With the Conservative Party out and Labour in after the United Kingdom’s July 3 election, opinions vary on what this seismic political shift from blue to red will mean for climate action.

In the words of one former Conservative minister who lost his seat, it was “electoral Armageddon” for the Tories as Keir Starmer’s Labour Party secured 411 of the 650 seats in Parliament. The landslide victory represents a “historic public mandate to accelerate climate action, invest in the industries of the future, and restore UK climate leadership,” E3G campaigns director Ed Matthew said in a release. “Dependence on oil and gas has driven the cost-of-living crisis,” he declared, adding the former prime minister Rishi Sunak had “pitched the Conservatives against every UK household” by delaying and damaging the clean energy policies that could cut energy bills.

“It was a catastrophic political blunder,” Matthew said.

An ‘Appetite’ for Green Policy

Greenpeace UK Co-Executive Director Areeba Hamid told EuroNews that Labour’s decisive win amounted to a “burial” of Sunak’s “divisive anti-green agenda.”

Hamid added the Starmer government “must take note” of the popularity of the Liberal Democrats, who secured 72 seats, and of the “surging Greens”. who quadrupled their representation in parliament from one seat to four. Both parties took “much bolder” stands on climate than Labour, showing “there is a genuine appetite from voters for much stronger green policies from the government,” Hamid said.

Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer, the newly-elected Member of Parliament for Bristol Central, spoke of her party’s “delight” at the surge in trust and support for its policies, reports the Guardian. “This result shows that many voters have had enough of incremental change—we need far-reaching action that can make a real difference to people’s lives, to tackle the issues they are facing.”

“We, as Green MPs, will push Labour to be braver,” she told supporters after her win, calling the Labour victory a “hopeful signal” that the “14 years of dither, delay, and retreat that defined the Conservative brand of environmentalism” has ended.

Mike Childs, head of policy at Friends of the Earth UK, also urged Labour to seize the day.

“Labour’s plans for climate and nature are far stronger than that of its predecessor, including a commitment to meet the international goal to cut emissions by two-thirds by 2030, but need to go further still if we’re to get the country back on course for meeting crucial targets,” Childs said.

Climate Action Promised

It’s now up to former Labour leader Ed Miliband, now the incoming Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary, to deliver on the party’s manifesto pledges, writes the Independent. The platform calls for the new government to establish a state-owned Great British Energy company, with £8.3 billion (C$14.5 billion) earmarked for cheap, clean, homegrown energy, halt new oil and gas licences, and deliver a “green prosperity plan” to create 650,000 jobs, cut energy bills, and shift the UK to a clean economy.

Reprising a role he held 14 years ago as energy and climate change secretary under then-PM Gordon Brown, Miliband will now take on the task of delivering on his government’s flagship “clean energy by 2030” pledge.

This will be “one of Labour’s hardest goals to implement,” given that as of last year, “some 33% of the UK electricity supply came from fossil fuels, most of it gas,” writes Bloomberg.

“Even if Labour succeeds with plans to double onshore wind, triple solar power, and quadruple offshore wind, there will still need to be a baseload energy source to fill the gaps that happen when demand is high, the sun is low, and the weather is still.”

With hydrogen and tidal energy still in development, the Starmer government has pledged to deal with this intermittency problem with a “strategic reserve” of gas power plants.

“These could in theory be run cleanly with carbon capture and storage—which Labour pledges to back—but that technology is far from being commercially feasible,” Bloomberg adds.

Climate Action Tracker described Labour’s clean power by 2030 pledge as “Herculean, but absolutely achievable.”

Labour has also pledged to increase the energy efficiency of UK homes, in order to meet climate targets while slashing “eye-watering” energy bills that contribute to cost-of-living woes across the country.

Labour’s pledge to double investment in energy efficiency in buildings is “crucial,” but the Starmer government will need to “ensure the funds go to those who need it most, to those experiencing fuel poverty,” writes Climate Action Tracker.

“Prime Minister Starmer would be wise to reconsider his promise to revoke the ban on new gas boilers,” adds the climate watchdog. “Credible long-term bans on fossil fuel technologies can—and have been—very useful in setting out a clear direction of travel for a sector, and should not be scrapped.”

Re-Establishing Global Leadership

Miliband is also expected to “re-establish the UK’s global leadership role on climate change, which reached a peak under Boris Johnson, when Glasgow hosted the UN climate COP26 talks,” before declining under Sunak and his short-lived predecessor, Liz Truss, the Independent writes.

“There is a wonderful opportunity—as well as a pressing responsibility—for the new government to show its citizens, as well as the world at large, what it means to be a leader on climate, development, and nature once again,” UK head of the World Resources Institute Edward Davey told the Guardian.

Some observers are skeptical about Labour’s commitment to climate leadership, at home or abroad. “Glaringly absent” from the Starmer government’s promise to focus on national security is any discussion of “the significant and growing risk climate change poses to global instability, as a warmer world exacerbates resource scarcity and population displacement,” write Jack Davis and Kate Seymour, both lecturers in sustainability at Manchester Metropolitan University, in a recent post for The Conversation.

A ‘Sandcastle Majority’

The mandate of the Starmer government for climate action—or any action—remains uncertain, as the disintegrating global climate was “barely discussed” during campaigns, Context reported just days before UK voters went to the polls. “‘Climate’ was mentioned in 8% of British media’s general election articles in the campaign up to June 30, compared to 17% in the 2019 election. And just 2% of articles included the term “climate change,” compared to 10% in 2019, according to data from the audience strategy consultancy AKAS.

The emergent “greenlash” narrative was likely a factor in suppressing talk about climate change, AKAS co-founder Richard Addy told Context. There was also an apparent reluctance about talking up climate pledges like supporting energy efficiency in homes.

“You would have thought that political parties might want to make more of the fact that they are promising to help people to bring down their bills and to insulate them from the price shocks of the future,” said Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) Director Peter Chalkley.

Such a “Ming vase” strategy of avoiding hard conversations during the campaign should be understood as delivering a “thumping majority but a questionable mandate,” writes Tortoise Media. “It might look impressive, but it could easily be swept away, and Nigel Farage’s Reform party could be that rising tide,” adds Tortoise, riffing off UK pollster James Kanagsooriam’s quip that Labour had won a “sandcastle majority.”

It was “eighth time lucky” for climate-denying Brexiteer Farage, who beat the Conservative incumbent  by more than 8,000 votes in the resort town of Clacton-on-Sea, reports the BBC News.

Labour will also need to face the reality that 2024 was “undoubtedly a low-turnout election,” as the Guardian put it, with only 60% of eligible voters participating.

And then there is the extraordinary geographic and social diversity of Labour’s new voter coalition. Maintaining consensus within such diversity will be challenging, notes the Guardian, especially given the rising stars of both the Greens and Reform. 

“Just as the Conservative party was caught between the Lib Dems and Reform UK with devastating consequence last night, so Labour may find itself similarly caught between the Greens and Reform in the future,” writes the Guardian.