Labour MPs including Jo White, the chairman of the Red Wall Group of backbenchers, have questioned No 10’s messaging on green energy in the wake of the election results.

Mr Farage put a vow to “reindustrialise” Britain at the heart of his pitch to voters in the north of England, and Reform went on to gain full control of Durham and Lincolnshire councils.

On Sunday, Khalid Mahmood, a former Labour frontbencher, said his party had “still got the bourgeoisie in London pulling the strings” and was “ignoring the working classes”.

He told LBC radio: “All these ideas like net zero, which we are pushing far above anyone else looking at it… It’s costing hugely working people, who have to get up in the morning and get in their van and actually deliver.”

Mr Mahmood added: “What we need to do is get our industries back up. The cost of energy is horrendous at the moment and part of the cost of net zero is the energy cost.”

Meanwhile, Louise Haigh, the former transport secretary, said her party must rip up its general election pledge not to raise taxes to see off the threat of Reform. 

In her first intervention since her resignation last year, she wrote in The Times: “It is now urgent that we develop a vision and a strategy that is confident in our values, sets the terms of the debate and takes the fight to Reform, rather than letting the fight come to us. That is the only way to hold our perilous coalition together.

“I believe the only way to achieve that is through an economic reset, through ripping up our self-imposed tax rules and by a serious programme of investment and reindustrialisation. Because Nigel Farage is not wooing these voters with a traditionally right-wing offer.”

Labour needs to learn lessons of past week and be flexible in green-target drive

by Lord Blunkett

Last week, three events focussed minds on the politics and practicality of achieving net zero by 2050 and decarbonising the production of electricity over the next five years.

The first event saw the Tony Blair Institute publish a report with a foreword from Sir Tony which caused controversy, not so much about its content as the interpretation of what it was saying. Plus, the unfortunate timing just before English local elections on May 1.

The second was those elections themselves, including a by-election for a Westminster seat, mayoral and some county council elections, which saw Nigel Farage’s Reform UK come out smiling.

The third was the outage of power across Spain and Portugal a few days earlier, which was a timely reminder of just how dependent we are on electricity supply and the devastation that can be caused when the lights go out, the trains stop, and charging points fail.

This reminded me of an event, three and half years ago, which seems to have faded from memory. A major storm hit Scotland and the north of England and around a hundred thousand families lost power – some of them for more than a week. Those reliant almost entirely on electricity couldn’t heat their homes, even where they had ground or heat pumps, couldn’t take a warm shower, nor could they use their electric oven, charge their car or connect to the Internet.

On that occasion it was a natural occurrence – ironically too frequent because of climate change – that brought down the pylons and caused, for some, much more than simple inconvenience. It was, of course, Scotland and the north of England, so the impact in relation to much of the national media was nowhere near what it might have been had the event happened in the south.

However, it did remind us – as the Blair Institute paper was intended to – that reliance on only one source of energy is not only politically dangerous but practically unwise.

That is why, in that document, they talked about carbon capture and the continuing use of alternative sources – including, for the time being, natural gas in a world where many are continue to commit to using fossil fuels, and even where a country like Norway is slowing down their transition from the very lucrative oil and gas fields to renewable sources of energy.

Which brings me to the local elections. Reform UK is the one party totally committed to abandoning the drive for net zero.

Their policy is insane. In years to come we will need to have protected ourselves from the vagaries of those world events which lead to fluctuations in both the availability and price of oil and gas.

Never mind the impact on the environment.

But the politics of this is genuinely tricky. So far, the moves that have been made (and yes, we as a country have made substantial moves towards net zero) have been at a heavy cost to both industry and domestic users.

Getting energy prices down quickly is a political imperative if the necessary changes aren’t to become electorally toxic.

Decoupling the price of electricity from the global gas market is an essential move, as is completely changing the terms of reference of the regulator, Ofgem.

At the moment, we’re in a Catch-22 situation, which sees measures taken to reduce the cost of clean energy undermined by price increases, reflecting the world price of carbon.

In any case, alternatives to total reliance on electricity are surely a no-brainer. For the reasons I’ve outlined, we need to look creatively at what can be done – both in terms of the use of technology to clean up existing sources of energy, but also to ensure that we can switch to alternatives or make them available for the comfort, well-being and choice of the consumer.

It is absolutely true that we can accelerate growth by investment in renewables and away from dependence on carbon fuels. But it’s also true that the price of energy for our industrial base is a major drag on growth and on our competitiveness. We have to square that circle.

We need targets but must be flexible

Much work is going on – including in my home city of Sheffield where the University of Sheffield, linked to ATM power and mirrored with work elsewhere, is looking to produce “clean hydrogen”, crucial to gradually replacing gas, including for some industrial forms of production.

Other innovations such as Small Modular Reactors to ensure that we are not entirely dependent on large nuclear power plants – and that we can regionalise and therefore decouple from the National Grid where it’s necessary – would be both a safeguard for our national security and the avoidance of devastating cyber-attacks, but also at times of natural disasters.

The Blair Institute report touched on the critical importance of preparation for that eventuality. And so, paradoxically, did a report from the Climate Change Committee, focusing on our existing resilience and amelioration of what is continuing to impact on the sustainability of our planet and the politics of careful, well explained and, where necessary, slower moves towards a common goal.

Yes, we need targets, we need the ambition and momentum set by deadlines, but we need the flexibility to ensure that the drive for a cleaner, more pleasant and safer planet is not undermined by the political victories of those who would reverse all that has been achieved so far.

In a democracy, you have to persuade not command people to contribute in their own lives to bringing about change. You must ensure that what you’re offering is a promise not a punishment, and, above all, you have to listen to them. That is the lesson of the past few weeks.

Lord Blunkett is a Labour peer and served as home secretary from 2002-2004