“Stronger, safer and less exposed” – global events impact Britain’s energy consensus

 Having spent the past few weeks being pummelled by the electorate, heckled by the US President, and faced with no easy options regarding how to respond to the Iran crisis, Prime Minister Keir Starmer may view this week’s meetings with Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as a way to take some of the heat off during times of domestic stress. 

Today's announcement of a new defence partnership with Ukraine involves measures to boost the global response to the kind of low-cost drone hardware that has come to define the war with Russia and, more recently, the conflict in the Middle East. 

Inevitably however, the friendly meetings with President Zelenskyy will pass, and Starmer will be thrust back into formulating the UK government's response to the evolving crisis. 

A little over four years since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the lessons and warnings of the 2022 energy crisis are having a substantial influence over reaction to this month's events in the Gulf. Wholesale oil and gas prices have spiked again, but the media is awash with warnings not to repeat the policy reaction of that time, with the Energy Price Guarantee now being seen to have contributed to the bout of inflation that followed. The measures announced so far this week have been limited to supporting the most vulnerable households who rely on oil for heating - an initial £53 million package rather than the tens of billions that could potentially be required. 

Just as pressingly, the past week has revealed the extent to which Britain's energy security is in no better position now than it had been in 2022, despite the Labour government's concerted drive to decarbonise in the power system since arriving in office. Streamlining the planning system and speeding up the consenting of major infrastructure projects takes time to feed through to the operational portfolio, and Britain still relies on imports for a significant share of its gas and electricity.  

Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband, has been quick out of the traps with an announcement over the weekend of a set of measures to go "further and faster" in bolstering energy security through the deployment of low-carbon generation. The next auction round to secure renewable capacity through Contracts for Difference ('AR8') has been brought forward several months to July 2026, and the government is preparing to make 'plug-in’ solar panels for balconies and gardens - which are already popular on the continent - available in the UK for the first time. 

Decisive action from Miliband is further evidence of his standing. Generally seen as the most effective cabinet member, Miliband consistently tops LabourList's survey of party members, with a +70% rating in February 2026 (Starmer, by contrast, was down at +5%). As such, he has significant scope for action within the cabinet, seen in his role to push back on the idea of Britain supporting US strikes on Iran, and his resistance to Downing Street's attempt to shuffle him out of DESNZ in September 2025. 

Of course, the world has changed in other ways since February 2022, and the medium-term trend of Labour's 'Clean Power Mission' is colliding this week with the shorter-term trends of a fractured net-zero consensus and the immediate shock of the war. Support for net zero has been steadily eroded since Labour came to power, with both Reform UK and the Conservatives repeatedly attacking the government's energy policy over the past 12 months.  

More concerningly perhaps from the government's point of view, the calls to pivot away from a singular focus on clean energy have started to come from some previously supportive sources. The Tony Blair Institute issued a report in February which called for 'Cheaper Power 2030' to become the new target, with renewable deployment accompanied by an 'all of the above' approach that would enable greater drilling in the North Sea.  

This week, meanwhile, Renewable UK, the main wind-industry trade body, asked via chief executive Tara Singh to "take energy out of the culture wars", saying that "Britain will be stronger, safer and less exposed if it produces more home-grown energy of every kind", with North Sea gas, fracking and nuclear all playing a significant role alongside an expanded renewable generation. While Singh was at pains to emphasise that this was not a call to overhaul the system in favour of oil and gas, her intervention does show the changing context in which energy policy decisions are being debated. 

Any move to reduce the Energy Profits Levy or license more North Sea drilling would provoke an instant backlash from many Labour members and MPs, not to mention the parties to Labour's left, and could be seen as among the defining choices of Starmer's premiership. Nevertheless, the longer the Gulf crisis continues, the least we can expect is for the debate to continue, and for the energy security aspects of Miliband's mission to increasingly eclipse the net zero part in the eyes of many fellow decision-makers. At least the Prime Minister can enjoy his meetings with President Zelenskyy today; on the question of support for Ukraine, British politics is still mostly in agreement.