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Jim Duffy ✍ A core problem with the neo-realist theory advocated by Mearsheimer comes from the generation of academics of his era. 


They were either conscientiously or subconsciously influenced by the dominant Marxist theory that swept through academia, which argued against the "great man" theory of history and instead focused on structural issues in society. The theory was that outcomes were decided by structural issues in a society, not leaders.
 
I completely disagreed in classes on it. Yes, the "great man" theory was wildly overblown and also completely ignored the critical role of structure and failings in a society. But the structural theory that neo-rationalism is built on ignored the crucial role a leader played. Yet at critical junctures the leader was central, either positively or negatively. If one takes the leader out of the equation, the outcome could have been radically different even with the same structural issues.
 
A classic example is that of King Louis XVI and the French revolution. A standard theory was that he was a weak not particularly able man unable to handle the structural flaws in the Ancien Regime. However some years ago unknown papers of Queen Marie Antoinette were found in the archives of a prominent figure in the period who had been close to her. She had given her papers to him for safe keeping.
 
What they showed, first of all, was that Louis XVI was actually a very capable man. He was however seriously ill and she described it in detail. Her description showed unambiguously that Louis had what we would describe as clinical depression. In his case it was to an extreme degree. I happen to have battled clinical depression. Reading her diary entries were shocking and I instantly understood what was happening. His already severe clinical depression was made dramatically worse when his elder son, the first Dauphin, died. He so went to pieces he could barely talk, barely react, barely get out of bed and wash. So, a man who was exceptionally able and might have been able to handle the crisis, was left effectively catatonic by mental illness.
 
Contrary to myth she didn't seize power. Her diaries show she never wanted power. The trouble was that there was nobody else available while Louis was in a catatonic state. He had two brothers. One was seen as cynical, manipulative and untrusted - the future Louis XVIII. The other, the future Charles X, was an intolerant extreme reactionary unfit ever to be monarch. The new Dauphin was a child so couldn't rule.
 
Marie Antoinette knew she was unqualified to rule. As the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francis she had never been trained to rule, whereas male heirs were. She knew she was out of her depth, but asked herself in her diary "but who else is there?" She reluctantly took on a governing role as there was nobody else in the Royal Family trusted enough and competent enough to do it, and her husband was catatonic.
 
Had Louis XVI not had extreme clinical depression, the talent he had shown before experiencing the extreme bursts of clinical depression might, just might, have avoided the revolution. It happened because he was severely ill and unable to physically or mentally function, and she wasn't qualified to, and the vacuum led to the revolution.
 
The more I read the more I felt sympathy for the King and Queen. I knew from experience exactly what he was going through. I could read her descriptions of Louis day by day and recognise things I went through. She was in despair. He was catatonic. There was nobody else suitable to act for the King among the senior royals, leaving her, to her horror, having to do it.

So that example, in that case of the impact of a vacuum at the heart of decision-making, showed that leaders do matter and it is not all about structural issues.
 
There were major structural issues in society in inter-war Germany. However there was nobody else able to take over and dominate Germany the way Hitler could. His unique personality enabled him to appear to speak for ordinary Germans. Take him out of history and again there is no certainty that the same outcome would have happened.
 
So while the 'great men' theory overestimated the impact someone could have as what they did or did not do was massively impacted by structural issues, structural issues won't deliver the same outcome without the impact of leaders.
 
Winston Churchill's pre-1940 career was haunted by many spectacular mistakes. He was desperately unpopular. He became prime minister in 1940 because everyone was tainted by appeasement, and all his warnings about Hitler proved prophetic. World War II would have been profoundly different without the impacts of Churchill, FDR, Stalin, Hitler - notwithstanding the structural issues.
 
Mearsheimer's problem in Ukraine is that his theoretical framework has always had significant design flaws in the area of the psychology of identity, nationalism, nations and nation-states. It has been an area many liberals cannot understand. It doesn't fit their rationalist theoretical framework. It is why they cannot understand the public opposition to mass migration, why they cannot understand the appeal of the nation state, etc. Mearsheimer's thesis cannot explain why Putin's nationalist view would invade Ukraine as neo-realist theory said he wouldn't. It cannot explain the determination of Ukraine to fight for its survival. It cannot explain why countries invaded fight more aggressively and determinedly than the invader. (The invaded are fighting for their survival. The invader's existence is not dependent on winning the war so they are less motivated.)
 
Mearsheimer's increasingly desperate efforts to double down, despite a 100% rate of being wrong on the war, are because his entire theory, his life's work, is on the line. If Ukraine wins, his theory is wrong. In the last few weeks he has spun stories of mythical Russian advances - all based on Putin spins.
 
Yet even Russian military bloggers and former Russian generals have rubbished those claims by the Kremlin. They have access to satellite images that entirely disproves the Kremlin claims. Those same bloggers and ex-generals are not pro-Ukraine. Many were enthusiastic supporters of the 'special military operation' but they can see in the data that the Kremlin claims are entirely disprovable. In one case, Russia announced that it was now just thirty miles from a critical target. That was spun by the Russian media as an "advance". Mearsheimer called it a "breakthrough". The bloggers pointed out that one year ago Russia was five miles from the city. Now it is thirty miles. It isn't an advance. It is actually a retreat of twenty-five miles! Furthermore, satellite images show that Russia had retreated.
 
Not alone that, but in a single month Russia suffered more deaths than the US suffered in the entire Vietnam war, and suffered more deaths than it was able to recruit. Russia's "advance" and it hasn't won more territory than it lost since March, is actually slower than in the notorious Battle of the Somme. One 'Z blogger', as they called themselves, pointed out that at that rate, it would take Russia 261 years to conquer Ukraine!!!
 
Mearsheimer's core problem is that his theory, his life's work, is being disproved daily by Ukraine. He cannot back down without admitting his theory, and life's work, is wrong. So he must double down on ludicrous predictions, even swallowing disproved Kremlin spin. As a result, it isn't just Putin's Russkiy Mir that risks being destroyed in Ukraine, but Mearsheimer's intellectually dubious claims in his life's work - his theoretical framework.

Some years ago, Putin gave a top military honour to a Russian soldier over his military leadership in Ukraine. One month ago, that now ex-soldier said "the war is lost. We cannot win it." Many oligarchs and generals believe that too. It a comment that Mearsheimer cannot echo. He and Putin are in the same boat, with their reputations dependent on winning in Ukraine, despite all the evidence that at best Russia is not winning. At worst, Ukraine is.

⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.

Mearsheimer's Core Problem

Louth For Ever ★ writing in Medium on 3-August-2026.

A sequel to No Form To Hold It, beginning with a correction to it.


What I Got Wrong

In May, in No Form To Hold It, I read Sinn Féin’s abstention on the Social Democrats’ Reproductive Rights (Amendment) Bill as absence from the abortion terrain: one of two grounds, with migration, where the party leans away when a line would cost it. The trailer, No Villain In It, carried the reading forward. The record does not bear it, and it is withdrawn.

Here is the fuller record. On 13th May the Dáil defeated the Social Democrats’ bill by 85 votes to 30, with 36 abstentions, Sinn Féin’s whole bench among them. But the bill was a bundle: removal of the mandatory three-day waiting period for abortion in early pregnancy, a revised test for terminations on fatal foetal abnormality grounds, and the removal of criminal sanctions from the 2018 Act. On the night, the party’s health spokesperson David Cullinane told the chamber that Sinn Féin supported removing the three-day wait, had never supported its introduction, and had already tabled its own legislation to remove it. The abstention was an objection to the bundle, argued on the floor in those terms. It was not absence from the headline measure.

Five weeks later the party proved it. On 17th June Sinn Féin brought the removal of the three-day wait back as a clean, single-issue bill and carried it by 86 votes to 70, with the government whip lifted, against on-the-record opposition from the Catholic bishops and from Aontú. On the three-day wait, Sinn Féin was not absent. It led, and it won.

The abortion strand of the hedge argument was overcharged, and this essay begins by striking it. The migration strand rests on its own record and stands. A body of work that reads political actors against the record has to submit to the same reading. That is the correction.

The Floor That Holds

What the correction clarifies is the question. Sinn Féin can move. It moved on the three-day wait and it won. Look at what it moved on: the broadly supported measure, stripped of the two provisions that carried a price, carried with government votes. The contested ground it left at the door. The question in front of the Irish left was never whether its parties will act. It is what they will spend.

Now put that question beside the newest numbers, because they contain a puzzle that ought to keep every person of the left in this country awake.

In the Sunday Independent/Ireland Thinks poll taken on the last day of July, 61% of voters disapprove of how the government is doing its job. 53% say the country is going in the wrong direction; 28% say the right one. The concerns topping the list are the cost of living and housing, the left’s home ground. Fianna Fáil has fallen to 16, its lowest in more than two years, and the two parties that have governed this state for a century hold 36 points between them, at the floor of a decline the Irish Times has mapped at roughly ten points a decade since the 1990s.

A government disapproved of by 2:1. A duopoly at its historic low. And the principal beneficiary of all that discontent, in the same table, is Fine Gael: unchanged at 20 and climbing steadily since April, when it stood at 17. The country wants something else, says so to every pollster who asks, and delivers its verdict to one half of the government it disapproves of.

The floor holds. What is holding it up is the question, because it is not the strength of the parties standing on it.

The Two Columns

Do the sums both ways, because doing them one way was the mistake I made first.

The left’s column: Sinn Féin 20, the Social Democrats 10, Labour 3, the Greens 3, People Before Profit-Solidarity 2. Thirty-eight. On Red C’s figures for the Business Post five weeks earlier, the same five parties came to 44, with Sinn Féin and the Social Democrats alone on 33 against the duopoly’s 32. Depending on the house and the month, the left aggregation runs from 38 to 44: somewhere between level with the two old parties and well adrift of them.

That range still contains something no previous generation of the Irish left has possessed. A two-party core within touching distance of the duopoly at its lowest ebb was not available in 1987 or 2011 or 2020. But the honest sum does not stop there, and the writer Eamonn Sweeney put the harder one publicly within hours of the poll: add Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Independent Ireland and Aontú, and the column on the right comes to 50. On Red C’s kinder June figures it came to 43 against the left’s 44. On the newest numbers it leads by twelve.

Whether that 50 is a bloc or merely a column is a fair question, but it is less open than it looks. Aontú’s leader has been canvassing coalition openly since his spring Ard Fheis, and his account of Fianna Fáil as a partner is worth quoting for its candour: attractive precisely “because they have no ideological core”, and therefore easy for a party that has one to steer. He keeps a Sinn Féin-led government in view as well. Independent Ireland has bound itself to nothing. Between the two columns, this much is established: the votes for an alternative government exist at the outer edge of the left’s range, and the votes for a broader conservative one exist comfortably, on every house’s figures, with nobody required to change their mind about anything.

The Áras Was Free

The optimists have a precedent, and it deserves its full weight before any qualification. On 24th October last year, Catherine Connolly won the presidency with 63.4% of the valid poll: 914,143 first preferences, the largest personal mandate in the history of the State. She was backed by the entire Irish left: Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats, Labour, People Before Profit-Solidarity, the Greens, 100% Redress, the Workers’ Party, and a slate of independents. Paul Murphy called it “the first time the left has won a majority of votes in a national election.” He was right. The demand for a politics outside the duopoly is not a theory. It has a number, and the number is 63.4.

But look at what the presidency asked of the parties that combined to win it, because the answer is nothing. The Áras is a single prize, winner-take-all. Backing a shared candidate required no party to shrink, no seat to be conceded, no rivalry to be suspended, because Sinn Féin and the Social Democrats are not rivals for it. Coordination cost nothing, so coordination happened. The presidency proved the two things genuinely in doubt: that the demand exists, and that the machinery of the left can point in one direction. It is silent on the only question that matters, which is what happens when pointing in one direction has a price.

Two details from October say the silence is not accidental. Sinn Féin, widely expected to run its own candidate, joined the Connolly coalition last of all the parties, on 20th September: the party-first instinct visible even in the costless case. And on the morning after the landslide, the Socialist Party, itself inside the coalition, asked publicly whether these parties could work together in the years ahead, and called it “an open question”. The left named its own translation problem before the count was cold.

The Costly Case

A general election inverts every term of the presidential one. The prizes are plural: more than forty constituencies, not one. The parties are direct rivals in most of them. Every seat the Social Democrats gain is, in large part, a seat Sinn Féin does not take.

May made the inversion concrete. In the Dublin Central by-election, in Mary Lou McDonald’s own constituency, the Social Democrats’ candidate took 12,050 first preferences to Sinn Féin’s 7,787, and took the seat. The Business Post’s polling analysis the following month attributed Sinn Féin’s slide directly to those by-elections. October proved the parties can coordinate when the prize is single and free. May proved what they do when the prizes are plural and priced: they take them off each other.

And July added a finding this argument did not have. The discontented vote in this state is not one pool but two, moving in opposite directions. On the right of the anti-establishment space, Aontú is up a point to 7, Independent Ireland holds 7, independents and others are up to 12. On the left of it, the Social Democrats are down two to 10, and Labour, the Greens and People Before Profit sit on 3, 3 and 2. The pool that is growing is the one with no objection in principle to putting Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael back in office. A last detail worth sitting with: Holly Cairns tops the country’s leader ratings on 38 while her party polls 10, and Mary Lou McDonald rates 30 while hers polls 20. The people are rated and the project is not, which is what a will without a form looks like in a table.

The Cheaper Path

Name the bloc’s actual requirement exactly, because it is smaller than the sceptics pretend. Nobody has to merge. Nobody has to dissolve. Under proportional representation with the single transferable vote, two parties can remain two parties, keep their names, their organisations and their rivalry in every count, and still function as one bloc, through two instruments as old as the system: a transfer pact, asking each electorate to continue its preferences to the other, and a shared governing commitment, published before the election, saying what a combined majority would do with office. It is the Connolly model transposed to government: separate parties, one direction.

And note that the first instrument half-exists already. The May by-elections showed left votes transferring left, a pattern Cairns herself praised, with four in five of her party’s Galway West transfers flowing to Labour. The voters are running the pact informally, unasked. What has never existed is the second instrument. The price is one sentence, said in public, before the votes are counted: we will not enter government with Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. Everything reduces to that sentence. And the sentence is precisely the thing neither party will say.

The Door

They have both declined to say it this year, on the record, in their own words.

Mary Lou McDonald, asked directly in January whether she had made coalition with Fianna Fáil impossible, said her ambition was a government beyond the two old parties, and then supplied the qualification that unsays it: she is a political realist, and “the numbers for government have to add up.” The Irish Times, reading her position, put it in six words: Sinn Féin has “placed a foot in every camp.”

Holly Cairns has ruled out no party. She has ruled out exactly one thing, and has said so at least twice since June, to the Business Post and again to the Sunday Independent: a formal left-wing alliance ahead of the next election. The Social Democrats’ red lines for government were set, on the leadership’s own account, to be reachable, because the party wants in; Jennifer Whitmore said it plainly: “we really want to get into government.” Read those positions together. Every door to office stays open. The one foreclosure on the record is of the bloc, and it is scoped, deliberately, to the window before the votes are counted, which is the only window in which a bloc can be made.

Understand the open door as an asset and the pattern resolves. An unshut door is worth something in every possible future: leverage in every negotiation, relevance in every formation, office by more than one route, survival if the left falls short. Closing it buys exactly one thing, the possibility of a bloc, and pays for it with every other future at once.

But there is a stronger form of this argument, and it was put to me in good faith by readers of the last essay: that Sinn Féin’s door is not merely open, but that the party might sooner walk through it than through the left’s. The evidence is not nothing. In July the party whipped its TDs into the government lobby against a hare coursing ban brought by People Before Profit; the Bill fell by 125 votes to 24, every other party of the left voted for it, and the party’s leader had described the question in advance as not one that “decides your politics” of right or left. The party has hardened on migration through the spring while the Social Democrats went on record as concerned by exactly that hardening. And beneath the positioning sits the deeper affinity: for a party whose foundational objective is constitutional rather than distributional, the other republican party is, on the objective that matters most, a more natural counterpart than a partner with no position on the border at all.

I do not assert that Sinn Féin prefers Fianna Fáil. I note that a serious part of its own sympathetic readership now believes it might, and that nothing the party has said forecloses it. That is not a rebuttal of this essay’s argument. It is the strongest version of it. A bloc whose largest component may prefer the other column is not a bloc at all.

And this week the poll asked the voters themselves, which settles nothing and clarifies everything. Only 4% of Fianna Fáil voters would accept coalition with Sinn Féin; among Fine Gael voters, none at all said yes, 93% said no and the rest stayed neutral. Sinn Féin’s own voters, asked to choose a partner, picked the Social Democrats by 65%. And Social Democrat voters split almost evenly on Sinn Féin, 45 for and 40 against. Assemble those numbers and the largest opposition party in the state stands partnerless in every direction: the duopoly’s bases would revolt at it, the partner its own base wants has just declined the formal version of the pairing, and the party’s leadership keeps every door open into rooms where nobody is holding one open from the other side. The Sunday Independent drew the conclusion itself: increasingly isolated from the coalition parties and from the rest of the opposition left alike.

The Asymmetry, and the Test

Here, then, is what is holding the floor up.

The right’s column converts without anyone paying anything. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael govern together already, and their electorates have ratified the merger: 93% of Fianna Fáil voters now call Fine Gael an acceptable partner, a figure the civil-war parties could not have imagined a generation ago. The parties beyond them face no bar of principle; one of them is openly courting, and the price of entry for any of them is a negotiation, not a renunciation. 50% assembles, whenever it is needed, out of parts that require no door to be closed.

The left’s column cannot assemble at all on those terms. It requires its two largest components to stop competing and start transferring, and it requires at least one of them to foreclose the rightward option in public, in advance, at its own sole cost, for a shared gain. The right’s arithmetic is additive. The left’s is conditional, and the condition is the one act the incentive structure of every party in the column is built to avoid.

And if anyone doubts that the sentence can be said at all in Irish politics, they have forgotten who says it. Before the last election, in the final television debate, the leaders of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael both ruled out government with Sinn Féin, plainly, on principle, before a single vote was cast. Simon Harris said it in eight words: “We will not go into government with Sinn Féin.” Micheál Martin grounded it in core principle. Neither man paid any price for the foreclosure, and neither was called reckless for surrendering his options. The sentence this essay keeps asking for is not unsayable. It is said at every election, fluently, in one direction only. The duopoly forecloses leftward as a matter of routine and it costs nothing. Their voters have the rule by heart: 4% of Fianna Fáil supporters and none of Fine Gael’s would accept the coalition their leaders had already ruled out. And look where the hard walls stand in Fianna Fáil’s base. Sinn Féin at 87% unacceptable. People Before Profit at 70%, with no measurable acceptance at all. But Labour, the Social Democrats and the Greens sit in the soft middle as prospective junior partners, better regarded than Aontú or Independent Ireland. The base does not veto the left. It vetoes the left that cannot be absorbed.

The left cannot foreclose rightward at all. That is not two blocs playing the same game with different nerves. It is a hegemon and its containment, visible in a single grammatical fact: who gets to say no to whom.

That is why the floor holds at the lowest level in a century. The two old parties are not kept in office by their own strength. They are kept there by the structure of what faces them: a discontent that splits into two pools, of which only the right one grows; a notional alternative whose components will not pay the single price of becoming actual; and a rule of the game, enforced by nobody and obeyed by everybody, that exclusion runs downhill only. The establishment does not need to win the argument anymore. It needs only for no vessel to form, and no vessel is forming, and that is not an accident or a mood. It is the predictable output of every actor’s rational self-interest, which is exactly what a hegemony is.

A reading of incentives should say what would prove it wrong, so here it is. This essay is falsified on the day either Sinn Féin or the Social Democrats rules out government with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in public and binds itself to the other in a pre-election governing commitment. The window runs to the next general election, which the Government does not expect until the winter of 2029. Connolly does not count; the Áras was free. A seat pact without the commitment does not count; that is a door held ajar with better manners. And the counter-test runs alongside: watch whether Aontú or Independent Ireland declares outright for the duopoly, because one of them is already circling, and the day the declaration comes, the right’s column becomes a bloc while the left’s is still a column.

It may never be paid, and this essay’s claim is not prophecy. The claim is only this: the demand is proven, at 63.4% of a presidential poll and 61% of a disapproval rating. The materials are proven, at the outer edge of the left’s range. The machinery is proven, from last October. What is missing is a sentence, and the sentence is missing because saying it costs the sayer everything while its absence costs no one in particular. Only everyone in general.

No Form To Hold It named the absence: a reforming will with no vessel large enough to hold it. This is the mechanism of the absence, and it is smaller and harder than a vessel. Not a form they cannot build. A door they will not shut. The test runs from here to the dissolution of this Dáil.

Watch the doors. Both sets of them.

References

Sunday Independent/Ireland Thinks poll, fieldwork 31 July 2026 (reports by Aisling Moloney, 1 and 2 August 2026): party figures, government disapproval, direction-of-country, issue priorities, leader ratings, coalition-acceptability figures, and the winter 2029 election expectation.

Red C for the Business Post, 27 June 2026 (Daniel Murray): June party figures.

Dáil Éireann division records: Reproductive Rights (Amendment) Bill, second stage, 13 May 2026 (85 to 30, 36 abstentions); Sinn Féin bill removing the three-day waiting period, 17 June 2026 (86 to 70); Animal Health and Welfare (Ban on Hare Coursing) Bill, 8 July 2026 (125 to 24).

David Cullinane, Dáil debate, 13 May 2026 (Oireachtas record).

Gavan Reilly, reporting of the 17 June vote.

Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference statement, 14 June 2026 (via RTÉ).

Presidential election result, 24 October 2025 (official return); Paul Murphy, The Nation, October 2025; Socialist Party statement, October 2025.

Dublin Central by-election result, May 2026; Holly Cairns remarks, Irish Times, 25 May 2026.

Business Post polling analysis, 30 May 2026.

Mary Lou McDonald interview, Irish Times, January 2026.

Holly Cairns: Business Post, 17 June 2026; Sunday Independent interview, reported 2 August 2026.

Jennifer Whitmore, RTÉ, February 2026.

Mary Lou McDonald on the coursing bill, Newstalk via The Journal, 6 July 2026.

Irish Times reporting on Sinn Féin’s migration positioning, January and May 2026.

Peadar Tóibín remarks, RTÉ analysis, 7 March 2026.

Simon Harris and Micheál Martin, final leaders’ debate, November 2024 (via BBC).

Eamonn Sweeney, public Bluesky post, 1 August 2026.

⏩Louth For Ever writes on Irish politics and constitutional change. Follow for analysis of Ireland’s democratic future as it’s constructed by those actually engaged in the work.

The Door They Will Not Shut

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Fifty Two

 

Hate Theology @ 10

 

A Morning Thought @ 3224

Gary Robertson ⚽ There’s a nip in the air at night. 

The days are drawing in, the last month of meteorological summer, August arrived and with it the start of another Scottish football season.

Of course in Irish Republican circles August brings with it the solemn anniversaries of the passing of both hunger strikers Kevin Lynch and Kieran Doherty on the first and second of the month respectively and so before I begin I'd like to pay my respects to these two brave selfless young men. To their families, friends and comrades, they will never be forgotten.
 
As I’ve said before I’m a bit of a traditionalist in so much as I like the opening day of the football season to start at 3pm on the first Saturday.
 
However this year the footballing Gods (Sky TV, who else) decided in their infinite wisdom that it would start on a Friday night and not with the champions unfurling the flag but instead last season's bronze medal winners and seventh place teams raising the curtain. Don’t get me wrong - it’s nice to see the smaller clubs get the spotlight occasionally but only in Scotland can you be forced to wait til Monday evening to watch the champions kick off. It’s not even a bank holiday!
 
It is what it is though and now that money rules the game, he who pays the piper etc, we’re left with little option but to put up and shut up.
 
I can already hear you yelling “get on with it”,  so get on with it I shall but just know am a bit pissed off with this Monday night madness.
 
Friday night and Rangers travelled to Tannadice to face Dundee Utd. Much has been made of the Gers' new signings, and with former player and fan in charge, Derek “we wiz robbed” McInnes' men set out to prove they would be a force to reckon with in the coming months ahead. Least that was the plan but Lachlan Rose, hadn’t read the script and duly rained on McInnes' parade with a goal, a tap in but they all count (mostly see VAR 🙄) on 38 minutes. Suddenly the reported advice of “Just win” that the manager had given his men had become “don’t lose” and United looked worthy of their lead.
 
The second half though definitely belonged to Rangers. When Aasgaard equalised in the 56th minute for most of the remainder of the game it looked like the points would be heading to Ibrox.
 
Ah but how things could have been so different for United, as in the 84th minute - and with only the keeper to beat - New Zealander Jesse Randall was clean through on goal only to watch his tame shot be caught comfortably by Rangers' Pandur. Try as they might neither side could find that winning goal and 1-1 at full time just about sums it up.
 
Saturday and the first of “it’s not over til the fat lady sings” matches of season 26/27 (yes it’s nearly 2027 bet that makes you feel old, it sure does me) and last year's runners up Hearts travelled to the granite city of Aberdeen.

Hearts with new manager in place and without their talisman Shankland (who followed his manager along the M8 to Glasgow) had a lot of rebuilding to do in the close season but when McEntee put the visitors ahead in the 35th minute it looked like business as usual for the Jambos. As the clock ticked round to the 90th minute the away fans celebrating Lewis Mayo touched home a Dan Happe effort from a Stuart Armstrong free kick the tide turned rapidly and it all fell apart for Hearts. Firstly Finlay seeing red and finally Nesbit slotting home a penalty on 95 minutes the turn around was complete. Fitba - don’t you just love it!
 
Meanwhile at Falkirk, St Mirren took care of business running out two nil winners for manager Craig McLeish who had recently secured the job on a permanent basis. Least as permanent is in football.
Sunday and a seven goal thriller at McDairmid Park Perth where championship winners St Johnstone carried on their excellent form from last season to eke out a 4-3 win against hapless Kilmarnock. An own goal apiece and a winner for Saints' Kai Fotheringham in the 80th minute, a game that wasn’t short on excitement. And whilst scoring four was an achievement a worrying aspect must be conceding three. If St Johnstone are to survive then they’ll quickly need to learn how to defend.
 
Last up on Sunday we have Hibernian against Motherwell at Easter Road, Edinburgh. Motherwell without Askou who’s moved on to pastures new under new manager Alfred Johansson are determined to play a similar style and push on from last season. And whilst they lacked some of the fluency we had been used to they still managed to run out 2-1 winners in a fiercely fought battle with a penalty apiece and a late winner from Said sending the Steelmen and their fans back home with hope in their hearts.
 
I made no secret of the fact I was a fan of Askous style and it’ll be a big ask for the new manager to continue in that groove he already looks like his team are gelling well though so who knows. Time will tell.
 
Monday it rained a lot.

It’s Scotland it rains a lot
 
That was it pretty much all day
 
There were sporadic glimpses of blue sky and the occasional shaft of sunlight but it’s beginning to look like the summers I remember when I was a scruffy urchin many moons ago.
 
Even the prospect of Celtic returning to the Premiership stage did little to lift spirits.
 
In reality much of Monday was spent watching replays on YouTube, highlights just in case I missed something and watching the movie “Ted 2” (for those unfamiliar it’s about a teddy bear that comes to life, yes I’m an adult and yes there’s lots of swearing, innuendo and drug taking) but I digress.
 
To be honest I was killing time til the silky skills to rival Barcelona were again on show at Paradise.
With a plethora of new signings (ok a small plethora i.e. two) Celtic took to the pitch at 7-27, a guard of honour provided by the visiting team. As the fireworks crashed and crackled in the early evening skies above Glasgow, and McGregor unfurled the championship flag, the nerves began to kick in (either that or the fish I had earlier) and a wave of panic swept over me.
 
I’m a smoker for my sins. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy a wee hauf but too many “old man tablets” as my son calls them and alcohol rarely mix so I forego the pleasure of a hangover and instead wheeze and cough my way through matches these days.
 
I like you dear reader and because of that I won’t insult your intelligence. The first half at Celtic Park was dreadful. No it really was. I mean, even the most ardent of fan must have been questioning whether there may have been a better movie or a discourse on the mating habits of hedgehogs and whether infidelity is prevalent among their communities on another channel to tear them away from the mind numbing mediocrity that was well, Celtic.

Dundee weren’t much better and it really was a painful watch.
 
The second half must be better than this wasn’t the incentive I was looking for. I mean any worse and Sky would be demanding their money back. So to convince myself it must be better was far from difficult. Perhaps the ball would stun an unwary pigeon and we’d have ten mins of the RSPB giving it beak to mouth or something. I don’t know quite where my mind goes to at times, again I digress.
 
Goal!!!!
 
Wait what?
 
Celtic 1 Dundee 0 - Nygren 52 minute.
 
Surely the floodgates will open and now the nerves have gone it’ll be 3, 4 or 5 for the Hoops. It wasn’t
It ended one-nil. Am I glad? Of course it’s 3 points but there’s big gaps in this team and times running out. We need players Dermot.
 
I’m not holding out much hope.
 
One man who did seem a little too excited was Ian “Old Firrn” Crocker who must have been delighted when both James and Alan Forrest arrived on the pitch at almost the same time.
 
I’m not a fan of Ian “I’m impartial but I want Rangers to win the treble” Crocker and even I worried the poor guy was about to succumb to spontaneous human combustion as he genuinely must have mentioned their relationship 20 times.

By the way turns out hedgehogs are absolute sluts. Who’d have thought it huh?

See this is the stuff Animal Planet charge you for - here it’s given freely.

You’re welcome.

Til next time ……

🐼 Gary Robertson is the TPQ Scottish football correspondent.

The Sex Lives Of Hedgehogs

Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières ★ Written by  Ilya Matveeva.

Hostages to the Kremlin: Russia’s Billionaires Between War and Nationalization

Russia’s billionaire class has recovered its pre-war collective wealth, but the conditions sustaining that recovery are already exhausted. 

Western sanctions have closed off the internationalization that previously gave the oligarchs leverage over the Kremlin, while wartime nationalization has reminded them that domestic property rights remain conditional on political loyalty. 

Andrey Melnichenko’s profile in The Economist - a public declaration of fealty to Vladimir Putin wrapped in the language of sovereignty - exemplifies the class’s impotence. 

Ilya Matveev argues that the safety valve of exit is gone, organizational capacity has atrophied after twenty-five years of enforced political abstinence, and democratization would threaten oligarchic fortunes as severely as Putinism. Russia’s tycoons are, in his conclusion, Putin’s hostages and will share his regime’s fate. [AN]

Among the eight billionaires removed from the Russian Forbes list in 2026, only four were dropped because their businesses became less valuable. Three others had their assets nationalized by the state: Dmitry Kamenshchik lost Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, Konstantin Strukov his gold-mining operations, and Denis Shtengelov his food conglomerate. 

Finally, one person, Yandex founder Arkady Volozh, was removed from the list following his renunciation of Russian citizenship.

Continue @ ESSF.

The Russia’s Billionaires Dilemma 🪶 Putin Threatens Them, But Protects Their Wealth

Barry Gilheany ⚽ In my last TPQ column I mused about the possibility of a day of reckoning for FIFA.

This was written in the aftermath of a World Cup in which the football on offer was largely pleasing to the eye (except for the Final itself!) but in which the off-field shenanigans and the presentation of the game on it (hydration breaks etc) did not assuage the widespread suspicion within football of FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s longer term plans. 

Well, football’s defining moment; its crossroads; it’s raison d’etre and mission has arrived much sooner than any observer or commentator could have expected with Infantino’s proposal to sell the commercial rights of its tournaments, including the World Cup, to private investors. The backlash to this attempt “to sell the soul of football” in the words of UEFA has been immediate with UEFA deciding in a unanimous vote of its 55 member associations to boycott all FIFA tournaments, including next year’s Women’s World Cup and the 2030 men’s competition; a decision quickly followed by similar action from CONCACAF, the North and Central American and Caribbean Federation and the Asian Federation. Numerically, these add up to a sufficient voting majority within FIFA to sink the sale. It is to be hoped that a contra vote by the African Federation would deliver the coup de grace to the sale but since African countries are the traditional major beneficiaries of FIFA ‘s pork barrel largesse and would stand to gain again from the disbursements dressed up as “football developmental aid”; hope for their resistance might be futile, but maybe not. 

As it stands, the arithmetic of FIFA member opposition to the sale could also spell curtains for Infantino at next year’s FIFA Presidential election. The resignation of Carlos Cordeiro, a close senior adviser to Infantino, in protest at the sale of equity in the World Cup could well be a strong indicator that it may already be dead in the water. The proposed sale has also aroused fierce opposition from the European Union and the new UK Prime Minister and keen football supporter Andy Burnham who has opined that Infantino is not fit to lead FIFA.

In fact, in developments which may have already rendered this article yesterday’s digital fish-and-chips wrapping, the proposal has indeed been dropped with Infantino’s Presidency in growing peril as UEFA are heading up a concerted campaign to oust him from his perch. The Welsh Football Association has started the figurative ball rolling with a letter of no-confidence in him, with their English counterparts expected to formally follow suit as I write. Before the crisis of last week exploded, all of UEFA’s 55 members, apart from Germany, Romania and Norway, had written letters to support Infantino’s candidature next March, making the re-election of the career Swiss football bureaucrat a virtual fait accompli.[1] Now expect withdrawals of these endorsements en masse.

Despite the foundering of his FIFA Forward Enterprise proposal, a number of countries in the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) publicly backed Infantino over the weekend. Following the endorsement of Infantino by the uber financial powerhouse that is Qatar, the smaller Asian associations Sri Lanka and Kuwait offered their public support. However the AFC rarely votes in unanimity, and it is possible that some disgruntled associations will rally around the UEFA campaign to oust Infantino. Gathering quickly around a suitable candidate is likely to be crucial in persuading Infantino that his game is up. Both the Confederation of African Football and the South American confederation, Conmebol, are fully behind Infantino, leaving Asia and North America as critical backgrounds in UEFA members’ quest to seek new leadership at Fifa.[2][3]

In addition, Infantino is also facing a rebellion from members of the FIFA council who are attempting to force an extraordinary general meeting (EGM), which could be the springboard for a leadership challenge. The FIFA council is the world governing body’s main decision-making forum comprised of 28 representatives of the six confederations, eight vice-presidents and Infantino. Under FIFA rules, a motion from 50% or 19 of the 37 council members can trigger an EGM.[4]

So how did it all come to this? The outlines were as follows: football’s world governing body would collaborate with the US bank JP Morgan to set up FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) to raise hundreds of millions by selling a stake in the commercial rights of the men’s and women’s World Cups and the Club World Cup to investors, with promises of an increase in distribution of “over $10bn” (£7.5bn) then being redistributed back to FIFA’s 211 member associations. Alarm bells rang immediately with those football cognoscenti repelled by Infantino’s public bromance with Donald Trump, with the knowledge that Thrive Capital, an investment company founded by Joshua Kushner – brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner - was heading up the quest for investors. The ill-fated venture was valued at about $20bn by sources with knowledge of FIFA’s proposals, with Infantino coveting enviously and looking to fully monetise football post-World Cup bounce in popularity with FIFA’s revenues from it revealed by the Guardian to exceed $15bn.[5]

FIFA had also promised an increase in annual disbursements and predicted a total of $10bn in extra funding would eventually be shared around. FIFA also stated that a majority of its 211 members must express an interest in taking the extra funding if the external investment was to be allowed. The sheer blatant conditionality and naked financial bullying of the FIFA’s plan lay in the geopolitical reality that many nations already depend on FIFA for the running of their operations and, in a contemporary sporting assertion of the pronouncement by King Louis XIV that “L’Etat, C’ est moi”, Infantino’s ex cathedra statement this year that without the governing body “there would be no football in 150 countries in the world”.[6] Such is the autocratic and imperialist agenda behind what in Orwellian Infantospeak was “an attempt to democratise world football,:"[7] This week has seen the denouement of FIFA as a supranational body, the playing out of its transmogrification into, in the words of Guardian columnist Marina Hyde “a travelling parasitic nation state”.[8]

Further probing into the 25-page sales deck tilted “FIFA Forward Enterprise Member Materials” produced by the US bank JP Morgan uncovers a seabed of the ghastly language of financial bromides that marked calamities such as the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market that triggered the credit crunch and global financial collapse of 2008 and, in the world of football, financial Armageddon for major clubs such as Leeds United, Glasgow Rangers and Deportivo La Coruna and the near extinction of clubs across lower leagues such as Portsmouth, Wigan, Reading, Sheffield Wednesday and the actual death of clubs such as Bordeaux and Bury FC. As well as the previously mentioned $20m ($15m) payment offered to all 211 FIFA member associations, the document projected that the four-year FIFA Forward payments would increase to $24m for each member by the 2035-39 cycle. It is made clear in the sales deck that such growth would come from “a growing tournament portfolio”, “third party sources of capital and debt financing”, and prioritising “high yield” partnerships and events.[9]

Such largesse would be recouped by virtual death of football by asphyxiation. For the JP MorganChase investor check prospect talks about more the doubling the number of global tournaments from 200 to 450, putting enormous strain on player workload or the game’s human capital which would the preferred argot for these income maximisers. The Club World Cup inaugurated last hear in the US last year as the dry-run for this year’s Infantino-Trump love fest was the first major parasitical innovation of this sort. Another would be Infantino vision of a biennial World Cup which he mused about five years ago. JP Morgan ventures further into football dystopia by floating the prospect of TV coverage of the biggest events such as the World Cup being sold to subscription channels or streamers, by referring to a plan to “expand and optimise media rights monetisation.” JP Morgan claims that FIFA is “undermonetised” but significantly uses comparators such as the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association (NBA) whose revenue figures are based on club or franchise earnings, rather than comparable governing bodies. FIFA’s stated annual revenue pf $3.6bn therefore compares unfavourably with the NFL’s compared revenue of $21.2bn, Major League Baseball’s $13.1bn and the NBA’s $12.5bn.[10].

Amongst the most glaring lacunae in the sales pitch are why FIFA, which has cash reserves of around $4bn and accumulated revenues of $15bn over the current four-year cycle, would need to take on debt; the absence of any reference to the identity of the investor group, projected returns or exit terns and, most disgracefully of all, not a single mention of women’s football.[11] In the words of one FIFA member, the figures were “a back of the envelope embarrassing undervaluation” and the literary style “banal AI- generated slop” . It was rife with American spellings and descriptors such as the reference to the World Cup as “the FIFA”. [12] It’s enthusiastic vision of “access to debt markets” is enough to send a chill down the spine of any European football fan such as those of Manchester United who have had to live with the legacy of the debt leveraged takeover of their club by the Glazer family in 2005.

It’s all about the money and jobs for the boys then. But then JP Morgan has form in such hubristic, half-cocked visions of the future for football. Five years ago, it ended up apologising to fans after its part in the plan to create a breakaway European Super League which imploded in the much the same time period as last week’s FIFA’s Forward Enterprise fiasco in the face of a firestorm of opposition of clubs outside the exclusive self-appointed elect, fans, national associations and politicians alike including Boris Johnston (remember him?). Back then, it said, “We clearly misjudged how this deal would be viewed by the wider football community and how it might affect them in the future” and promised that “we will learn from this”. Not for JP Morgan the chastening deterrents of eviction from office at the hands of the electorate or alarmed ruling parties that for politicians who break promises or who don’t learn from their mistakes.

But there is a wider lesson to be learnt outside of football from Gianni Infantino’s seemingly inexorable fall from grace. In the week which began with his self-pitying Instagram meltdown in which he posted:

To those behind their pens and papers, behind their screens spreading hate and false rumours, I want to say that while you are sitting behind, we at FIFA are on the frontlines organising, working hard, and delivering the best show in the world.

And which ended in the ruination of his plan to deliver just the latter which could have led to “A World Cup with no football teams”[13]. He should reflect that he has forgotten one of the golden rules of modern life – it is fine not to post.[14] The problems which those with a constant online presence like Zac Polanski, leader of the Green Party in England and Wales, have encountered in offline life through inadvertent reposts and posts (to give him an early benefit of the doubt) offer salutary lessons to people in the public life and in the public eye. Serial shitposters such as Donald Trump and Elon Musk are the prominent exceptions that prove that rule.

References

[1] Nick Ames and Matt Hughes. Infantino in peril. UEFA members prepare to oppose his FIFA re-election. The Guardian 3 August 2026 p.44

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid

[4] Ibid

[5] Matt Hughes and Paul MacInnes ‘Selling the soul of football’. FIFA faces backlash over $20bn proposal for World Cup rights. The Guardian 28 July 2026

[6] Paul MacInnes, Is World Cup for sale? The lowdown on FIFA’s plans and next stages. The Guardian 26 Juily 2026 p.41

[7] Ibid

[8] Marina Hyde, Who would dare ridicule creator of world peace Infantino? You? The Guardian Opinion 29 July 2026 p.3

[9] Matt Hughes, FIFA's sales pitch. More tournaments, more debt and higher ticket prices. The Guardian 31 July 2026 p.40

[10] Ibid

[11] Ibid

[12]Rob Draper. Game over? As he scraps has ‘shabby’ World Cup sell-off deal, Infantino’s job hangs by a thread. The Observer 2 August 2026 pp.6-7

[13] Marina Hyde, A World Cup with no football teams: it’s a bold move, Gianni. The Guardian Opinion 1 August 2026 p.3

[14] Hyde, Guardian 29 July 2026 op cit

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter. 

Caught Offside ⚽ The Selling Off Of The World Cup And The End Of FIFA As We Know It . . . Hopefully!

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Fifty One

 







A Morning Thought @ 3223

People And Nature ☭ Written by Simon Pirani. 


The government’s Local Power Plan will fail to boost community renewable energy projects if regulatory and market obstructions are not swept away, campaigners say.

An obsessively centralised system of regulation, and the energy corporations’ power, are blocking change, some activists argue.

Even modest proposals to support community energy projects with a long-term, fixed price for their electricity fall on deaf ears.

A site visit preparing an area-based retrofit scheme in south Manchester.
Carbon Co-op works as an intermediary party on the scheme

And while the government says it wants to make it easy for community projects to supply local customers directly, it has shied away from scrapping the multiple obstacles to them doing so.

A deeper-going shake-up, to facilitate local microgrids, is at least being talked about – but is even further away from implementation.

Community energy representatives say that, if projects are stuck in years-long queues for a connection to the electricity grid, the government can wave goodbye to its commitment to expand community energy renewable generation capacity nearly 20-fold, to 8 gigawatts by 2030.

The House of Commons Energy Security and Net Zero (ESNZ) committee said last month [June] that the Local Power Plan “risks failing”. The MPs were “not convinced” the government would hit the 8GW by 2030 target.

It is best to assess the government’s actions in relation not only to its own targets, but to community energy’s potential both to combat social injustice and to make a substantial contribution to tackling climate change.

That potential could be realised most effectively by taking electricity networks into public, cooperative and municipal forms of ownership, and by prioritising decentralised renewables technologies and flexible throughput.

The Local Power Plan could be a battleground on which progress is made on both counts.

The gap between words and actions

The Local Power Plan, published in February, promises to “accelerate the build-out of clean power” in communities, through up to £1 billion of investment between now and 2030 in “grants, loans, advice, expert help and more”.

The government claims the funding – partly through a new state-owned company, GB Energy – will reduce electricity bills, “transform communities” and “create jobs”.

There are about 700 community energy projects in the UK with generation capacity of 440 megawatts (MW), or 0.44 gigawatts (GW). The government’s Clean Power Action Plan includes the target of 8GW of new renewable community electricity generation by 2030 – but no details about how to achieve it.

Community energy groups say this aim will be frustrated by the grid connection crisis, constraints on selling energy locally, the lack of a guaranteed price from the big market players, and other regulatory failures.

The biggest obstacle to new projects is the near-impossibility of getting a grid connection, without which electricity can not be generated. 379 MW of electricity generation capacity, that would almost double total output from community schemes, is “stalled by grid delays and outdated policy”, a coalition of 250 organisations complained in an open letter to the government.

The years-long queue for grid connections is a national scandal that also affects big commercially-operated renewables. The lack of transmission capacity, especially between Scotland and England, means that wind farms in Scotland are paid to stop working, while gas-fired power stations in England are ramped up, a damning report by Carbon Tracker showed.

It is a story of neoliberalism and underinvestment: in the decade 2014-2023, the deployment of solar and wind quadrupled, but investment in the transmission grid stayed flat, and after 2017 decreased.

In the financial year 2024-25, the National Energy System Operator (NESO), that runs the grid, paid £2.7 billion in balancing costs – mostly compensation for switching off wind farms. In 2024, Scotland’s largest wind farm, Seagreen, was paid £65 million to restrict output 71% of the time.

In December last year, NESO addressed a related scandal by reforming the grid connection queue to throw out speculative and “zombie” projects, for which companies requested a connection, but which might never go ahead.

A ship loading jackets for the Seagreen offshore windfarm at Nigg Energy Park.
Seagreen’s output was curtailed 71% of the time in 2024.
Photo by Glen Wallace / wikimedia

An infuriating irony of the reform was that for community energy projects in Scotland, it actually made matters worse. New regional grid capacity requirements were set, and all of Scotland’s capacity for wind, solar and battery projects was allocated, up to 2035.

“This means that new community-led projects, including some that volunteers have spent years working on, will be unable to get a connection”, Zoe Holliday, chief executive of Community Energy Scotland, said in an interview.

“The only opportunities now available will be in cases where projects that have received offers don’t go ahead.” Then, “the impact on communities should be recognised” in the decision-making process, she said.

Another barrier to community energy in Scotland is the expensive and time-consuming Transmission Impact Assessment (TIA) required for projects larger than 200 kilowatts (kW) capacity, or just 50 kW on most of the Scottish islands. In England and Wales, the threshold for this process was recently raised to 5MW: Community Energy Scotland and the energy research group Regen call for a similar revision north of the border.

Along with the grid connection queue, community energy projects have to battle market regulation that favours large-scale electricity generation from gas-fired power stations.

Guaranteed prices for electricity exported to the grid are essential to make projects “financially secure long term”, and to attract investment and borrow funds from banks, Zoe Holliday of Community Energy Scotland said. Until 2019, small-scale renewables – including community projects – were supported by the Feed-in Tariff (FiT), a subsidy that was scrapped by the Tory government.

There are “multiple mechanisms that would work” today, Holliday argues: a floor price (i.e. a minimum that small renewables generators would be paid, supported by state guarantee if necessary); something similar to Ireland’s Small Scale Renewable Electricity Support Scheme, which includes a community tariff; or a simplified Contract for Difference (a financial derivative used by the government to protect commercial renewables projects from price swings volatile markets).

Community Energy England calls for a Community Energy Export Guarantee, with a minimum price guaranteed for 15-20 years. The MPs on the ESNZ committee backed that proposal, pointing to the lack of a secure pricing mechanism is “one of the biggest barriers” to the growth of community energy.

Community energy is also being stifled by market rules that all but force projects to sell via the wholesale market, advocates say. The “big six” corporations that control 90% of electricity sales are in no hurry to change the system.

Big suppliers buy electricity from community energy projects and sell it back to local people, often at two or three times the price. An energy club, that negotiates a “match price”, paid by households directly to a local generator when it is working, can cut out the middleman, and Energy Local, a non-profit, supports dozens of these.

Jeff Hardy of Sustainable Energy Futures, who leads an energy transition research team at Imperial College, London, said in an interview:

At present, being a small supplier is a dangerous place to be. You need to be able to do supply, and to do flexibility.

Steve Shaw of Power for People, which lobbies for legislation to enable community energy projects to sell electricity directly to local customers, said:

In practice, to make it economic and practical to get a supply licence, you need to operate on a national scale, and have more than 250,000 customers. This has to change.

The MPs on the ESNZ committee agreed: the cost of setting up as a supplier, and getting a licence, is “prohibitive for small community projects”, and licence exemption rules are not fit for purpose, they argued.

Regulators are working on a rule change that supports the formation of local electricity markets, called “complex sites” (Elexon’s P441 modification). But the ESNZ committee has told the government it should go further, though, “to accommodate all types of local supply and require the participation of local suppliers”.

The tweaking of local trading rules might sound arcane – but without it, the potential of decentralised networks, an essential technical complement to small-scale renewables, will never be tapped.

A report commissioned in 2023 by the government’s own innovation agency, Innovate UK, on the potential of decentralised energy resources was scathing, declaring it “difficult, if not impossible, to trade and settle energy locally in local energy markets”. This constrains not only small-scale renewable generation, but also flexibility, i.e. the efficiencies achieved by adjusting electricity use to reduce the load on networks at busy times.

The rules for licencing energy suppliers, and the industry’s self-governance of codes and standards, “stifles decentralised energy from realising its potential”, the report stated. The rules set by Ofgem, the industry regulator, for licencing are “complex, prescriptive, rigid – and were not designed with a highly decentralised energy system in mind”.

Government has a responsibility to champion inclusive ownership models – and this is missing from the Local Power Plan – Alan Simpson, the former Labour MP and long-time community energy campaigner, said in an interview. “Many community energy organisations are investor co-ops, rather than co-ops in the traditional sense, and the danger of losing the community aspect is always present.

To become a real force for uniting communities, co-ops should be open to people who are not in a position to invest, but are in a position to benefit from sharing energy resources.

Solar panels installed by Glasgow Community Energy at Ashton secondary school in Easterhouse

The weakness of local government structures, and a complex web of planning rules, further frustrate community energy, the House of Commons ESNZ committee heard from multiple witnesses.

The Energy Savings Trust told the MPs that there has been no long-term strategy to support community energy since 2014; many local authorities “do not have sufficient resources or knowledge” to give effective backing; and the competitive bidding processes through which they have to access funding are a “postcode lottery”.

Planning rules need to be revised and guidance be given by something better than GB Energy’s proposed advice service, the MPs concluded.

Alan Simpson, the former Labour MP, put the issue in political context in his evidence: the core problem with the Local Power Plan is that it has “few statutory powers to override existing constraints”.

He pointed to the Mozes community energy co-op in Nottingham, that spent several years applying for permissions to develop a local energy grid. “Detailed schemes were submitted, with university and energy technology partners, but blocked by the Distribution Network Operator, Ofgem or existing energy suppliers.

Current approaches are largely tokenistic and designed to be non-disruptive of the existing UK energy cartel.

Since it lacks teeth, what is the Local Power Plan likely to achieve, without additional pressure from civil society? Some campaigners fear that, given the finite budget and finite time-scale, cash support for shared ownership schemes – under which community organisations take shares in commercial renewable projects – is likely to be prioritised.

The danger looms of a gigantic failure to enhance social change and climate action.

Realising the potential of microgrids

A striking feature of the Local Power Plan is its lack of ambition for microgrids – proven technologies that cut carbon emissions and rationalise electricity use, and that community energy organisations would be well-placed to manage.

Microgrids are semi-autonomous from electricity networks, and share electricity produced locally. In the US, microgrid capacity, strongly supported by government, was expected to reach 10GW last year. Microgrids are mushrooming around industrial parks in China and are widely used in the global south to supply geographically distant communities.

US microgrid development is largely corporate-led, partly in response to soaring electricity demand from data centres. But it does not have to be. June Sekera of Boston University last year published a blueprint for community-run local power networks, envisaged as “a ‘back-to-the-future’ model – a return to decentralised, locally-controlled, non-corporate generation and supply of electricity: self-generation for self consumption”.

In the UK, things are slower. The Local Power Plan includes only a vague, timeless commitment that GB Energy “will explore, with stakeholders and expertise, the future potential of generating and sharing power locally” – even though the plan’s evidence annex lists ways in which microgrids can benefit the electricity grid.

Small-scale electricity generation “has the potential to defer network reinforcement, by lessening the growth in power flows that drive constraints on network assets”, the annex states. By making full use of flexibility, battery storage and rooftop solar, Smart Local Energy Systems (i.e. microgrids) could save £1.7 billion a year.

The combination of decentralising networks and flexibility “delivers multi-billion-pound annual systems savings”, the annex continues.

Were community-owned and -managed microgrids to develop at any scale, they would pose a massive headache to the big energy corporations, who make money by buying electricity and selling it to consumers.

Such microgrids would give communities greater control over the economics of electricity generation and use, and manifold opportunities to cut costs for households. They could also open up potential for energy efficiency, which has been “systematically underfunded” and tends to be implemented patchily by suppliers because it “jars with their business model to sell more commodities”, as the Innovate UK report argued; “it is hard to get paid for not demanding energy, even though it carries system benefits”.

Ultimately, community-managed microgrids could help to challenge the decades-old neoliberal assumption that electricity is best supplied as a commodity, instead of being provided as an essential service. Against this, radical engineering researchers have long ago shown how networks could treat electricity as a commons.

Tackling social injustice and global heating together

For all of us who seek to unite the struggles for social justice and climate action, community energy projects are a great inspiration. Where I live, South East London Community Energy has for years supported low-income households against fuel poverty and campaigned against energy system injustices. Volunteers up and down the country do the same.

What would it take to build on such action, to generate and use renewable electricity outside of the control of the big corporates and the markets they serve? Far more than is offered in the Local Power Plan, that’s for sure.

First, we need to try to find ways to restore the principle of electricity provision as a service that meets a need, not as a commodity. In my view, local supply rights that community energy advocates are demanding could be a step towards this. Then national market regulation needs to be prised out of the big corporates’ hands.

Second, the battle for public, community and collective forms of ownership is vital. The importance of inclusive co-operatives, open to all no matter their ability to contribute, can not be overestimated.

Third, we need to find ways for communities to access, and use, the technologies that allow decentralised renewables to realise their potential. Semi-autonomous microgrids with renewable generation and batteries are widespread: we need them here in the UK, free of corporate control.

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The Local Power Plan Risks Blocking Community Energy Potential

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