Rupert Darwall

Both have the same cause: a failure to accept reality

‘The climate transition presents a historic investment opportunity,’ says BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. ‘What the financiers, the big banks, the asset managers, private investors, venture capital are all discovering is: There’s a lot of money to be made in the creation of these new [green] jobs,’ chimes in presidential climate envoy John Kerry.  Fink concedes that

On the face of it, the Labour party conference commitment to bring forward Britain’s net zero greenhouse gas emission target to 2030 is nothing short of reckless. ‘We need zero emissions,’ the economist Paul Johnson and member of the Committee on Climate Change tweeted. ‘Getting there by 2050 is tough and expensive but feasible and

Here’s a negotiating gambit that seldom fails. Make a blatantly outrageous demand, and the other side won’t notice they’ve been stitched up in the rest of the agreement. That’s what Brussels did negotiating the Withdrawal Agreement. The backstop got so much attention that Britain’s commitments in the Political Declaration – wrongly thought of as optional

There’s a useful rule of thumb in politics. When Conservative politicians pronounce themselves to be a One Nation Tory, you can be pretty sure they’ve got nothing sensible to say. Instead of addressing voters, they’re conversing with each other in a special form of Tory code. It’s an identifier without substance, a form of ritualistic

For some of those desperate for Britain to stay put in the EU, the Customs Union option functions as a handy obsession. Ministers, too, appear to be rallying behind this as a solution to the Brexit crisis, amid reports that dozens of senior Tories could vote for the UK to stay in a customs union in

Clear thinking is what Brexit requires but clear thinking is the one thing most lacking. An example is how the Norway model has morphed into Norway plus. As it gathered political support, in the process, it lost any semblance of coherence. At the weekend Labour MPs Alan Johnson and John Denham touted Norway Plus as

To those who’ve known Greg Clark for any length of time, the transformation of the mild-mannered business secretary into the Cabinet’s most fervent Remainer requires some kind of explanation. So what’s the real reason Clark finds Brexit a threat? Forget about protecting the automotive industry and manufacturing generally. The car industry is already reeling from the

The Climate Change Act is ten years old. It was passed in a different age. David Cameron had been hugging huskies to de-toxify the Tories. It was a year before the Copenhagen Climate Conference. ‘Fifty days to set the course for the next 50 years,’ Gordon Brown declared. China and India’s veto put paid to

Brexit hangs by a thread. The Chequers Plan has already failed. Public hostility and its one-sided nature mean that it cannot provide a durable basis for the UK’s future relationship with the EU.  Only eighteen months ago, the Prime Minister was saying that Britain could not possibly stay in the EU Single Market. It would

The management principle that in static organisations, people are promoted to their level of incompetence reveals the government’s two most inept politicians to be the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Appearing at Davos last week, Philip Hammond pitched the government into its current – conceivably terminal – Brexit crisis. Thanks to his

Conservative ministers are going through a green fit in an attempt to appeal to voters they lost at the last election. They want to show the world they’re doing good. ‘You know what some people call us – the plastic bag party,’ seems to be the political re-branding calculation. As the former No.10 spin doctor