Strip away the politics, and the climate crisis debate isn’t complicated. We’re changing the planet in ways that are “damaging and dangerous”, and every country will be affected. “No one can opt out.”
Those quotes might sound as if they came from a leftwing Scandinavian leader, but they are, in fact, from Margaret Thatcher. Speaking to the UN general assembly in 1989, Britain’s then prime minister tore into world leaders and warned that there was “no good squabbling over who is responsible or who should pay”.
Not the obvious place for a Labour climate minister to start, but it matters.
From Thatcher to New Labour’s 2008 Climate Change Act and Theresa May’s net zero target, Britain has benefited on this issue from something usually in short supply: political consensus. There has been a shared belief that the climate crisis is real and that we have a responsibility to play our proper, humble role in tackling it.
It’s never been a hard sell here. This is a country that rinses jam jars, hoards “bags for life” and sells or shares what we no longer need. That instinct to make things last runs deep – I saw it first-hand when I worked at the WWF and Friends of the Earth. Yet, sadly, 2026 is already seeing the political consensus on the climate start to crack. Even as the war in Iran chokes global energy supplies, some pick a fight rather than face the facts.
While Reform UK’s Richard Tice has said it is “absolute garbage” to claim that human activity is the main cause of the climate crisis, companies he’s led have boasted of “zero net emissions” buildings, some featuring solar panels and electric vehicle charging points. One company of which he is chief executive told shareholders last year that those solar panels generating electricity were “saving hundreds of tonnes of CO2 per annum”.
At the same time, Kemi Badenoch, who once backed net zero as “crucial”, now wants to repeal the Climate Change Act, reverse Labour’s ban on new oil and gas licences and disband the independent Climate Change Committee, a world-class group of experts Britain should be proud of.
But if this is meant to be a culture war, the public hasn’t turned up – 84% of Britons say the climate is changing and 68% want government action. Landslide territory. Even Beyoncé’s popularity rating only sits at about 54%.
On the climate, the country isn’t divided, it’s decided – and miles ahead of any politics dragging it backwards. This isn’t a fight we need. We’ve shown we can agree on the goal and get results. Letting that consensus slip helps no one.
Yet, if we are going to call out the right, we must be just as honest about the left. Even the Green party is letting the side down.
The Greens have abandoned Caroline Lucas’s legacy for something far less ambitious. Green councillors oppose pylons needed to bring clean energy to homes in Suffolk (echoed by a Green MP in Westminster), block solar in Kent and push back on schemes to clean up the air in London. In fact, across 10,000 words of Green party material in 21 leaflets since Zack Polanski became leader, there has been only one mention of climate change, according to Climate Outreach.
You can’t call it a climate emergency on Monday and block the solutions on Tuesday. That’s not environmentalism, it’s greenwashing. Polanski is trying to convince the public into thinking the Greens still lead on climate while blocking the very things that cut emissions.
This is where Labour is different. Labour is now Britain’s climate party, not by accident but by choice, because we’re prepared to build.
Our task is clear: electrify our economy and take oil and gas out of our veins as our lifeblood. While others argue or block, we’re delivering the biggest transformation in how this country is powered in a generation.
Coal is now all but gone from our energy system, replaced by renewables that now generate more than half of our electricity, up from 6.5% in 2010. In less than two years, we’ve secured enough clean power for more than 23m homes, backed new nuclear and approved record solar, with Great British Energy set to invest billions, backing offshore wind in Scotland, hydrogen in South Yorkshire and solar on school rooftops across the country.
Electric vehicles are now cheaper to buy and run, with more than 100,000 charge points. Solar and heat pumps are taking off, backed by Labour grants.
The climate fight isn’t decided in Westminster alone. It’s street by street, project by project, with councillors on the frontline deciding what gets built. The local elections this week will determine whether progress accelerates or stalls. This is the choice between ambition and procrastination, between getting things built or finding reasons to block them.
If you believe in climate action that actually delivers, this is the moment to vote for it.
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Katie White is the Labour MP for Leeds North West and a minister for climate in the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero
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