Key events
UK launches Yemen airstrikes, joining intense US campaign against Houthi rebels
British fighter jets joined their US counterparts in airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels overnight, the first military action authorised by the Labour government and the first UK participation in an aggressive American bombing campaign against the group, Dan Sabbagh reports.
Dale Vince accuses Blair of talking ‘net zero nonsense’
Dale Vince, the founder of the renewable energy company Ecotricity and Labour party donor, has accused Tony Blair of talking “nonsense” on net zero policy. In a statement he said:
This from Tony Blair is net zero nonsense. He talks of growing fossil demand from China, when in fact it has peaked. He says we need less focus on renewable energy and more on carbon capture – one is cheap and abundant and prevents carbon emissions, the other is an incredibly expensive way of trying to deal with emissions. Prevention (green energy) is always better and cheaper than the cure.
Net zero is in fact the economic opportunity of the century. Jobs and GDP growth is what’s at stake, green energy can bring both of those, fossil fuels will keep us on the global energy bill rollercoaster and carbon capture is a fools errand. Expected better than this from the TBI.
The Green party peer Jenny Jones has described Tony Blair as “completely out of touch” on climate policy. She posted this on social media.
Tony Blair is completely out of touch. @UKLabour should ignore him as a past relic. Net Zero is popular with people.
Who can argue with warmer homes, better public transport and (potentially) much cheaper energy, when we unlink from gas.
Environment secretary Steve Reed plays down significance of Blair’s criticism of net zero strategy
In his interview with Times Radio, Steve Reed, the environment secretary, was specifically asked about the claim from an unnamed Labour source who said that Tony Blair’s net zero comments amounted to a tantrum. (See 9.46am.) Asked if he agreed, Reed replied: “No, I don’t.”
Reed also played down the extent to which the Blair article amounted to criticism of government policy. He said:
One of the other points that Tony is making in his piece is that there needs to be more focus on carbon capture and storage technology. Well, we agree with that. The government is investing £22bn in that technology. That’s the highest amount any government has ever invested.
So I think we are doing what Tony Blair says he wants to see, but we’re also shifting away from dependence, over-dependence on fossil fuels because it’s better for the country to take control of our own energy.
And, in an interview with LBC, asked if Blair was right to say “net zero is doomed”, Reed replied:
I don’t think that’s quite what Tony Blair said, to be a fair. This government is transitioning the economy away from being dependent on fossil fuels.
In the foreword he wrote to the report published by his thinktank yesterday, Blair did not explicitly talk about UK government policy (he was talking about climate policy in the developing world generally – although the points he made apply as much to the UK as to anywhere else) and he did not directly mention the 2050 net zero target. But he did say:
Any strategy based on either “phasing out” fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail.
Labour anger ‘palpable’ after Tony Blair’s intervention on government climate strategy
Good morning. Keir Starmer faces PMQs a day after Tony Blair in effect fired a torpedo at his net zero strategy – an essential part of Labour’s Plan for Change. We covered the Blair comments on the blog yesterday and here is Jessica Elgot’s story.
Blair has been out of office for 15 years, but he is still an influential and knowledgeable figure and there is no one alive in British politics who has a better record at winning general elections. Until relatively recently, climate policy was an area on which all the main parties were broadly agreed. After Kemi Badenoch recently gave a speech saying that the government’s legal target of getting carbon emissions down to net zero by 2050 was unachievable (despite the fact the Tory government legislated for this, and Badenoch herself was one of the MPs who approved the secondary legislation without voting against), and with Nigel Farage now saying the government does not need to do anything about climate change, the Blair intervention is final proof that that consensus is now in tatters.
Badenoch is likely to raise this at PMQs today, not least because much of what Blair said sounded as if it could have come from one of her speeches. According to Politico, Farage is also due to get a question today too.
Steve Reed, the environment secretary, was doing a morning interview round, and he played down the significance of Blair’s intervention. He told Times Radio:
[Blair is] making a valid and important contribution to a very significant debate that we’re having. 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.
Reed was following Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, who said this when asked about the Blair comments in the Commons yesterday.
I agree with a lot of what [the report from Blair’s thinktank] says. It says that we should move ahead on carbon capture and storage, which the government are doing. It says that we should move ahead on the role of artificial intelligence, which the government are doing. It says that we should move ahead on nuclear, which the government are doing.
But, privately, Labour figures are not as relaxed about Blair’s intervention as these comments imply. This is what Sam Blewett and Noah Keate are reporting in their London Playbook briefing.
Anger in the Labour ranks was palpable last night, with one campaigner telling Playbook the foot soldiers “working their socks off” ahead of the locals are “incredibly pissed off.” The well-connected campaigner suggested it was the tantrum of “someone struggling for influence” … and even went on to point out the TBI has received funds from Saudi Arabia. (Blair’s think tank insisted it was “editorially independent.”)
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, speaks to the Scottish TUC conference in Dundee.
Morning: Adrian Ramsay, the Green party’s co-leader, is campaigning in Doncaster.
Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.
2pm: Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, gives evidence to the joint committee on human rights.
2pm: David Lammy, the foreign secretary, gives evidence to the Lords international relations and defence committee.
Afternoon: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is campaigning in Tunbridge Wells in Kent.
Afternoon: Kemi Badenoch is campaigning in Hertfordshire. She is also due to do an interview with GB News.
Afternoon: Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, is campaigning in south Yorkshire.
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