Headlines this last week have reported an increasing tension between Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband, and the former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair – both of the Labour Party fold, of course. The former PM’s eponymous Institute for Global Change has published a report that apparently argues for Miliband’s zeal to be cooled down. ‘Miliband’s Net Zero promises are false, Tony Blair’s think tank warns,‘ said the Telegraph on Thursday. The Sun followed with ‘Miliband’s ambitious pledge to deliver 650,000 green jobs to Britain slammed by Tony Blair‘. But, sadly, this tension doesn’t quite represent a dispute between anti- and pro-Net Zero forces that these headlines suggest. And as ever with Blairites, the remedy may well be worse than the disease.
Anyone reading the report in search of red meat is likely to be disappointed. It is a long tract that will only satisfy players of buzzword bingo – authored, as it is, by think tank wonks in favour of a long-term industrial strategy. Even to fans of industrial strategy as such, this is likely to be disappointing, for two principal reasons. First, there is no meaningful emphasis on industry, but empty promises that certain policies, also known as ‘picking winners’, can drive particular outcome. Second, whether the authors understand it as such or not, it is written wholly from the green perspective, which is categorically anti-industrial, and is consequently unable to identify the mistakes that have been made in recent decades.
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