WHO REALLY RUNS THE UNITED KINGDOM

Introduction (Blair–Brown to Cameron : 2010–2016, The Greenest Government Ever)

When Tony Blair departed Downing Street in 2007, replaced by Gordon Brown, Britain was already legally and politically primed for the greatest transformation of its modern era. The Climate Change Act of 2008 had entrenched carbon reduction as a statutory obligation, overseen by a new, unelected quango The Climate Change Committee (CCC). Brown had given the project an economic rationale through the Stern Review and through Treasury frameworks that treated carbon as a central cost in all decision-making. Blair, in turn, had given it international legitimacy, selling climate policy as Britain’s ticket to moral leadership on the world stage.

But what followed under the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government (2010–2015) — and later under David Cameron’s majority Conservative government (2015–2016) — was even more revealing. For years, voters had been told that Labour’s climate zeal was a symptom of “progressive” ideology, and that Conservatives would restore balance. Instead, Cameron not only preserved the framework but declared his administration would be the “greenest government ever”. Far from dismantling the Climate Change Act, he doubled down on its targets and presided over the rapid expansion of subsidies for renewables.

This moment exposed the deeper truth: climate policy in Britain had transcended party politics. It was no longer a question of left or right, but of a consensus shared by the entire political class, enforced by law and upheld by a sprawling ecosystem of quangos and NGOs. The role of elections was reduced to theatre; the outcomes no longer altered the trajectory.


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Austerity Meets Green Dogma

The coalition government came to power in the shadow of the 2008 financial crisis. Britain’s public finances were in disarray, with a ballooning deficit and national debt. Chancellor George Osborne made “austerity” the watchword of the age, cutting public services, squeezing local government budgets, and introducing years of fiscal restraint.

Yet while libraries closed, hospitals strained, and social care systems creaked under funding shortages, there was one area of policy where spending surged: green subsidies. Billions of pounds were funnelled into wind farms, solar schemes, and biomass energy. The Renewables Obligation, introduced under Blair, was expanded, guaranteeing above-market prices for renewable electricity. Households paid for these subsidies through levies on their energy bills, often without even realising it.

This produced a bizarre paradox. On the one hand, working families were told that “the cupboard is bare” and that wages, pensions, and benefits would be squeezed for the sake of fiscal discipline. On the other hand, the same Treasury was underwriting vast subsidies for wind farms owned by multinational corporations, sovereign wealth funds, and wealthy investors. The working class, already reeling from austerity, was effectively paying for a green industrial revolution that offered them no immediate benefits — but significant additional costs on their energy bills.

This was no accident. It was a political choice, consistent with the logic of the Climate Change Act. Because the Act had transformed carbon reduction into a legal obligation, successive governments were compelled to pursue emissions cuts regardless of economic hardship. The Treasury could not ignore carbon costs, but it was free to ignore the social costs of unemployment, fuel poverty, or deindustrialisation. Once again, the balance tilted in favour of ideology over the lived realities of ordinary people.

The Role of the EU and International Frameworks

The coalition government also reaffirmed Britain’s commitment to European climate directives. In 2009, just before Cameron entered office, the EU Renewable Energy Directive had bound the UK to ensuring 15% of its total energy came from renewables by 2020. This was no mere guideline: it was a binding target, enforceable through EU mechanisms. Cameron’s government accepted this obligation without meaningful debate, presenting it to the public as an environmental necessity rather than a political choice.

In practice, this meant subsidising offshore wind at enormous cost, often guaranteeing developers two or three times the wholesale price of electricity. It meant promoting biomass generation at plants such as Drax Power Station in Yorkshire, which burned imported American wood pellets classified as “carbon neutral” under EU rules — even though transporting and processing the wood created significant emissions, and even though the forests being cut down were often not replanted at the same rate. Critics called this a greenwashing exercise, whereby emissions were exported overseas and rebranded as “renewable” energy.⁶

At the same time, the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) imposed costs on British industry, encouraging energy-intensive sectors like steel and aluminium to relocate production abroad where carbon rules were laxer. This hollowing out of industry did nothing to reduce global emissions; it merely shifted them from Britain to China, India, and elsewhere. Yet ministers in London celebrated falling domestic emissions as a sign of success.

The Silencing of Opposition

If Blair and Brown had made climate orthodoxy the bipartisan consensus, Cameron’s government ensured it became unchallengeable. Dissenting voices within the Conservative Party, notably figures like Owen Paterson, who served as Environment Secretary from 2012 to 2014, were quickly marginalised. Paterson’s scepticism about the costs of Net Zero made him a target for environmental NGOs and their allies in the media. After a series of disputes, he was dismissed from the Cabinet, a warning to others not to stray from the consensus.

Meanwhile, Conservative leaders echoed the very language of their Labour predecessors. Cameron famously installed a small wind turbine on his home, a gesture of personal commitment to green energy. His Chancellor, Osborne, publicly grumbled about “green crap” driving up bills, but in practice the subsidies continued to flow. The Treasury, bound by the Green Book’s carbon valuations, continued to treat emissions reduction as a primary policy driver. Even as manufacturing shrank and energy bills soared, the machinery of government pressed forward, guided not by democratic debate but by the dictates of quangos and international commitments.

The Blairite Afterlife

Throughout these years, Tony Blair himself was never far from the scene. His Institute for Global Change, launched in 2016, acted as both a consultancy and an advocacy hub, advising governments around the world on climate strategy and governance structures. In many ways, the Institute was an extension of the project Blair had begun in office: embedding globalist frameworks into national governments, bypassing the messy unpredictability of democratic politics.

This was not merely consultancy work. Blair’s network extended into corporate boardrooms, international NGOs, and supranational bodies such as the World Economic Forum and the United Nations. Figures trained through Common Purpose, the leadership NGO that rose to prominence during his premiership, found themselves in key positions across Whitehall, local councils, and major corporations. The ideology of global governance, clothed in the moral language of climate salvation, became self-reinforcing.

By the time Cameron called the Brexit referendum in 2016, Britain’s energy and climate policy was so deeply entrenched in international law and quango governance that even leaving the EU could not undo it. The “green ratchet” built by Blair, Brown, and Miliband and safeguarded by the CCC  had already locked Britain’s future into a trajectory that no single election could overturn.

Transition to the Next Section

The Cameron years reveal the core truth of Britain’s predicament: climate policy had become untouchable, protected by law, economics, and a network of institutions loyal not to voters but to an ideology. The financial sacrifices of ordinary citizens were justified as the cost of “saving the planet,” even as energy security eroded and industry withered.

In the next section, we will examine how these contradictions deepened in the years after 2016, when Brexit far from restoring sovereignty. Provided the perfect pretext for recommitting Britain to the Net Zero agenda under Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and eventually Keir Starmer.

📑 Endnotes (

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


23. Friends of the Earth, The Big Ask Campaign (2005–2008).


24. House of Lords, “Baroness Worthington: Biography,” UK Parliament.


25. Carbon Trust, Our History, Carbon Trust Official Site.


26. European Union, “Directive 2009/28/EC on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources,” Official Journal of the European Union, 2009.


27. Chatham House, Woody Biomass for Power and Heat: Impacts on the Global Climate, 2017.


28. European Commission, 2030 Climate and Energy Framework, COM(2014) 15 final.


29. Paterson, Owen. Wasting Energy: How Climate Alarmism Undermines UK Competitiveness, speech at Global Warming Policy Foundation, 2014.