Jamie Carey
Ten months ago, the United Kingdom was a very different place.
Keir Starmer’s government hadn’t found its purpose yet. Some would say it still hasn’t. Somehow, Kemi Badenoch has managed to become even more irrelevant than she was back then. For the first time, Nigel Farage had lied his way to the top of the polls, Ed Davey was probably skydiving, and nobody had a clue who or what a ‘Zack Polanski’ was.
It was also ten months ago that the Great British Energy Act received royal assent, establishing this Labour government’s flagship energy policy: Great British Energy, a so-called ‘publicly owned energy company’. It’s no secret that for the last five years, and especially since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, energy prices for both Brits and the wider world have skyrocketed out of control. A succession of poor decisions from the Johnson, Truss and Sunak administrations failed to mitigate the crisis, and before long, the Labour Party found themselves with both over 400 seats and an almighty job to do. Despite my own initial optimism that Labour’s renewable energy strategy could provide a tangible difference, disagreements between Number 10 and Ed Miliband sum up what this project – and government – has become: dull.
Worst of all, as a member of the Labour Party and someone who believed that this version of Labour could create transformative change for people across the country, irrespective of background, I still believe that many people within the party and government are fundamentally decent people.
After all, the Labour Party was founded in 1900 to take power away from private monopolies and put it in the hands of the public.
After all, the Labour Party was founded in 1900 to take power away from private monopolies and put it in the hands of the public. That tradition built the NHS, council housing, and real public ownership of essential services. Today, they feel like ‘more of the same’, which they promised they were not. So, what happened?
To begin, the cost-of-living crisis did not come out of nowhere. It was driven, in large part, by a broken energy market that allowed price shocks to be passed directly onto households while shareholders were protected. Millions of people are still rationing heat, skipping meals, or falling into debt because non-renewable energy companies have directly benefited from castrating renewable projects that would have tangibly improved the lives of working people.
Every government since Thatcher believed and accepted the failed experiment of privatisation, including New Labour.
Labour, in all fairness, has a point. All governments stretching all the way back to the Thatcher government, which started the privatisation of the industry with the sale of British Gas in 1986, failed to make any progress in reversing Thatcherism’s effects on the energy sector. Perhaps it’s because, for some reason, every government since Thatcher believed and accepted the failed experiment of privatisation, including New Labour. Ironically, despite their apparent disdain for the current model, Labour believe in a form of ‘trickle down energy’, where they perceive that the benefits of public investment into private companies will eventually ‘trickle down’.
Must be because trickle-down economics has been an unmitigated success, hasn’t it?
Indeed, without tackling ownership, regulation alone becomes a sticking plaster. Yet Sir Keir Starmer has repeatedly ruled out full public ownership of energy generation and supply since he assumed Labour leadership in 2020, even though it remains popular with the public and economically rational.
The climate crisis is not a future threat. It is a present reality.
Another policy that remains popular with the British public is action on the ever-growing climate crisis, reflected in the Greens’ newfound polling supremacy on the left of British politics. They can even take historically safe Labour heartlands. This opinion has good reason behind it; the climate crisis is not a future threat. It is a present reality. Floods, heatwaves, and ecosystem collapse are already reshaping lives. For example, Storm Goretti recently wreaked havoc across Britain, breaking snowfall records and causing me to have four power cuts in one day. Meeting this challenge requires rapid, coordinated transformation of the energy system. That transformation cannot be left to the market, which has consistently failed to rise to its moral obligation to protect the one, sole planet we live on.
Private energy companies invest when it is profitable, not when it is necessary. They delay, lobby, and extract. A genuine public energy company could plan at scale, invest for the long term, and prioritise decarbonisation over dividends. Great British Energy, by contrast, is explicitly designed to partner with private capital, not replace it.
This creates a fundamental contradiction. Labour claims climate leadership while refusing the very tool that made previous national transformations possible: public ownership. The result is a policy that gestures at urgency while remaining structurally cautious.
While Reform offers reactionary, divisive, and dangerous answers, it feeds on a very real frustration.
The same problem appears in Great British Railways. Despite the name, it does not bring the railways fully back into public hands. It centralises planning while leaving operations open to private involvement. Again, Labour avoids the word “nationalisation” while hoping the branding does the work. And it isn’t.
When Labour refuses to offer clear, transformative solutions, it leaves space for others to channel public anger. Reform UK thrives on the sense that politics is broken, that elites protect themselves, and that ordinary people are ignored. While Reform offers reactionary, divisive, and dangerous answers, it feeds on a very real frustration.
People see energy bills stay high. They see corporations protected. They hear promises of change that never quite materialise. When Labour offers technocratic half-measures instead of systemic reform, it inadvertently confirms the cynicism Reform exploits.
Labour stands at a crossroads. It can continue down the path of managed decline dressed up as ambition, or it can rediscover the courage that once defined the movement.
Labour stands at a crossroads. It can continue down the path of managed decline dressed up as ambition, or it can rediscover the courage that once defined the movement. Great British Energy could be transformed into a genuinely public, vertically integrated energy company, owning generation, supply, and infrastructure, with a mandate to deliver cheap, green energy for all.
That would be a clear break with the failed market model. It would speak directly to the cost-of-living crisis. It would meet the scale of the climate challenge. And it would undercut the narrative that “they’re all the same”.
If Labour instead settles for investment funds and public-private partnerships, it risks winning office without winning power and governing without changing the conditions that make life harder for millions.
If Labour instead settles for investment funds and public-private partnerships, it risks winning office without winning power and governing without changing the conditions that make life harder for millions.
The rise of Reform UK is not inevitable. It is the product of political failure. Labour can stop it, but only by offering real change, not carefully branded continuity. But instead, by driving half-baked and poorly planned, faux nationalisation programmes in Great British Energy and Great British Railways, this Labour government risks becoming a Great British Failure.
Jamie Carey
Featured image courtesy of Adrian Raudaschl via Unsplash. Image license found here. No changes were made to this image.
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