Tony Blair flirts with climate denial
Tony Blair has done another of his “infrequent” interventions in politics. Once again he is critiquing the Labour Party and explaining that everything has gone catastrophically wrong since the day he stopped being leader.
It is one of British politics’ longest-running theatrical productions. Every few years Blair emerges from whatever Davos panel, consultancy boardroom or private jet lounge he currently inhabits to announce that Labour has lost its way and that only he possesses the sacred wisdom to save it.
This time it’s Keir Starmer who comes under fire for leading Labour into yet another existential crisis.
Don’t read it
You don’t need to read Blair’s 5,000-word essay. The key points are exactly what you would expect: don’t move to the left, let AI and large corporations do whatever they fancy, stop annoying rich people, cosy up to an increasingly aggressive American president and get involved with his military misadventures in the Middle East.
There is one aspect of Blair’s critique that I would like to zoom in on. Despite his criticism of Andy Burnham for allegedly being too left-wing, one of Blair’s key arguments concerns the government’s approach to Net Zero. Specifically, he thinks Britain should drill more in the North Sea.
What is striking about this is that Blair knows perfectly well what the environmental consequences will be.
Denying climate science
I can believe Donald Trump is enough of an idiot to deny climate science, but say what you like about Tony Blair, he is not stupid. He understands the evidence. He understands the risks. He understands that climate change is real and that expanding fossil fuel production makes the problem worse.
Yet he talks as though none of this matters. He reproduces claims that expanding North Sea production will lower household energy bills, despite there being little evidence for this. He dismisses Britain’s overall impact on emissions as though climate change were a group project where everyone gets to avoid doing the work because someone else has a bigger carbon footprint.
I genuinely cannot believe that supposedly serious grown-ups are now putting forward arguments so detached from reality that they amount to climate denial.
Two strangers meeting at a bus stop
Of course, the Tony Blair Institute receives funding linked to fossil fuel interests and petro-states, so perhaps the simplest explanation is that his opinions are available on a consultancy basis. Maybe this is all just a remarkable coincidence. Perhaps the fossil fuel money and the fossil fuel arguments merely happened to arrive in the same place at the same time, like two strangers meeting at a bus stop.
That is certainly one theory, but I would like to propose another. The modern centre cannot stand up to the right on anything.
The right successfully turned Net Zero into a culture war issue by convincing people that a blue-haired non-binary cyclist in Hackney was moments away from confiscating their Ford Focus, replacing Sunday lunch with lentils and forcing them to communicate exclusively through interpretive dance. Then the centre folded instantly.
Against progressive patriotism
It’s the same thing that happened with patriotism. We went very quickly from “people can be patriotic” to “only the most aggressively nationalist version of patriotism is acceptable”. Every year the centre gives more ground to right-wing flag shaggers until eventually the debate becomes whether there are enough Union Jacks visible from space.
Now we have Wes Streeting attacking Progressive Patriotism, which was supposedly the compromise position. The whole point was that people could identify with Britain without becoming extras in a low-budget remake of The Great Escape.
The result is that overt nationalism and racism become increasingly normalised, which has worked out extremely well for people like Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson.
Abandon arguments on every issue
With climate change we are playing with the fate of the entire planet. This is not some obscure debate about Whitehall procedure or whether civil servants should work from home on Fridays. We are talking about rising temperatures, collapsing ecosystems, crop failures, floods, droughts and mass displacement.
The government is already doing far too little to avert climate catastrophe. Now senior Labour figures are arguing that we should actively make the problem worse. This is complete insanity.
What I genuinely do not understand about the Blairite tendency is its ability to argue, with absolute confidence, that Labour should abandon arguments on every issue where the right is gaining ground.
Move right
Immigration? Move right. Patriotism? Move right. Climate change? Apparently move right.
At some point you begin to wonder whether the strategy is less “winning the argument” and more “agreeing with your opponents slightly more slowly than they do.” This is one reason so many people are voting Green.
Since when has Tony Blair been a climate denier?
The fact that supposedly sensible people keep parroting such obvious nonsense is one reason so little is being done about climate change. The political debate has become completely detached from reality.
If Tony Blair is willing to obfuscate on an issue this important and this urgent, then there is only one question left to ask: Since when has Tony Blair been a climate denier?
"Tony Blair" by StefdeVries is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0
