Britain’s energy strategy is leaving the country dangerously exposed to global shocks and hostile supply chains, a former armed forces minister has warned in a sharp intervention targeting Energy Secretary Ed Miliband.
Al Carns, who resigned from the frontbench last week, said the Government’s approach to Net Zero risks prioritising ideology over national security, arguing that Britain is behaving as though it still operates in a far more stable world.
Writing in The Telegraph, the former Royal Marines officer said energy security should no longer be treated as a purely environmental question.
“Energy is not an environmental issue, but a security one,” he wrote.
His comments amount to one of the most direct criticisms yet from a recently departed minister over the direction of Labour’s energy and climate policy, and will fuel an already intensifying political row over North Sea drilling and Britain’s long-term reliance on imports.
Carns argued that Britain’s dependence on foreign energy supplies — with more than 40 per cent of demand met through imports — leaves the country vulnerable at a time of heightened geopolitical instability.
“Our energy policy is designed for a different time,” he said. “A serious country would be using all of them. We are not. That is a choice, and we are paying for it.”
The intervention comes amid renewed scrutiny of global energy markets following sharp price spikes triggered by instability in the Strait of Hormuz, which sent oil prices surging and pushed up fuel costs for UK motorists.
For Carns, the episode underlined a broader strategic weakness: Britain’s exposure to supply chains it does not control.
He pointed in particular to North Sea oil and gas, small modular nuclear reactors, energy storage and renewables as part of what he described as a balanced energy mix that would reduce risk.
Instead, he warned that policy decisions in recent years have narrowed Britain’s options.
The Labour Government introduced a temporary ban on new North Sea drilling licences last year as part of its Net Zero agenda, a move strongly associated with Miliband’s department and one that has become a lightning rod for criticism from opposition politicians and parts of industry.
Carns also raised concerns about the UK’s reliance on global supply chains for critical minerals and advanced technologies, warning that Britain is increasingly dependent on countries whose strategic interests may not align with its own.
“The critical minerals that underpin advanced technology pass through countries whose interests do not always align with our own,” he said.
His intervention also widened into a broader critique of government preparedness, with Carns arguing that Britain is still operating on outdated assumptions about global stability.
He said ministers were behaving as though “the world of 2026 is the world of 2010”, a remark widely interpreted as criticism of what he sees as slow adaptation to rising geopolitical tension.
The comments come at a sensitive moment for the Government, which is already under pressure over its long-delayed Defence Investment Plan and wider questions about national resilience.
Carns, who served as a colonel and was awarded the Military Cross, also linked energy policy to defence readiness, warning that economic and military security are now increasingly intertwined.
He suggested that Treasury-driven constraints were limiting strategic decision-making across government, arguing that defence and energy investment are too often treated as costs to be minimised rather than capabilities to be strengthened.
His criticism echoes wider concerns in parts of the defence and security establishment that Britain’s industrial and energy base is not aligned with the scale of modern threats.
The intervention is also likely to sharpen tensions within Labour over the pace and direction of Net Zero implementation, with critics warning that the transition risks moving ahead of infrastructure, affordability and security considerations.
A US-based energy strategist also weighed into the debate, warning that an overreliance on renewables could deepen dependence on China for key technologies and materials, adding a further geopolitical dimension to the argument.
For Carns, the issue ultimately comes back to national resilience.
“A serious country would be using all of them,” he repeated. “We are not.”
The comments ensure that Britain’s energy strategy — already under scrutiny from industry, voters and international partners — remains firmly at the centre of a widening political and strategic dispute.
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