Who really runs the United Kingdom

Chapter 1

Section 1.2 – The Climate Change Act: Britain’s New Constitution

If the destruction of coal and industry was the dismantling of Britain’s old energy sovereignty, then the Climate Change Act of 2008 was the construction of a new constitutional order. It was not simply a piece of environmental legislation; it was a law that subordinated Parliament to a parallel system of governance. The Act locked future governments into a path of decarbonisation, irrespective of economic cost, industrial survival, or public mandate. It was the quiet birth of a second constitution — one based not on the sovereignty of Parliament, but on the sovereignty of carbon targets.

The Political Climate of 2007–08

The Climate Change Bill was introduced in a peculiar political moment. Gordon Brown had just succeeded Tony Blair as Prime Minister in 2007, inheriting a Labour Party still confident after a decade of dominance but facing growing discontent over the Iraq War, financial turbulence, and public services under strain. The Conservative opposition, under David Cameron, had rebranded itself as environmentally conscious — Cameron hugging huskies on a glacier became the image of a party desperate to shed its “nasty” image.

Environmental politics was fashionable. “Climate leadership” had become the new moral currency in Westminster, the way Britain’s political class sought legitimacy after the collapse of trust in the Iraq adventure. By 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had issued its Fourth Assessment Report, declaring with “very high confidence” that climate change was man-made. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth had won an Oscar. The Stern Review, commissioned by Gordon Brown, had warned that the economic costs of inaction would dwarf the costs of radical decarbonisation. In this febrile atmosphere, scepticism was politically suicidal.

When Environment Secretary David Miliband first floated the idea of a Climate Change Bill in 2006, NGOs like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace organised mass campaigns to push it forward. Their “Big Ask” campaign mobilised celebrities, charities, and even schoolchildren to demand legally binding carbon reduction targets. Parliamentarians of all parties fell over themselves to demonstrate green credentials. By the time the Bill reached Parliament in 2007, resistance was minimal.

What the Act Did

The Climate Change Act 2008 became law with only five MPs voting against it. Its provisions were sweeping:

It set a legally binding target to reduce UK greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050, compared with 1990 levels (later amended to “net zero” by 2050 under Theresa May in 2019).

It created a system of five-year carbon budgets, binding on successive governments, which determined the maximum emissions allowable for the entire economy.

It established the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) — a statutory, independent body tasked with advising on budgets and monitoring progress.

It required annual reports to Parliament on emissions progress, but crucially, those reports were drafted by the CCC, not by elected ministers.


This framework amounted to a profound transfer of authority. For the first time in British history, Parliament legislated away its discretion on a central area of economic policy. Energy, industry, transport, housing, agriculture — all would henceforth be subordinated to carbon budgets devised by unelected technocrats.

The Birth of an Unelected Government

The Committee on Climate Change was sold to the public as an “independent advisory body.” In practice, it was a quasi-legislature. Its recommendations on carbon budgets acquired the force of law once endorsed by ministers, who had little realistic option but to comply. Refusing CCC advice risked being branded “anti-science” or “climate denier.”

The composition of the CCC reflected the ideological orientation of its mission. Its members were academics, economists, and NGO veterans — voices drawn from a narrow orthodoxy. Industry leaders or sceptics of renewables were absent. The effect was to enshrine one worldview — that decarbonisation was urgent, feasible, and affordable — as the sole basis of policy.

Thus Britain acquired what critics called an “unelected government within government.” Like the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee after 1997, the CCC represented the technocratic turn in governance: Parliament outsourcing responsibility to experts, thereby insulating decisions from democratic contestation. But while interest rates could be adjusted in response to changing conditions, carbon budgets were cumulative and legally binding. They left almost no room for manoeuvre.

Why Was There So Little Opposition?

The near-unanimous support for the Act is one of the most striking features of the story. Only five MPs opposed it — a figure so small it barely registers in parliamentary history. How could legislation of such constitutional significance pass with so little scrutiny?

First, the destruction of coal and the weakening of industry meant there was no powerful constituency left to resist. The unions were diminished, manufacturing lobbies were weak, and the political cost of appearing to oppose climate policy seemed greater than any benefit.

Second, the framing of climate change as an existential, scientific emergency foreclosed debate. MPs feared being seen as “deniers.” The rhetoric of inevitability — that “the science is settled” — created a culture of conformity.

Third, the Act was presented as a world-first, a chance for Britain to lead by moral example. Politicians basked in international praise. Ed Miliband, who as Energy Secretary shepherded the Bill through, described it as “an act of leadership for the world.” For backbenchers, it was a cost-free way to feel virtuous.

Finally, the timing was revealing. The Act passed in November 2008 — at the very moment Britain was entering the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. Banks were collapsing, unemployment was rising, and industry was under threat. Yet Parliament devoted its energy to legislating climate targets for 2050. In retrospect, this looks like an extraordinary misallocation of political attention: shoring up ideology while the economy was burning.

The Constitutional Revolution

The effect of the Climate Change Act was not merely to commit Britain to reducing emissions. It was to bind future governments to a single trajectory, regardless of elections or public opinion. Unlike most laws, which can be repealed or amended, the Act created a self-ratcheting mechanism. Each carbon budget required deeper cuts than the last. There was no mechanism for reversal.

This is why critics describe the Act as a constitutional revolution. For centuries, the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty held that no Parliament could bind its successors. Yet the Climate Change Act came close to doing precisely that. Though technically repealable, the political costs of repeal were made prohibitive by the way the Act embedded itself in law, bureaucracy, and international commitments.

In practice, therefore, Britain acquired a parallel constitution: one written not in Magna Carta or the Bill of Rights, but in carbon budgets and CCC reports. The priorities of this constitution were not liberty, prosperity, or sovereignty, but decarbonisation at any cost.

The Consequences: Energy, Industry, and Sovereignty

The impact was immediate. Subsidies for renewables expanded dramatically, paid for by levies on consumer bills. Energy prices rose steadily, long before the Ukraine crisis of 2022. Manufacturing industries — already weakened by globalisation — now faced additional costs from carbon pricing and regulation. Many relocated abroad, exporting emissions but hollowing out domestic capacity.

The grid itself became less stable. Designed for predictable baseload from coal and nuclear, it now had to accommodate intermittent wind and solar. To balance this, the National Grid ESO was forced to procure “constraint payments” — effectively paying wind farms not to generate when the system could not cope. Consumers thus paid twice: once for subsidies to build the turbines, and again to switch them off.

Above all, sovereignty was diminished. The Act committed Britain not just domestically but internationally. By embedding carbon budgets in law, the UK locked itself into a framework aligned with EU directives, UN climate treaties, and later the Paris Agreement of 2015. Even Brexit could not undo this: outside the EU, Britain remained shackled to its own carbon laws.

The Continuity of Architects

One of the most striking aspects of the story is how the architects of the Act remained influential long after 2008.

Ed Miliband, the minister who delivered the Bill, is back in 2025 as Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, pursuing even more aggressive targets.

Tony Blair, though out of office, operates through the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, lobbying governments worldwide to adopt similar frameworks.

Gordon Brown, who commissioned the Stern Review, continues to push international economic governance through the UN and IMF.


In other words, the same cast of characters who laid the foundations continue to shape policy. The Climate Change Act created not only a legal framework but also a permanent political class of climate managers.

A Constitution Nobody Voted For

Perhaps the most damning indictment is that the British public never voted for this transformation. No general election has ever been fought on whether to enshrine carbon budgets into law. There has been no referendum on Net Zero. The people were never asked whether they wanted to subordinate sovereignty to climate ideology.

Yet here we are: an economy warped, households impoverished, sovereignty curtailed — all in the name of legislation passed in a single November evening with almost no dissent. The Climate Change Act stands as a monument to how democracy can be hollowed out without a shot fired, without a debate held, and without a vote cast beyond the green benches of Westminster.


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Endnotes

1. David Miliband, Speech introducing the Draft Climate Change Bill, DEFRA, March 2007.


2. Friends of the Earth, “The Big Ask Campaign,” campaign archive, 2005–2007.


3. UK Parliament, Climate Change Bill – Division List, 2008.


4. Nicholas Stern, The Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change, HM Treasury, 2006.


5. Committee on Climate Change, “About the CCC,” official website, 2009.


6. UK Parliament, Hansard, November 2008.


7. Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, “About Us,” 2016.