Let’s scrap Britain’s successful climate law so we can burn more gas, lose investment and have higher bills. Crazy as it might seem, that is the message of Kemi Badenoch’s new energy strategy. The Conservative leader proposes to repeal the 2008 Climate Change Act in favour of a plan to “maximise oil and gas extraction”, and remove all legally binding carbon targets. It’s pitched as pragmatism. But it’s a lurch into ideological self-harm.
Britain’s energy problem isn’t its climate legislation, which is admired globally, backed by industry and supported by the public. It’s that this country remains too dependent on volatile fossil fuels. Emissions targets are not the reason for high bills. It is gas prices, which skyrocketed after Russia invaded Ukraine. They set UK electricity prices. In Europe, they don’t – that’s why bills are lower there. Rather, Mrs Badenoch is choosing to follow Donald Trump in rolling back climate goals and seeing electricity prices in the US rise, not fall.
In Britain, she is mimicking Reform UK in a race to the populist bottom. It’s a culture war stunt – turning climate doubt into tribal identity. And it’s pathetic: a retreat from 17 years of Conservative climate leadership. The former Tory prime minister Theresa May rightly condemned it. This isn’t pragmatism – it’s the abandonment of a successful industrial strategy, a gift to polluters and a blow to corporate confidence. It shatters a rare cross-party consensus that made Britain a global leader.
Contrast that with Ed Miliband’s Labour party conference speech, delivered the day before Mrs Badenoch’s announcement. The energy secretary offered a full-throated defence of the green transition as both an economic necessity and a moral mission. He argued that clean energy is the foundation for a new economy – one built in the interests of working people, with unionised jobs, lower bills and public ownership. He named the rightwing billionaires standing in the way – notably Elon Musk – and cast Labour’s green agenda as a battle for the future against misinformation and oligarchic wealth.
The most significant part of his speech wasn’t about energy at all. It was his rejection of trickle-down economics and austerity, the twin failures behind decades of stagnation. By doing so, he used clean energy not just as climate policy but as a Trojan horse for a deeper transformation – a blueprint for a post-crash greener, fairer social democracy. Mr Miliband’s pitch went far beyond cautious technocracy. It was a story about whose interests the economy serves, and a subtle dig at Labour’s current orthodoxy on growth.
The politics of transition are hard. Mr Miliband didn’t spell out in his speech how Labour would shoulder the costs of structural change, though on the conference fringes he worked hard to turn tensions with trade unions into partnership. He still faces the pressure of high bills in a cost of living crisis. Building an affordable clean energy system must be the goal of the government – not just Mr Miliband. Mrs Badenoch’s absurd plan is anti-science and a reckless attempt at framing net zero as elitist. In an age of cynicism, cautious technocracy won’t win hearts.
Mr Miliband offered conviction and hope. Speeches can inspire, but it is delivery that keeps people onside. That is Mr Miliband’s test – and Britain can’t afford for him to fail.
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