Tony Blair. Climate vampire. Will Morgan McSweeney choose the Renfield Option?

Remember. It’s darkest before…things go totally pitch black.

Whether originating with the late Senator John McCain, Paul Newman, Mao, or John McCain quoting Mao, we love that line.

Embrace the dark. When you stop being afraid of the dark, your eyes get pretty good.

You might even spot some undead types who are back from the grave and up to no good. And I think there might be some types up to no good, here in Britain. It’s one thing for Nigel Farage to suddenly look odds-on to form the next government here leading Reform UK’s right-populist anti-climate party, should this week’s UK local election results be predictive to the next general election.

The real question is whether the incumbent UK government will stay the course or join the “vibe shift” of deciding there’s short-term political profit in sacrificing long-term climate survival.

Thankfully, for this third episode of the early May holiday weekend, necessary for the insane news cycle, for these conversations we were joined by Holly Brazier-Tope, deputy director of politics at UK think tank Green Alliance; UK-based climate journalist and 6th-dan-blackbelt Bluesky shitposter Dave Vetter; and

Adam Bell

, director of policy at Stonehaven, a UK consultancy.

Exit Music

All will become clear.

Is Net Zero a winner or loser in the UK?

The difference between whether an issue is of concern and whether it moves votes is something like the difference in words between lightning and a lightning bug.¹

The polling, exhaustively researched by people like Luke Tryl at More In Common and Steve Akehurst at Persuasion UK (whom I amalgamate to “Luke Akehurst” in the episode), is that people do in fact care about climate change and doing something about it:

So why on earth would Tony Blair of all people decide to make his big comeback on the back of trying to undermine a core policy of the first government of his party elected in 14 years? Particularly on an issue that is actually a) popular; b) morally essential; and c) working.

We get into that.

We also touch on reactions to the UK Climate Change Committee’s progress report on adaptation, featuring

Rupert Read

and Green Alliance’s Lydia Collas.

And the impacts on what happened here in Britain from the great Spanish/Portugese blackout we discussed with friend of the show

Tom Raftery

.

Bank Holiday Reading

We’re also writing the next part of - whatever this is - trying to puzzle out the relationships between sci-fi, philosophy, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and this political moment, in order to…I dunno…be better able to form any kind of strategy that takes into account why their ideas (especially those they borrowed) got traction.

All the Outros

We like using music to give a bit more dimension to what we’re thinking. We hope you like it.

1. I can’t find a clip of either Val Kilmer or Hal Holbrook saying Twain’s line but will pay actual money to someone who sends me a link to such a clip.