funded and authored by Green Blob grantees. It argued that Britain should beg China to make us an annexe of its industrial force. A second report in May was reported as a “blast” against Miliband’s “irrational” and “hysterical” agenda, but in fact stated that none of its content “invalidates the inconvenient truth that the climate is changing”, that climate change “is one of the fundamental challenges of our time” and that we should “continue to deploy renewable energy, which is both necessary and cost effective”. A third report in October, at its face stated that “The future of Britain relies on access to plentiful, low-cost energy”. But this future was little more than a wonkish fantasy in which Net Zero energy policy and technology was designed by AI. And a fourth report – unless I have lost count – in February this year argued that Miliband’s Clean Power 2030 agenda was “no longer fit for purpose” and that it “is not climate leadership – it is climate theatre”. For all the factual observations, the report, I argued, was “merely trying to save Net Zero without confronting the causes of Net Zero”.

In other words, the problem is that the terms of Britain’s policy agendas – in all domains – are set by lofty think tanks, which manifestly serve opaque interests and ideological priorities that are not ours.