The blob rotates and the blobbers spin while Britain's internal enemies seek its humiliation

I’ve written a lot about the blob, blobbers and their blobbing over the years. The first time I was ever moved to ask about green cash was following one of Greenpeace’s earlier conspiracy theories about Exxon Mobil. Greenpeace had claimed to have identified flows of cash between the oil company and a number of figures and organisations in public life, which they claimed made the case that “denial” had been “funded” to protect the company’s interests from policies. But it was bullshit. The amounts involved were tiny. Moreover, these sums shrank in significance even further when compared to the budgets of the large green NGOs, which were orders of magnitude greater. This is when I first also begin to understand that environmentalists have failed to develop a sense of proportion.

It turned out that with vastly more money than it was alleged “Big Oil” had spent on “denial”, a handful of green billionaires was not only “funding” green organisations, it was founding them also, and aligned them and many more grantors to a single strategic purpose as a condition of their grants. Through their philanthropic vehicles, they were simply buying civil society wholesale. This phenomenon wasn’t unique to the green sector, but that is where it was clearest. Greenpeace’s conspiracy theory was true, but the wrong way round.

The brass neck of it is quite remarkable. The green blob funders even spent money on funding fake civil society organisations to find the hidden links between big oil and “denial”. But as I pointed out here, they were forced into inventing data, rather than, as they claimed, finding receipts. They were doing what they were accusing others of. And it really worked. Many people now really do believe that “Tufton St” is the reason that the world does not have a global climate agreement and the UK is not already a green Utopia. And the SW1P conspiracy did it, according to the green theorists, for mere £thousands.

Away from the bizarre fantasies of the Byline Times and the Guardian/Observer, the reality was quite different. A number of “Tufton St” think tanks (which weren’t even on Tufton St) were given plenty of Green Blob cash to write up policy ideas in their grantors’ favour.

As I point out in my recent piece for the Daily Sceptic, which is copied below, the Conservative-leaning think tank Policy Exchange has produced countless reports for the green blob. But it has no produced an extreme damning report on the potential opened up for climate lawfare against Britain and British companies by a recent International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory.

I have to admit, I thought there would be more interest in this story, which puts both Britain’s surrender of territory and its vulnerability to ongoing climate litigation at the foot of the one, green blob-funded ecoBarrister. But news agendas are mysterious.

Policy Exchange’s late but welcome awakening is consistent with the broader Tory fold’s apparent withdrawal from the conspicuous green agenda, if not the green blob. Although such appearances remain to be seen in fact. A few days later, however, The Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) made a surprise move.

Liam Halligan is someone who gets the problem with Net Zero, I think. But the CPS was very much involved with it…

Robert Colvile was one of the authors of 2019 Conservative Party Manifesto. And, despite his protestations, was another instrument of the green blob (and on its coins), putting Net Zero at the centre of the party’s offering.

It’s interesting to see these how these parts of the Tory movement essentially sanitise their own history.

In the week that Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch took the whip away from her predecessor’s (Theresa May’s) former Chief of Staff (Lord Gavin Barwell), I find it Curious that Hannan can’t find it within him to admit Colevile’s error in leading the Tories up the garden path. Hannan, now a peer, and director of the CPS and PE’s neighbour, the Institute of Economic Affairs has never fully explained his own role in promoting green bullshit, having once — and not that long ago — claimed:

Britain can lead the world in transmuting water into fuel

Britain no longer has to worry about dodgy Middle Eastern dictators. We are phasing out fossil fuels at breakneck speed. Coal will be banned from our power stations in 2024. The last gas heating system will be installed in 2025. Petrol, diesel and even hybrid cars will be gone by 2035. There is no point in arguing about whether ordering these bans was proportionate; we have made the decision, and industry is already adapting.

Colvile, Barwell and Hannan epitomised the utter intransigence of the Tory milieu, which made it practically indistinct from the Miliband club. And now they are only two — the seemingly most obnoxious of the trio having been chucked out — does the sudden appearance of realism change the past, or even the present, sufficient to make a compelling case for a Tory future?

I don’t want to torture the point or the party. But I don’t think the crisis has been understood yet.

The case of the degenerate lawyer and his colleagues causing so much harm to Britain — and proudly boasting his pride in humiliating the country — ought to cause a recalibration of just how capable of damage blobs and their front organisations are. That British political culture — or to be precise the culture of British political establishment — is such that one of its number can be so proud of humiliating the country, and putting it at risk of territorial erosion and creating a multi-£trillion liability, with less than zero sense of shame about it speaks to the fact of a longstanding systemic condition exceeding its terminal phase. Hannan and Colville were party to it.

Meanwhile…

Britain is about to gain a new Prime Minister, even the MPs around the last one deciding that he must go, even though their consensus was also that none among them are fit for the position. So after much performance, the Mayor of Manchester was dragged back to Westminster. And this leaves the question mark over Miliband, Secretary of State for (against) Energy Security and (for) Net Zero.

Though Miliband was tipped for the job at Number 11, this apparently spooked the markets and others. If he is removed from the energy and Net Zero brief, that would by symbolic of…. something… We’ve yet to find out.

But speaking of blobs… It was instigator of the Climate Change Act, Ed’s Brother David, who was Foreign Secretary. When Ed stabbed him the back to become leader of the Labour Party, David quit politics, to take up a position as President of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in New York, where he apparently commands a salary of approximately £1 million. As I wrote, back at the start of last year:

You might join me in wondering how is the Director of any ‘charity’ worth a million quid a year? The answer might be that though he quit politics, David Miliband did not sever relationships with the state. The British taxpayer is a very generous supporter of the IRC, which was the beneficiary of contracts worth £45 million, £16 million and £8 million in 2021 alone – £69 million in total.

We really need to talk about blobs and the humiliation of Britain.

According to a new report from the Conservative-aligned think tank Policy Exchange, an ‘Advisory Opinion’ issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) may leave Britain exposed to excessive climate litigation. This litigation may include trillions of pounds in climate reparations, the report claims, and could prevent the exploitation of North Sea oil and gas, even if the government was willing to allow it. It is indeed an extremely worrying possibility and a grotesque departure from the notions of democracy and national sovereignty. But why is anyone surprised by this destruction of democratic national sovereignty? Surely that has long been the point of green globalism?

It’s a strange report to see from Policy Exchange, because the think tank has long been at the centre of driving the green agenda into the Tory perspective. Policy Exchange has published many dozens of reports that candidly give thanks to its sponsors, which include the European Climate Foundation (ECF), Bloomberg Philanthropies, WWF and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), which have given support to green policies. Policy Exchange also incubated some significant climate wonk careers, including Guy Newey, now CEO of the Net Zero research funding quango Catapult Energy Systems and Director of the UK100 campaign, which inserts the Green Blob into local governments to accelerate Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and Clean Air Zones, despite local opposition. Another Policy Exchange alumnus is Ben Caldecott, co-founder of the Conservative Environment Network and of the Oxford Smith School’s Sustainable Finance Group, where he is Associate Professor.