Like most political geeks, I spent most of Thursday night/Friday morning awake in front of the TV, watching the most revolutionary election I can remember (I was overseas in 1997 and just eight years old in 1979). Keir Starmer’s Labour Party secured an enormous Commons majority on the back of a record low proportion of the vote, having played the rules of our bizarre electoral system craftily. The ruling Tories crashed to a record low number of seats, largely by losing shed loads of voter to the right wing Reform UK (who failed to turn a decent vote share into more than a handful of seats). The centrist Liberal Democrats (full disclosure: I’m a member and Councillor) roared back from their flirtation with wipeout in the mid-late 2010s to take a record 72 seats. And, importantly for Labour, the SNP in Scotland were punished by the electorate for all the motorhome-related shenanigans.

During the election, the Tory Party tried to weaponise Net Zero against Labour while still ostensibly supporting it (the UK’s Net Zero by 2050 commitment was made by Theresa May’s Tory administration), one of a number of catastrophically misjudged attempts to ride two horses at once. Anti-Net Zero voters embraced the anti-Net Zero Reform UK, while liberal Tory-leaning voters switched to the pro-Net Zero Liberal Democrats in the ‘blue wall’ of affluent Tory/Lib Dem marginals.

During the election, the Labour Party pushed one totemic green policy – the establishment of a Government-owned company GB Energy to develop the renewables sector with the aims of decarbonising the grid by 2030 and driving growth. An early promise to invest £28bn per year in green technology was watered down after the then Tory Prime Minister Sunak trained his fire on it, in line with Labour’s safety-first (and ultimately successful) ‘Ming vase’ strategy. Labour’s Net Zero spokesman Ed Miliband was largely invisible during the campaign, with rumours swirling that his exuberant enthusiasm was seen as a liability by the staid leadership. All this caution begs the question: what next for Net Zero in the UK?

Let’s start with GB Energy. I’ve been struggling somewhat to find much detail on what it is intended to do, but it does look a lot like the Green Investment Bank (GIB) which was established during the 2010-2015 Lib Dem/Tory coalition. GIB was quickly flogged off by the Tories when they found themselves with a majority after the 2015 General Election. The now private and renamed Green Investment Group says it has developed 30+GW of renewable energy, suggesting the model will work, but it will inevitably take time to deliver carbon reductions and economic growth.

On other green policies, GB Energy will form part of a Green Prosperity Plan. Former Tory PM Boris Johnson’s ban on the sale of new internal combustion engined cars by 2030 will be reinstated but that the similar ban on combi boilers may not be. There is also a commitment to insulate homes, but with no detail on how this will be done – Governments of all colours have struggled with this one in the past. The proposed National Wealth Fund will invest in (amongst others):

• £1.5 billion to new gigafactories so our automotive industry leads the world
• £1 billion to accelerate the deployment of carbon capture
• £500 million to support the manufacturing of green hydrogen.

One of my worries is Labour’s economic strategy is partially predicted on streamlining the planning system to “get Britain building”. Will ‘green tape’ as well as ‘red tape’ be stripped out to make this happen? The manifesto maintains commitments to ‘nutrient neutrality’ and climate resilience which restrict housebuilding in sensitive zones, but the expansion of towns and cities into the so-called ‘grey belt’ will require huge investment in mass transit to avoid entrenching car-dependency further. Active travel gets barely a mention in the manifesto.

But the main threat to Net Zero is external. Reform UK leader/owner Nigel Farage has already stated that he is coming for Labour votes next. It is clear that Reform is already trying to set Net Zero up as a scapegoat for the abject failure of Brexit, their previous pet-project, to deliver any promised benefits. The evidence suggests this policy will fail – the Tories tried to weaponise Welsh Labour’s default 20mph speed limit in built up areas policy, but promptly lost all their seats in Wales. Polling suggests a huge majority of support for climate action amongst the British public and the Green Party did better than ever in the elections. But, then again, polling suggested a substantial majority for staying in the EU in the 2016 referendum and look how that turned out. Unlike Sunak in this election campaign, Farage is unrestrained by any climate commitments (or scientific evidence, facts, or anything else for that matter).

Hopefully Starmer will now put down the Ming vase and govern like someone with a huge majority. We cannot afford for him to be bullied into watering down Net Zero commitments by Farage and/or the next Tory leader the way he was chivvied by Sunak before and during the election. This isn’t just a UK necessity – given election results elsewhere and the potential return of Donald Trump, we need the UK to be an international leader for Net Zero too.