Sir Tony Blair has performed a dramatic U-turn following his attack on the government’s net zero policies as the row threatened to derail Labour’s plans.
The former prime minister had warned that energy secretary Ed Miliband’s eco policies and the push towards renewable energy were wrong because voters know the financial and lifestyle sacrifices needed to meet government pledges will have virtually no impact on climate change.
His criticism, contained in the foreword to a report for his Tony Blair Institute (TBI), fuelled the fury over high energy costs that have exacerbated the cost of living crisis and damaged economic growth by piling on costs for businesses and manufacturers.
But in a reversal on Wednesday, a spokesperson for the TBI insisted that Sir Tony supports the current government’s policies.
The spokesperson said: “The TBI report is clear: we must prioritise technologies that capture carbon, place a bigger emphasis on protecting and enhancing nature, and develop new nuclear power, smart grids, and a new system of financing existing renewable solutions in developing economies. The UK government is already pursuing these, and their approach is the right one.”
They added: “The report is clear [that] we support the government's 2050 net zero targets, to give certainty to the investors and innovators who can develop these new solutions and make them deployable.”
The U-turn comes less than 24 hours before voters go to the polls in the local elections and the Runcorn by-election, in the first major electoral test of Sir Keir Starmer’s government since last year’s election. Downing Street was asked whether officials had scrambled to secure the clarification from Sir Tony’s think tank, and did not deny that this was the case.
Kemi Badenoch’s official spokesperson told journalists: “She enjoyed the fact that, barely five minutes out from PMQs, the Tony Blair Institute felt it fit to release that statement.”
Sir Tony had called for the government to invest more in carbon capture, which sees carbon removed from the air; to allow fossil fuels to continue to be used; to make greater use of technology, including artificial intelligence; and to oversee a rollout of nuclear power.
The former PM had claimed that voters “feel they’re being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal”.
His intervention on Tuesday came as the Climate Change Committee warned that the UK is critically unprepared for the escalating climate crisis and accused the government of not doing enough in the face of impending floods, heatwaves, droughts, and wildfires.
It enabled Sir Keir to claim during PMQs that his predecessor is “absolutely aligned” with the current government.
Responding to DUP MP Sammy Wilson, Sir Keir said: “What Tony Blair said is we should have more carbon capture – we’ve invested in carbon capture. That’s many jobs across different parts of the country.
“He said that AI [artificial intelligence] should be used; we agree with that. We’ve invested huge amounts in AI and the jobs of the future. He also said we need domestic targets so that businesses have their certainty.
“If you look at the detail of what Tony Blair said, he’s absolutely aligned with what we’re doing here. These are the jobs and the security of the future.”
The attempt to cool down the row came after environment secretary Steve Reed earlier on Wednesday admitted that Sir Tony’s criticisms of Labour’s net zero policies were “valid and important”.
Speaking to Times Radio, Mr Reed disagreed with a government source who accused the ex-PM of “having a public tantrum”, and said that Sir Tony “is making a valid and important contribution to a very significant debate that we’re having”.
He went on: “I agree with much of what he said, but not absolutely every word and dot and comma of it. But this government is moving to clean energy because it’s best for Britain. It’s more energy security for Britain. It’s jobs and investment right across the United Kingdom. And those are all things we all want to see.”
It was a very different tone from the one used by sources close to Mr Miliband, who was seen as the main target of Sir Tony’s ire.
The ally of the energy secretary said: “We’ve just won an election, in part on an argument that we need to speed up the clean energy transition. The PM said last week that clean energy is in the DNA of the government.”
But despite appearing to disagree with Mr Miliband’s hardline stance, Mr Reed defended the government’s actions.
These include a 78 per cent tax on energy profits, which is pushing up the price of energy; stopping drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea; and closing down coal mines. Instead, Mr Miliband has greenlighted plans for massive solar and wind farms as renewable alternatives.
Mr Reed said: “The reason we’re asking people to take that action is because it breaks our dependency on fossil fuels and the likes of Vladimir Putin. Why should anybody that cares about the security of the United Kingdom want us to remain dependent on fossil-fuel dictators?
“We want to take back control of our energy [and] generate more of it at home, because it gives us more energy security as well as lowering prices.”
Meanwhile, Sir Tony’s former political secretary, John McTernan, denied that the former PM’s claims put him at odds with Mr Miliband, adding that Sir Tony’s views “totally align with Ed Miliband’s current policies”.
Mr McTernan told Times Radio: “Labour are toast... this election has nothing to do with net zero. There’s nothing that can be done in the next 24 hours that can change the election results.
“You look at all the focus groups: if you go to any of them, what do people associate the Labour Party with? Taking winter fuel payments away from pensioners. Why are they attacking pensioners? Why are they now attacking the disabled? That’s what people are saying. It’s on the doorstep in Runcorn. It’s on the doorstep everywhere.”
Nicholas Stern, now a Labour peer, who was commissioned by Blair in the early 2000s to write a report on climate change, hit out at the TBI report, calling it “muddled and misleading”.
He said that it “downplays the science in its absence of a sense of urgency, and the lack of appreciation of the need for the world to achieve net zero as soon as possible in order to manage the growth in climate change impacts that are already hurting households and businesses across the world and in the UK”. He added: “Delay is dangerous.”
