Last week, the Government announced the results of Allocation Round 7 (AR7) – record-breaking subsidies for renewable energy stretching 20 years into the future. ‘Clean, homegrown, power is the right choice for this country to bring down bills for good’, chimed Ed Miliband, the Net Zero Secretary, claiming that AR7 prices were 40% cheaper than […]
Sometimes it seems the world can be divided in two: Those who have read Vassily Grossman’s Life and Fate and those who have yet to. Grossman’s novel, set mainly in the Soviet Union during the battle of Stalingrad, has been compared to Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Its title consciously echoes its predecessor’s. But whatever their comparative literary merits, […]
“To boldly go where no economy has been before” was the theme of the Committee on Climate Change’s net zero report released last week — but with fingers cross behind backs. No industrialised economy has completely decarbonised, as the committee recommended. Going to net-zero is necessary, feasible and cost effective, the committee’s chair Lord Deben asserts about […]
“When seventeen and a half million voted to leave, that was a revolutionary act,” Geoffrey Cox, the attorney general told Nick Robinson last week in what, to the ears of this listener, was the most thoughtful, eloquent and sensitive reflections on Brexit by any minister. “It was a step that was designedly taken by those millions to […]
“Les gilets jaunes triompheront,” was the message on the Arc de Triomphe that greeted President Macron on his return from the pointless Buenos Aires G20 summit. Predictably, his 57-minute address last Tuesday on France’s transition écologique did nothing to quell popular unrest and suggests the French president’s troubles are only going to worsen. In condemning […]
How conservative is the Conservative Party? Since the high noon of Thatcherism in the 1980s, the party has been on an ideological journey propelled more than anyone else, by Tony Blair. His apparent invincibility during New Labour’s prosperous decade seemed to demand a new kind of politics and a search for new political truths. Blair, […]
Minutes after being appointed Prime Minister, Theresa May was talking of her mission to fight burning injustice. “If you’re one of those families, if you’re just managing, I want to address you directly,” Mrs. May said. “The government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours.” So […]
Everywhere markets are in retreat. Conservative politicians respond to the Left blaming markets for the state of modern Britain by pledging to fix broken markets and promising more interventions and more regulation. Their pitch to voters is “we’re better regulators and spenders than Labour”. Planning policy “in the right hands” can be a powerful tool […]
At a February 2000 press conference, the first man to walk on the moon announced the National Academy of Engineering’s twenty most significant engineering achievements of the twentieth century. The aeroplane took third place; the automobile second; in first, the vast networks of electricity that power the developed world. None of the other nineteen would have […]
Theresa May is the second British prime minister to attempt to recast the UK’s problematic relationship with the European Union. David Cameron tried to reformulate our relationship by giving the UK a special status inside the EU, culminating in the deal he agreed with Brussels in February last year. But that effort died when he lost the EU referendum a few […]
“What we’re saying to the politicians, regulators and customers is: let’s keep going – this [wind power] has been a huge success,” Scottish Power’s Keith Anderson gushed yesterday. It certainly has been for Mr Anderson and Scottish Power’s Spanish parent Iberdrola SA. You’ll be hard pressed to find more expensive electricity today than that being […]
Figures published this week suggest that households could end up paying eight times more for the Hinkley Point nuclear power station than was originally estimated four years ago. This should have come as no surprise. Last month, a devastating report by the National Audit Office (NAO) laid bare the full horror of this policy fiasco, for which the […]
Britain is about to complete its first lost decade. A second one would leave young people marooned on stagnant wages, shut out of the housing market and unable to start families. So here’s a lesson for the Conservatives from the election: don’t go into the next one without a strong story on the economy. After the […]
Proposals to impose price caps on energy bills highlight the mess Britain’s energy policy has got into. For some time, politicians of all parties have been imposing policies that force up energy costs. Now they want to cut the energy bills that have been driven higher by their own policies. The only good argument for […]
Last December, under the cold grey skies of a Paris still reeling from the Islamist atrocities at the Bataclan, the countries of the world approved the Paris Agreement on climate change. The first climate conference since the Paris Agreement came into force, taking place under the cloudless skies of Marrakech, should be an occasion for […]
Ugly reality has broken into British energy policy. Last week’s speech by the climate and energy secretary Amber Rudd is a milestone that defines the end of the fantasy stage of the renewables fairy tale. Policy makers must now grapple with the distortions and dysfunctions they created. Something has gone badly wrong and Ms. Rudd […]
Last week’s announcement by Britain’s energy and climate secretary Amber Rudd on curbing subsidies could well be the high water mark for renewable energy. Between 2004 and 2014, average domestic electricity prices in Britain increased by 75 percent after inflation. The rise provoked a consumer backlash. In pre-election manoeuvring, politicians had cast around for a […]
‘You gotta do what you gotta do,’ a re-elected Bill Clinton told Bob Dole who was complaining about Clinton’s attack ads. David Cameron went one better. Dole was an opponent. Nick Clegg was his deputy. Ruthlessness in a political leader is a virtue. After the disappointment of the 2010 election, David Cameron more than made […]
Energy policy exemplifies the contradictions of the new politics. The three main UK parties are in furious agreement about its essentials; yet Labour wants to make it a big dividing line in the election. Labour leader Ed Miliband says he wants more competition; as energy and climate secretary, the same Miliband’s 2010 Energy Act downgraded […]
