WHO REALLY RUNS THE UNITED KINGDOM

Who Really Runs Britain?
It’s not the politicians you vote for. Since Blair rewired our constitution, power has been outsourced to unelected committees and foreign treaties. The Climate Change Act handed control of our energy to the Climate Change Committee, not Parliament. Our borders are ruled by the ECHR and UN conventions, not the British people. Step by step, sovereignty has been dismantled — not by accident, but by design. Westminster pretends to govern, but the real decisions are made in Brussels, Geneva, and New York.

Introduction (Part E – 2019–2025: The Net Zero Consensus Under Johnson and the Lead-up to 2025)

If the years of Blair, Brown, and May cemented the foundations of Britain’s climate and energy straitjacket, then the Johnson era and the early 2020s represent its full consolidation. By this point, the Climate Change Act’s architecture had hardened into an immovable framework. The “ratchet” mechanism of successive carbon budgets meant that every new government was under legal compulsion not merely to maintain existing targets, but to deepen them. To reverse course would have required Parliament to repeal the Act.An action that no major party, fearful of accusations of climate heresy, dared to contemplate.

The arrival of Boris Johnson in 2019 might have marked an opportunity to pivot. Elected on a promise to “get Brexit done” and to revive Britain’s industrial heartlands, Johnson carried the votes of millions of working-class Britons who had turned their backs on Labour. They expected a return to pragmatism: investment in jobs, infrastructure, and a secure energy future. Instead, Johnson , ever eager for a legacy and a platform on the world stage , made Net Zero by 2050 his central crusade.

The “Green Industrial Revolution”

In November 2020, in the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, Johnson unveiled the Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution. This was billed as a transformative programme, promising to deliver 250,000 “green jobs”, unleash £12 billion of government investment, and position Britain as a global leader in renewable energy and electric vehicles¹. The plan covered offshore wind, hydrogen production, nuclear (though limited to one or two large projects), electric vehicle infrastructure, and carbon capture and storage.

The language was triumphalist: Britain would become the “Saudi Arabia of wind,” Johnson declared, with enough offshore turbines to power every home by 2030². Yet beneath the rhetoric, the plan was riddled with contradictions. Offshore wind required vast subsidies, often guaranteed to foreign state-backed companies. Hydrogen, though promoted as a silver bullet, remained technologically immature and prohibitively expensive at scale. Nuclear, once the backbone of reliable baseload power, was reduced to a secondary role, with the government dithering over investment in new projects such as Sizewell C.

The “green jobs” narrative also proved hollow. Many of the manufacturing contracts for wind turbines went overseas, particularly to factories in Denmark and Asia. Where jobs were created in Britain, they were often temporary construction roles, not long-term skilled employment. Meanwhile, the traditional manufacturing and heavy industry sectors , already battered by decades of deindustrialisation , faced crippling energy bills that forced closures and offshoring. The very communities that had voted for Johnson in 2019 found themselves paying for a transition that offered them little in return.

The COVID Distraction

The COVID-19 pandemic provided both a challenge and an opportunity for the green agenda. As the economy was locked down and energy demand collapsed, Britain briefly experienced the kind of reduced emissions that climate campaigners had long advocated. Ministers seized on this as evidence that radical decarbonisation was possible, framing the crisis as a chance to “build back greener.” Billions were channelled into renewable subsidies, electric vehicle grants, and home insulation schemes.

Yet the pandemic also exposed the fragility of Britain’s energy system. With supply chains disrupted and international markets in turmoil, the dangers of over-reliance on imported energy became clear. The closure of the Rough gas storage facility in 2017 meant Britain had only a few days of gas reserves³. When global gas prices spiked in 2021–22, Britain had no buffer. Wholesale prices soared, suppliers collapsed, and households faced energy bills quadrupling in a single year.

Instead of reconsidering the wisdom of deepening dependence on intermittent renewables and imported gas, the government doubled down. The crisis was reframed not as a failure of policy, but as proof of the urgency of Net Zero. The public, already battered by lockdowns, was told that the solution to their energy poverty was not cheaper domestic generation but more offshore wind, more solar farms, and more battery storage — technologies that could not, in practice, provide the stable, affordable energy households needed.

The Return of Ed Miliband

The political theatre reached new heights in 2023 and beyond, when Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, buoyed by electoral gains, elevated Ed Miliband once again to a central role , this time as Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. It was a moment of almost Shakespearean irony. The architect of the 2008 Climate Change Act, the man who had first written binding carbon budgets into law, was now tasked with enforcing them in government.

Miliband’s return symbolised the enduring continuity of the climate agenda. Seventeen years after the passage of the Climate Change Act, the same figures remained in charge, pursuing the same ideological project. Blair, through his Institute for Global Change, remained a key influencer on global governance. Brown continued to lobby for international economic coordination through the UN and IMF. And now Miliband was back at the helm, promising to deliver “Clean Power by 2030”, a target even more ambitious than May’s net zero by 2050⁴.

The new agenda was presented as a moral imperative: Britain would decarbonise its electricity grid entirely within five years, regardless of cost or feasibility. The fact that the national grid was already facing severe constraints — with “queue-jumping” projects and multi-year delays in transmission upgrades — was quietly ignored⁵. The Climate Change Committee, as ever, endorsed the plan, insisting that technological solutions such as long-duration batteries and hydrogen storage were imminent, despite little evidence.

The Human Cost

While the political class congratulated itself on climate leadership, ordinary Britons faced a harsher reality. By 2023, fuel poverty had reached record levels, with more than 6.5 million households spending over 10% of their income on energy bills⁶. Pensioners were forced to choose between heating and eating; food banks reported unprecedented demand. Industries from steel to ceramics warned that high energy costs were making British production unviable. Jobs disappeared overseas, while imports , often produced with higher carbon footprints ,replaced domestic goods.

Rural communities bore a particular burden. Vast solar farms were proposed on prime agricultural land, swallowing thousands of acres of green fields in places like South Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Cambridgeshire. Promises that panels would coexist with sheep grazing often went unfulfilled, as developers fenced off land, stripped topsoil, and installed industrial-scale battery storage systems. The result was not a greener countryside but a more industrialised one: landscapes once dedicated to food production replaced by glass and metal, while flood risks increased due to soil compaction and drainage disruption.

The irony was cruel. In the name of saving the planet, Britain was sacrificing its own countryside and food security. At the very moment when global supply chains were under strain and geopolitical instability threatened imports, Britain was turning fertile farmland into industrial energy parks. And all of it was driven not by the will of voters, but by the inexorable ratchet of legally binding carbon targets.

A System Beyond Politics

By the mid-2020s, the energy agenda had achieved something extraordinary: it had lifted itself out of the realm of democratic politics altogether. Whether the government was Conservative or Labour, the direction remained fixed. The Climate Change Committee issued its advice; the Treasury applied the Green Book’s carbon values; international agreements set the parameters; and ministers competed only to promise faster or deeper decarbonisation.

This was governance without consent , a parallel constitution, created by the Climate Change Act of 2008 and reinforced by the networks of quangos, NGOs, and international institutions that Blair, Brown, and Miliband had helped to construct. Parliament had tied its own hands, and the electorate had been told that the most consequential policy of their lifetimes was not up for debate.

Towards 2025: The Breaking Point

As Britain enters 2025, the contradictions of this system are reaching a breaking point. Energy bills remain stubbornly high, despite the expansion of renewables. Grid constraints mean that gigawatts of potential generation capacity sit idle, unable to connect. Communities from Norfolk to Yorkshire are rising in protest against vast solar and battery projects imposed on their landscapes without meaningful consent. Industry continues to shrink under the weight of high costs.

And yet the political class presses forward. Ed Miliband’s “Clean Power by 2030” is sold as destiny, not choice. Ministers claim that Britain has no alternative but to obey the dictates of the CCC and international agreements. The narrative of inevitability persists, even as the public begins to question its premises.

The introduction to this book has traced how we arrived here: from Thatcher’s defeat of the miners, through Major’s European entanglements, Blair’s globalist evangelism, Brown’s Treasury dogma, and May’s net zero decree, to Johnson’s green revolution and Miliband’s return. Each stage reveals the same pattern: sovereignty eroded, costs imposed, and democracy sidelined , all in the name of an ideology that refuses scrutiny.

The question for the future is stark: will Britain continue down this road, binding itself ever tighter to a failing model, or will it finally confront the reality that the Climate Change Act must be repealed and replaced with a truly sustainable, sovereign, and affordable energy policy?

The rest of this book will argue for the latter. For unless Britain finds the courage to break free from the grip of unelected technocrats, global networks, and ideological obsessions, its decline will not merely continue , it will accelerate. And the people, once again, will be asked to bear the cost.

Endnotes (Part E)

1. HM Government. The Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution, November 2020.


2. BBC News. “Boris Johnson: UK to Become ‘Saudi Arabia of Wind Power’,” October 2020.


3. House of Commons Library. UK Gas Storage and Security of Supply, Briefing Paper 06186, 2017.


4. UK Government. The Climate Change Act 2008 (2050 Target Amendment) Order 2019.


5. National Grid ESO. Connections Reform and Queue Management: Future Energy Scenarios, 2023.


6. End Fuel Poverty Coalition. Fuel Poverty Statistics, 2023.