WHO REALLY RUNS THE UNITED KINGDOM

Blair–Brown Part II: The Making of the Climate Change Act.

The passage of the Climate Change Act in 2008 is often remembered as a moment of broad political consensus. Journalists praised it as evidence that Britain could “rise above party politics” and act in the long-term interests of the planet. What is rarely acknowledged is that this apparent consensus was manufactured. The result of years of conditioning by media campaigns, NGO lobbying, and quango reports that made dissent not only unfashionable but politically suicidal.

The Political Context: Fear and Silence

By 2007, the political class was desperate to demonstrate relevance. The Iraq War had tarnished Blair’s premiership, Gordon Brown was struggling to assert authority after succeeding him, and the financial crisis was looming on the horizon. In this context, climate change became the “safe” moral cause that could unite politicians across parties.

The media played a critical role. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (2006) had saturated the cultural environment with imagery of catastrophe,melting glaciers, drowning polar bears, and flooded cities. The BBC aired endless documentaries emphasising the urgency of climate action, often without offering any dissenting voices. In 2007, the broadcaster went so far as to hold an internal seminar declaring that climate science was “settled” and that balance in reporting would only “confuse the public.”¹ This editorial stance effectively delegitimised all opposition as denialism.

In Parliament, MPs of all parties absorbed this narrative. No one wanted to be cast as a modern-day Enoch Powell, an outlier against the tide of progress. When the Climate Change Bill came before the Commons, only five MPs had the courage to vote against it and they were immediately castigated as fringe cranks. The silence of opposition was not evidence of consensus but of intimidation.

The NGO Lobby

Behind the scenes, activist NGOs were driving the agenda. Friends of the Earth’s “Big Ask” campaign, launched in 2005, was explicitly designed to pressure MPs into supporting binding climate legislation. The campaign mobilised celebrities, church groups, and schoolchildren to bombard MPs with letters demanding action.² It was a masterclass in political theatre: any MP who resisted could be painted as heartless, backward, or indifferent to the future of children.

Other NGOs joined the chorus. Greenpeace lobbied aggressively for renewables subsidies, while WWF presented glossy reports claiming that Britain could transition to a fully renewable system at minimal cost. The environmental lobby was united, well-funded, and deeply embedded in Whitehall. Crucially, many activists had moved seamlessly from NGOs into government advisory positions. Bryony Worthington, one of the principal drafters of the Climate Change Bill, was a former Friends of the Earth campaigner.³ This revolving door between activism and policymaking ensured that the Bill was written not by neutral civil servants but by committed ideologues.

The Media–NGO–Political Feedback Loop

The machinery worked as a self-reinforcing loop. NGOs generated alarming reports; the media amplified them; politicians echoed the headlines; and quangos produced technical papers to give the process a veneer of objectivity. By the time the Climate Change Bill reached the floor of the Commons, it had already been sanctified by years of relentless messaging. To oppose it was to oppose science, morality, and the future itself.

The result was a legislative landslide. On 28 October 2008, the Commons voted by 463 to 3 to pass the Bill at third reading. The Lords followed suit. It was heralded as a triumph of British leadership. In truth, it was a democratic failure: a law of generational consequence passed without serious scrutiny, in the absence of informed debate, under the weight of orchestrated propaganda.

Blair–Brown Part III: The Quango State and the Parallel Constitution.

The Climate Change Act did more than create carbon budgets; it institutionalised a new mode of governance. To understand why it has proved so enduring, one must look at the ecosystem of quangos, advisory bodies, and consultancies that grew around it.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC)

At the centre of this architecture stood the Climate Change Committee, established by the Act. Officially an “independent statutory body,” the CCC was in practice an unelected legislature. Its remit was to set five-year carbon budgets, monitor compliance, and advise on policy. Though ministers technically retained discretion, the threat of judicial review meant that ignoring CCC advice was politically untenable. In effect, the CCC became a shadow government for energy and industry.

The Committee was staffed by economists, academics, and former civil servants,many with links to the very NGOs and institutions that had lobbied for the Act. Its early chair, Lord Adair Turner, had previously been director-general of the CBI but was also deeply embedded in the global governance circuit, serving on UN climate panels and international think tanks.⁴ The CCC’s reports, framed as neutral expertise, were in fact steeped in normative assumptions: that decarbonisation was non-negotiable, that renewables must dominate, and that economic costs were secondary to climate goals.

The Wider Quango Ecosystem

Surrounding the CCC was a dense web of institutions. Ofgem, nominally an energy regulator, shifted from ensuring competition and affordability to enforcing decarbonisation. The Carbon Trust continued to channel taxpayer funds into renewables projects. The Energy Saving Trust, staffed by environmentalists, influenced everything from appliance standards to household insulation rules. Even the National Grid ESO became a de facto policy body, warning of “climate emergencies” while justifying ever-expanding subsidies for renewables integration.

Each of these bodies was insulated from democratic accountability. They published reports, set targets, and lobbied ministers, but none were answerable to voters. Their power came from expertise, from access to Whitehall, and from the legal scaffolding of the Climate Change Act. Collectively, they constituted a parallel constitution: a network of unelected institutions that guided the country’s economic and energy policy regardless of election results.

The Permanent Ratchet

The genius,or the tragedy,of the Climate Change Act was its ratchet mechanism. Each carbon budget locked in deeper emissions cuts. Once set, they could not be relaxed, only intensified. This created a one-way ratchet of ever-greater ambition. Politicians boasted of “leading the world,” but in reality they had locked Britain into a path from which there was no lawful escape.

This ratchet effect explains why successive governments, regardless of party, all pursued the same course. David Cameron’s Conservatives, Theresa May’s caretaker government, Boris Johnson’s bombastic administration, and now Keir Starmer’s Labour all claimed to differ in tone or emphasis, but none could alter the trajectory. The law forbade it. In this sense, Britain ceased to be a parliamentary democracy on energy matters in 2008.

Blair’s Shadow

Even after leaving office, Tony Blair’s influence lingered. Through the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, he advised governments worldwide on climate governance, exporting the very model Britain had pioneered. Blair’s global network of think tanks, consultancies, and training programmes,often linked with Common Purpose alumni. Ensured that the logic of supranational climate governance spread far beyond Britain’s shores.⁵

Thus, the Climate Change Act was not simply a piece of legislation. It was the crystallisation of a decades-long project to displace sovereignty from Parliament to quangos, NGOs, and international bodies. Blair and Brown laid the groundwork, Miliband pulled the trigger, and every government since has been bound by the shot.

📌 Endnotes :

16. BBC Trust. “From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel: Safeguarding Impartiality in the 21st Century,” 2007.


17. Friends of the Earth. “The Big Ask Campaign,” 2005–2008.


18. Worthington, Bryony. Biography and Parliamentary Contributions, House of Lords.


19. Turner, Adair. Biography, UK Government Archive.


20. Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. “Our Work,” official website.