Skip to main content
The Tory ‘Clean Growth Scam’
The government’s new environment policy document is full of platitudes, but there will be no market disruption or climate duties, writes ALAN SIMPSON

Energy Secretary Greg Clark launched the government’s Clean Growth Plan last week, claiming that “Britain continues to lead the world in efforts to tackle climate change.”

He ought to have added “and in self-delusion.” If for nothing else, you have to hand it to the government for breathtaking audacity; dressing up abject failure as if it were runaway success.

One year late, and forced to do so only because there is legally obliged to, the government provided a statement to Parliament on how it plans to meet its fifth and sixth carbon budgets. Skip past the flannel. 

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Features / 29 April 2025
29 April 2025

ALAN SIMPSON warns of a dystopian crossroads where Trump’s wrecking ball meets AI-driven alienation, and argues only a Green New Deal can repair our fractured society before techno-feudalism consumes us all

US President Donald Trump stands in the presidential box as
Features / 20 March 2025
20 March 2025
As the ‘NRx movement’ plots to replace democracy with corporate-feudal dictatorship, Britain must pursue a radical alternative of local food security and genuine wealth redistribution to withstand the coming upheaval, writes ALAN SIMPSON
MODERN FEUDALISM:
New US President Donald
Trump
Features / 30 January 2025
30 January 2025
Some hard political choices must be made in Trump’s post-truth era – starting by abandoning any illusions about the ‘special relationship’ and waking up to the need for bold policy-making on the climate, argues ALAN SIMPSON
PLUMMETING IN
THE POLLS: Keir
Starmer’s popularity
ratings
3 January 2025
3 January 2025
Centrist governments around the world face rejection by their electorates as neoliberalism fails to deliver the public prosperity it never promised – and the same fate awaits Labour unless it starts to deliver for those struggling to survive, says ALAN SIMPSON
Similar stories
A child rides a bike at Whitelee Windfarm in East Renfrewshi
Britain / 13 December 2024
13 December 2024
But Unite warns that Labour has ‘missed a golden opportunity to bring the national grid under public ownership’
Shadow Energy Secretary Ed Miliband on board the jack-up bar
Features / 10 October 2024
10 October 2024
The government’s reliance on unproven and short-termist technology won’t deliver answers to today’s energy crisis, warns MARK MASLIN