Green power bills finally come due for the UK, and Tony Blair reemerges

Tony Blair is back to explain how Britain should rescue itself, bringing along a new report from his Tony Blair Institute for Global Change that rebrands the country’s energy ambitions yet again.

Once upon a recent time, the dream was called ‘Clean Power 2030’. Now it has been reboxed and reissued as Cheaper Power 2030. Sounds like someone stumbled out of their green stupor long enough to take a good look at the bill and gulp.

Blair’s institute now says that the clean mission was “right for its time” but that “circumstances have changed.” No kidding. What did you expect when you build an energy plan out of little more than optimism and debt?

“Energy has shifted from being a national advantage to a growing constraint,” the report warns, citing Britain’s premium-grade power prices. “Clean electricity is the future of UK energy… Unless the foundations are fixed, however, the risks are clear: higher costs, weaker reliability, lost public confidence and a growing backlash against climate action.” Sounds like Brits are tired of paying luxury rates for basic necessities.

Affordability is now declared to be the new priority. Which is refreshing, considering that for years anyone who mentioned the financial side of going green was treated like they personally clubbed a penguin stranded on an ice floe.

The government’s own target of removing fossil fuels from the grid by 2030 has slipped into the realm of fiction. So the narrative now shifts to keeping things from getting worse in the short term, while promising Net Zero glory by 2050. Hence the Blair report title: “Cheaper Power 2030, Net Zero 2050: Resetting the UK’s Electricity Strategy for the Future.” Okay, so they’re just going to hit snooze on the hard part, okay? At least enough to lull everyone back to sleep so the government can keep rifling through their pockets.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband insisted earlier this month that everything is under control. The decades-old grid “just needs investment,” he says, as if the same government that struggles to patch potholes will seamlessly modernize the entire power network to include their green fantasies while also paying for the conventional parts that actually work right now. But don’t worry, folks, those “hundreds of thousands of new jobs” arriving by 2030 under the UK’s ‘Clean Energy Jobs Plan’ will make it all possible, Miliband says. All the analysts calling the projects overpriced and a tax burden on the average citizen are just buzzkills.

Yes, under-investment helped create the mess. But not because they didn’t focus on green projects. The real issue is that every time a government tried to build anything essential that actually worked, protesters descended faster than a queue outside of Greggs at lunchtime. And the government was only too happy to take their orders.

Even Blair’s own Institute admits that high electricity costs stem from “decades of policy decisions.” All those levies, subsidies, and PR-friendly targets didn’t magically produce a functioning system. Shocking.

Now Britain, burdened with some of the world’s priciest electricity, wonders why businesses are leaving and families are sweating their utility bills. There’s a clue in there somewhere.

Meanwhile, the country spent £117 billion on imported energy last year. That’s twice the bill from 2021. The UK shut down homegrown production for moral points, only to buy the same fuel back at designer-label prices. But yes, trust the planning skills of these same establishment fixtures confidently projecting milestones for 2050.

Why 2050? Perhaps it pairs neatly with the digital ID push currently being marketed by Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Wouldn’t that be something? Something creepy.

His online videos show happy young citizens celebrating the joy of not needing paper documents anymore, in a genre that could best be described as North Korean New Wave. The digital ID is supposed to help fight illegal immigration, mainly by verifying people that the UK government already let in. But don’t blame European leaders for the fact that they can’t control their own borders and need to introduce digital ID as a result. It’s Putin’s fault for sneaking migrants in like cheap canned soda and candy into a movie theatre, as they’ve taken to arguing recently.

Canada provides a glimpse of where this might go. In provinces like British Columbia, the digital ID plugs directly into health, taxes, employment, housing, court services, and more. If one system flags you as a problem, how many easily flipped switches would it take someday for the rest to follow? Add a forced march to Net Zero by 2050, and suddenly the word “dystopian” doesn’t feel exaggerated.

Call this desperate scramble to save the good soldier Green an expensive clown show. Blair’s crowd calls it a “recalibration.”

“Circumstances have changed,” they say. Yes. The numbers finally demanded attention. If only because everyone could feel the impact of the sticker shock. The Clean Power plan was “right for its time,” they insist. But everything is right until the invoice arrives. Then it magically becomes “right for later.” Say, around 2050.

Team Blair now wants a “full-spectrum” energy strategy. Britain already had one of those, until politicians dismantled it to win environmental bragging rights. Now the same people who broke the system are promising to fix it. First, it was clean power. Now it’s cheap power. Next year? Whatever power is still available, perhaps.

Maybe that’s progress. But it just looks more like repackaged promises sold by master rebrander Blair, who once pushed grand foreign crusades and bombing campaigns as “democracy.”

If “circumstances have changed,” then maybe what really needs recalibrating isn’t the grid, but rather the people running it, who seem to be part of a recycling program of their own, consisting uniquely of British elites spewing whatever nonsense they think they can sell in an effort to cling to power and influence.