The British left has spent years warning about malign billionaires, ‘industrial complexes’ and dodgy lobbying networks. Yet on net zero it has built such a machine itself: an internationally funded ecosystem that bankrolls thinktanks, campaign groups, media organisations and litigation in pursuit of a single political objective.
The consequences of that work are all around us – high energy prices, industries crippled by those costs, manufacturing in retreat, cities like Aberdeen hollowed out, rising fuel poverty and higher bills for the poor, and an ever-expanding state regulating every-thing from gas boilers to air conditioning.
Net zero has given the left a new means of controlling and constraining capitalism and growth. It has given international billionaires a cause to signal their virtue while they asset-strip and price-gouge elsewhere. When their rapacity is called into question, they can point to their climate credentials, claim benefit of clergy and know the poorest will pay the price. And now the darling of the Dark Green lobby, Ed Miliband, is on the verge of becoming the man controlling the economy. It is hard not to be impressed. And deeply depressed.
Wow. spot. on.
I wonder when people will break.
I think the left coding air conditioning as right wing and bad might break the whole thing, if we have another summer like this in London.