The gap between discourse and action in the United Kingdom: Exploring the weakness of climate action in the post-COVID political space

Abstract

The post-pandemic recovery saw global attention given to the idea that we could Build Back Greener. In the UK, despite a similar narrative emerging, the government has failed to deliver decarbonisation policy in line with the country's targets. Following an initial wave of attention, the period from 2023 to (July) 2024 saw a backsliding in existing climate policy and rhetoric. This work explores why the UK government failed to translate ambitious rhetoric into sustained action as the UK emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on 22 interviews with political actors we demonstrate how two competing narratives around climate action constrain the development of climate policy. The first narrative promotes climate action as an opportunity for economic growth that requires government policy to drive action. The second narrative discusses climate change as a purely technical challenge where government intervention places unwanted burdens on individuals. The lack of a single, dominant policy paradigm identified in the interviews can also explain the inconsistent and changing approach to mitigation action. Neither narrative moves climate change beyond the economic-policy framing. Therefore, both narratives will continue to constrain the government's ability to act, either by limiting policy to actions that provide growth or by framing climate change as a problem for markets to fix. For climate action to be delivered at the scale required, non-techno-economic narratives are needed.