Jessica Elgot is the Guardian’s deputy political editor.Tony Blair has called for a “reset” of action on climate change, to the dismay of some green campaigners, suggesting the government should focus less on renewables and more on technological solutions like carbon capture.In remarks that have antagonised some in Labour and in industry, the former prime minister said people were “being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal”.Blair, who was writing the foreword to a new report from his thinktank, the Tony Blair Institute, echoed similar criticism of net zero made by the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch.He wrote “any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail.

”The former Labour leader, whose institute has been highly influential in Labour circles, said that the current climate debate was “riven with irrationality” and suggested net zero was losing public support.The paper itself, written by the TBI’s Lindy Fursman, said that net zero policies were now being seen as “increasingly viewed as unaffordable, ineffective, or politically toxic”.In the UK however, climate change policies have retained popularity.The thinktank Persuasion UK said in a report published yesterday that Labour could potentially lose far more seats from disillusioned leftwing Labour voters defecting to the Greens than from those defecting to Reform.Last week Keir Starmer told conference in London that tackling the climate crisis and bolstering energy security were “in the DNA of my government” and that “we won’t wait – we will accelerate.

”But Blair said that present policy solutions were “inadequate” and said leaders should shift towards a “pragmatic policy” that prioritised technological solutions.He said this was borne out by rising demand for production of fossil fuels, especially in China and India and the doubling of airline travel plus increased demand for steel and cement.He said he still believed climate was “one of the fundamental challenges of our time” and that renewable energy was necessary.But he said the government needs “to alter where we put our focus”.Blair said there should be more focus on carbon capture, saying: “The disdain for this technology in favour of the purist solution of stopping fossil-fuel production is totally misguided.

” He also called for a major new international embrace of nuclear power and to intensify work on new small modular reactors,Tony Blair has called for the government to change course on climate, suggesting a strategy that limits fossil fuels in the short term or encourages people to limit consumption is “doomed to fail”,The Conservative party and Reform UK have welcomed his comments,(See 3,16pm and 4.

53pm.) But Mathew Lawrence, director of Common Wealth, a green and progressive think tank, said:The public are clear and Tony Blair is out of touch.They support the net-zero agenda and want polluters to pay.The net-zero economy is how we renew our communities and tackle the cost of living crisis.Clinging to the roller coaster of a fossil fuelled energy system is what is truly unaffordable, ineffective, and politically toxic.

It is sad to see a former Labour prime minister - someone who once got the importance of climate ambition for Britain’s economic success - echo the lines of Big Oil.Brendan Cox, the husband of the murdered MP Jo Cox, has said the Irish rap trio Kneecap have offered only “half an apology”, after criticism of comments in which they appear to call for politicians to be killed.Downing Street has said suggestions that a reliance on renewable energy contributed to blackouts in Spain, which have been endorsed by the Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, are “unfounded claims and speculation”.(See 5.04pm.

)For a full list of all the stories covered here today, scroll through the key events timeline at the top of the blog.Almost half of voters do not have confidence than any party leader would be effective at governing the country, a poll suggests.Channel 4 News has released the results of polling carried out by More in Common ahead of a debate for the local elections it is broadcasting tonight at 7pm.C4 says:More In Common asked voters who they thought would be most effective in governing the country - 41% responded: ‘None of the above’.The second most popular choice was Reform’s Nigel Farage with 23%, followed by the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, with 19%, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch with 8%, the Lib-Dem’s Ed Davey on 6% and the Green’s co-leaders, Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay, coming last with 2%.

More in Common polled people in England living in areas where local elections are taking place (mostly shire areas, not big cities),In these areas, the poll also found Reform UK in the lead, on 26%, with the Conservatives on 25%, Labour on 18%, the Lib Dems on 17% and the Greens on 8%,Commenting on the poll findings, Luke Tryl, executive director of More in Common UK, said:The public mood going into these elections is one of deep disillusionment, voters are impatient for change but aren’t confident any party can deliver it,As results trickle in on Friday this polling suggests we will see that the fragmentation of the electorate in last year’s general election has only accelerated since then,For many their vote on Thursday will be an expression of deep frustration with the status quo.

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK look set to be the big winners of the night, leading in our polling, while the Conservatives on these numbers would lose scores of seats in elections being contested on normally solid turf - both to Reform UK and the Liberal Democrats.Yesterday, in a thread on social media, Tryl said that he was returning home after conducing focus groups in Beverley, Hull, Scunthorpe and Peterborough and that he thought the “disillusionment” he had heard was the worst he had experienced in his time as a focus group organiser.Here are some of the points he made.Views of politicians went beyond healthy cynicism ranging from them not getting it to being useless to being actively corrupt.This wasn’t a partisan thing, it applied to everyone Tory, Labour, Lib Dem, Reform, being part of the political class was more telling than party.

The demand for change was palpable, but there was a lack of faith it was going to happen, again not limited to one party but instead there was a sense politicians weren’t up to it or weren’t willing to take on vested interests.From pot holes to the NHS it was all going wrong.While some people were still willing to give the government the benefit of the doubt and time - most were disappointed or angry at the pace of change, but more than that there was a common view of no difference between Labour and the last Conservative Government.All in all a bleak picture.If politics can’t be shown to make genuine improvements in people’s lives people will lose faith entirely, switch off, look elsewhere or demand something else - which is why I don’t think what I’ve heard this weekend is sustainable.

Downing Street has said suggestions that a reliance on renewable energy contributed to blackouts in Spain are “unfounded claims and speculation”,Echoing a theory promoted prominently by the Daily Telegraph in its splash story on the power cuts in Spain and Portugal, Kemi Badenoch said she thought it was likely that having a grid reliant on renewable energy was a factory,She told journalists:I’ve heard different theories about what’s happened,Some have said that it’s cyberterrorism, but the more likely issue is the grid – that when you have an electricity supply that’s reliant on renewables, you need a lot of battery storage,And quite often, what we’re seeing is renewables running ahead of the storage facilities, which means that when you have surges one way or another, you end up with blackouts.

And this is one of the reasons why I’ve been saying that the net zero plans we have are not thought through.But Dowing Street said these were “unfounded claims”.At the afternoon lobby briefing, asked about the theory that there was a renewable energy link to the power cuts, a No 10 spokesperson said:In terms of the claims of reliance on net zero energy leaving countries affected vulnerable to power cuts, these are unfounded claims and speculation at this stage.It is too early to confirm the exact cause of the incident, and the priority has obviously been the restoration of power.Switching fossil fuelled generation for home grown, clean energy from renewables and other clean technologies offers us security, electricity supply that fossil fuels simply cannot provide.

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has claimed his party is “winning the argument” on net zero in the light of Tony Blair now arguing that current policies are failing.(See 3.05pm.) Farage posted this on social media.Even Tony Blair now says the push for Net Zero has become ‘irrational’ and ‘hysterical’.

We are winning the argument!Britain’s gas power stations should be nationalised to prevent their owners from holding the electricity market “to ransom”, the thinktank Common Wealth has urged.Jill Ambrose has the story.The Scottish Green MSP Maggie Chapman has survived an attempt to remove her from Holyrood’s equalities committee, where she is the deputy convenor, over her criticism of the supreme court’s ruling on trans rights and the defintion of a woman.As Holyrood reports, three MSPs (two Tory, and one Labour) voted to remove her, but they were outvoted 4-3 after three SNP MSPs voted to back Chapman, who also voted for herself.Chapman accused the supreme court of “bigotry, prejudice and hatred”, which led to Scotland’s Faculty of Advocates accusing her of underming the independence of the judiciary.

The government has rejected calls to join France in preparing to recognise the state of Palestine within months,As Hamish Falconer, the Foreign Office minister, made a Commons statement on this visit to London by Mohammad Mustafa, prime minister of the Palestinian authority, Emily Thornberry asked if the UK would follow France, which has said it might recognise the Palestinian state in June,Thornberry, chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee, asked if the government agreed “that now is the time to take the next serious step which is to finally recognise the state of Palestine and perhaps the best time to do that might be alongside the French in New York in June?”Falconer said the government’s position on this had not changed,He went on:We do wish to recognise a Palestinian state, we wish to do so as a contribution to a two state solution and we will make a judgment about when the best moment is to try and make the fullest possible contribution,Because as I said to the Palestinian prime minister this morning, our responsibility is for the reality of the situation on the ground, the practical viability of a Palestinian state.

Of course there are other states that have taken a different position from the UK government and chosen to recognise a Palestinian state.That has not called it into existence.Our job in the British government is to make a practical contribution to a two state solution and that is how we intend to approach this issue.A reader BTL asked what the actual question was in the Commons urgent question tabled by Mark Francois on Kneecap.An urgent question is a means of getting a minister to make a mini-statement on a topic, and the actual question tends to be very bland.

In this case, it was: “To ask the secretary of state for the home department if she will make a statement on the alleged incitement to murder MPs by the Irish Republican group Kneecap.”The Conservatives have welcomed Tony Blair’s criticism of current net zero policies.Andrew Bowie, the acting shadow energy secretary, said:It seems even Tony Blair has come to the realisation that Keir Starmer and the Labour party’s mad dash to net zero by 2050 is simply not feasible, or sustainable.As Ed Miliband’s net zero zealotry pushes this country’s energy security even further into the arms of China, and their slave labour supply chains, and risks driving up energy bills further and further, only Kemi Badenoch and the Conservatives are telling the truth about energy policy in this country.Under new leadership, we have been clear that the cost of net zero by 2050 to families will be far too high, and we must urgently change course.

Will Labour now finally be prepared to do the same, and put the national interest above their own ideological dogma?Blair’s comments in foreword to the report published his thinktank (see 3.05pm) do not directly refer to UK government policy.His remarks refer to climate policy in developing countries in general.But the points he is making clearly apply to the UK.Here is a summary of the arguments that Tony Blair is making about net zero policy in the foreword to the report that his thinktank has published.

(See 1,10pm,)Blair claims the policies being adopted by governments around the world to tackle the climate crisis are losing public support,He says:Though most people will accept that climate change is a reality caused by human activity, they’re turning away from the politics of the issue because they believe the proposed solutions are not founded on good policy,Blair does not cite evidence at this point to back up this claim, and it is at least arguable.

Polling suggests that, in the UK, at least some aspect of the net zero agenda are popular.For example, YouGov published a poll recently saying more than half of Britons support the government’s target of getting emissions to net zero by 2030.The government carries out its own tracker polling, and that shows 54% of people think the transition to net zero will have a positive impact on the economy over the long term.Blair says people in developed countries don’t think their governments’ climate policies will make much difference.In developed countries, voters feel they’re being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal.

Whatever the historical responsibility of the developed world for climate change, those with even a cursory knowledge of the facts understand that in the future the major sources of pollution will come principally from the developing world.This is quite similar to what Nigel Farage was arguing only last week.Blair says people in developing countries also resent the push to net zero.For that developing world, there is an equal resentment when they’re told the investment is not available for the energy necessary for their development because it is not “green”.They believe, correctly, that they have a right to develop and that those who have already developed using fossil fuels do not have the right to inhibit them from whatever is the most effective way of developing.

Blair says the current climate policies around the world are “inadequate” and not working,Because of the levels of growth and development, present policy solutions are inadequate and, worse, are distorting the debate into a quest for a climate platform that is unrealistic and therefore unworkable,So, the movement now needs a public mandate, attainable only through a shift from protest to pragmatic policy,Too often, political leaders fear saying what many know to be true: the current approach isn’t working,(The line about politicians not saying “what many know to be true” sounds like an extract from a Kemi Badenoch speech.

In fact, she would probably agree with almost all of what Blair is saying in this foreword.)Blair says current policies are not curbing the rise in rise in the production of fossil fuels.Despite the past 15 years seeing an explosion in renewable energy and despite electric vehicles becoming the fastest-growing sector of the vehicle market, with China leading the way in both, production of fossil fuels and demand for them has risen, not fallen, and is set to rise further up to 2030.Leaving aside oil and gas, in 2024 China initiated construction on 95 gigawatts of new coal-fired energy, which is almost as much as the total current energy output from coal of all of Europe put together.Meanwhile, India recently announced they had reached the milestone of 1 billion tonnes of coal production in a single year.

Airline travel is set to double over the next 20 years.By 2050, urbanisation is expected to drive a 40 per cent increase in demand for steel and a 50 per cent increase in demand for cement – core inputs to development, but materials with a significant emissions footprint.He says that is why trying to phase out fossil fuels in the short term is “doomed to fail”.These are the inconvenient facts, which mean that any strategy based on either “phasing out” fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail.Blair does not define “short term” in this context