Henry Hill joins the Institute of Economic Affairs to discuss why he supports the principle of Net Zero, but very rarely the ways politicians try to deliver it.
In Bristol and Brighton and Hove their record has consisted of hypocrisy and mismanagement.
If the Corporation cannot persuade even half the public it offers a well informed and unbiased public service, it will need to change.
One statistic epitomises the Government’s failure. In 2025, for the first time since the 1960s, no new exploration wells have been drilled in the British North Sea. Meanwhile Norway have drilled almost 40.
It is a decision that reflects one of the Conservative Party’s greatest strengths: pragmatism. When the evidence, the facts, and the fundamentals change, we respond to that change rather than dig our heels in and ignore the reality before us.
This lack of grid capacity is not only holding back AI and data centres, but also new housing, clean energy projects and industrial investment. Labour Ministers talk endlessly about Britain being a “science and technology superpower,” yet they have not taken enough action to modernise the power grid to help our country achieve that status.
In the long term, by supporting a thriving free market and creating the conditions for growth and innovation, we can achieve the greener future we all want.
Conservatives have historically led every stage of Britain’s nuclear storyl from Magnox in the 1950s, to Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactors in the 1970s, to Pressurised Water Reactors in the 1990s.
The government argument goes that wholesale electricity is only so dear because the price reflects the gas price. This is very misleading.
Every fraction of a degree of warming matters. Every year of delay compounds the risk. Climate change is not just a problem for the future; it is a process already underway, and we are accelerating towards thresholds we will not be able to reverse.
Today the Conservatives have thrown the net zero baby out with the bath water. This is bad politics, bad economics, and deeply un-Conservative.
History makes the lesson plain: from the Great Unrest of 1911 to the paralysis of the 1970s, whenever domestic energy is destabilised, British politics is destabilised.
A sensible nuclear programme need not conflict with, for example, heavy exploitation of the North Sea. But Britain’s long-term prosperity and energy security rest also on getting a head start on tomorrow’s power sources.
Labour have been squandering a golden opportunity. The sands of the international trade system built in the 90s are shifting considerably. It is obvious that newly nimble countries like our own have an enormous advantage over the sclerotic bureaucratic blocs like the EU.
Miliband ducks questioning in the Commons, hides behind meaningless soundbites on the media, and has never, ever, published a forecast of what his radical plans will do to people’s energy bills.