The Disciples of Blair: Still Trying to Sell the Net Zero Lie

The disciples of Tony Blair are back at it, spinning a broken energy policy like snake oil salesmen who won’t admit the bottle’s empty.

In their Telegraph article, Ryan Wain and Tone Langengen ,both senior figures at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, try to repackage failure as “pragmatism.”

They call it “Cheaper Power 2030.”But don’t be fooled. This isn’t a new plan.It’s the same Net Zero con trick, just with a new label.For years they promised us “cheap, clean power.” Now they admit clean power isn’t cheap.

But instead of facing the truth, they’re trying to sell the lie again, blaming interest rates, talking up AI, and pretending there’s a sensible middle ground.There isn’t.This is a political rearguard action to protect Net Zero from collapse, not an energy strategy for Britain.

The Reality They Don’t Want to Admit

If Net Zero worked, energy would be cheaper by now. It isn’t.Why?

Because the system they built is fundamentally inefficient.Take solar. It’s being rolled out across Britain like confetti:

It generates the least when we need power the most, in winter,It disappears, forcing gas to pick up the slack,It floods the grid during low-demand periods,It drives up curtailment payments and grid reinforcement costs,And it devours prime farmland in the process.

This isn’t “cheap power.” It’s expensive chaos.

Every extra megawatt of solar adds cost, not savings. It doesn’t cut bills, it bloats them.Yet Wain and Langengen, like so many Net Zero disciples, talk as if adding more intermittent generation and sprinkling it with AI buzzwords will somehow fix the problem.It won’t. It can’t.

Blaming Interest Rates to Distract from Failure

Their opening line gives the game away: “Clean power and cheap power used to mean the same thing. They don’t anymore.”That isn’t a throwaway line. That’s an admission that the entire Net Zero promise has failed.

How do they explain it? Interest rates.

Not the collapsing economics of offshore wind.Not the seasonal mismatch of solar.Not the massive cost of grid expansion to connect scattered projects.Not the billions wasted on constraint payments.They want people to believe that it’s the Bank of England, not their own energy dogma, that blew up Britain’s energy system.

The problem isn’t interest rates.The problem is Net Zero.

The “Middle Ground” Trick,A Political TrapThey frame the debate as a battle between “populists” who want to abandon climate action and “zealots” who chase targets at any cost.

Then they position themselves as the “sensible centre.”It’s a deliberate rhetorical trick:

Label opponents as extremists,Occupy the middle ground rhetorically,Maintain the legal framework of the Climate Change Act 2008,Shut down real debate.This isn’t moderation. This is narrative control.

If you oppose the cost and chaos of Net Zero, you’re branded a “populist.” If you question offshore wind subsidies, you’re “anti-science.”It’s how the political class protects an agenda that’s crumbling under its own weight.

Admitting the Grid Is Failing ,Then Doubling Down

To their credit, Wain and Langengen admit some of the symptoms of the disease:

Grid constraint payments already cost £1.7 billion a year, and are projected to hit £8 billion by 2030.Connecting offshore wind could cost £112 billion,more than building the turbines themselves.Strike prices for offshore wind have risen by 75%.But what’s their solution?

Zonal pricing. AI. “Modernising the grid.”In other words, more of the same, just wrapped in shinier packaging.

The grid isn’t failing because it’s old. It’s failing because it was never designed to carry erratic, scattered, weather-dependent generation across the country.You can’t fix a fundamentally broken model with smart meters and algorithms.

Solar the Elephant in the Room

They don’t dare mention it. But solar is one of the worst offenders in this system.It peaks when Britain’s demand is low,It collapses when demand is high,It forces backup gas to stay on standby,It clogs up the grid,And it’s being dumped on prime farmland across Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and beyond.

This isn’t strategic planning. It’s ideological dumping, driven by subsidy, not engineering.Every acre lost to ground-mounted solar is land taken away from food production to prop up a fantasy energy policy.

The Bombshell Buried in Plain Sight “Connecting offshore wind farms to the grid could cost £112bn – more than building the wind farms themselves.”They toss this line out mid-article, hoping it slips by unnoticed.

But this is the smoking gun.The true cost of Net Zero isn’t in the turbines or panels,it’s in the staggering infrastructure needed to make unreliable generation tolerable.This isn’t about climate. This is about protecting a bloated, failing energy model that benefits a handful of developers and lobbyists while punishing households.

“Balanced Mix” A Tactical Retreat

They throw nuclear into the mix, claiming to support a “balanced system.”But look closer:

No call to prioritise dispatchable generation,No strategy to roll back intermittent dependency,No honest cost accounting,Just token nuclear to dress up the same old renewable-first plan.This isn’t a rethink.

It’s a fig leaf.

The Silence That Says Everything

Notice what’s missing:

No mention of the storage gap. because battery systems last hours, not days.

No mention of seasonality ,solar’s winter collapse.

No mention of grid connection delays, 10 to 15 years in many regions.

No mention of land impacts, because they know rural Britain is pushing back hard.

No mention of zombie projects ,thousands of megawatts stuck in limbo.

Silence isn’t an oversight.It’s a strategy.

This Is Not Energy Policy.

It’s Narrative Management.

This article isn’t about solving Britain’s energy crisis. It’s about protecting Net Zero from political collapse.

Rebrand failure as pragmatism,Marginalise critics,Keep the legal framework in place,Buy time with slogans like “Cheaper Power 2030.”It’s political survival, not energy reform.

Britain Has a Choice

We can:Keep pouring billions into an intermittent, unreliable, subsidy-fattened system,Or rebuild a rational energy strategy based on secure, dispatchable power,nuclear, gas, SMRs, and rooftop microgeneration that doesn’t destroy farmland or the grid.

Net Zero isn’t a moral necessity. It’s an economic liability And the public is waking up.

❌ Net Zero isn’t cheap.

❌ It isn’t reliable.

❌ And it isn’t democratic.

🧭 It’s time to stop the lie, not rebrand it.

Further Reading

Not A Lot Of People Know That — Muddled Messages from Tony Blair Institute by Paul Homewood The Telegraph

Greenpeace is wrong: we can’t have net zero at any price

Climate Change Act 2008 — the law driving the crisis.

✅ Bottom line:

The disciples of Blair are still trying to sell the Net Zero lie.They’ve changed the label, not the product.And the product still doesn’t work.