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The recent article on Consciousness of Sheep raises an important point about modern politics and the impossible promises the government is now making.

The impossibility of making any promises at present is not simply political incompetence. It is that industrial society itself is encountering physical and energetic limits which top-down politics cannot overcome.

The evolution to localism is now getting in the way of government planning.

For decades governments assumed that economic growth, rising consumption and expanding technology would continue indefinitely. Elections were fought on promises of more jobs, higher spending, better public services, greener technology, cheaper energy and rising living standards. But all of these assumptions depended upon abundant, cheap surplus energy and increasingly productive industrial systems.

That world is now fading.

The industrial economy depends upon extraordinarily complex and expensive technologies – global supply chains, rare minerals, massive electricity grids, data centres, satellites, AI systems, electric vehicles, industrial agriculture, container shipping and continuous infrastructure replacement.

These systems appear efficient, but only because the hidden energy and material costs are spread across the entire planet.

As the energy cost of obtaining energy rises, the burden of maintaining this complexity also rises. More of society’s effort must go simply into keeping systems operating. Less remains available for discretionary prosperity which impacts the cost of living. It is not yet generally realised that discretionary spending is becoming less affordable, and will do so for the foreseeable future.

This is one reason governments increasingly struggle financially, even as taxes rise.

Technology itself is not disappearing. But the assumption that every new technology, including AI can be expanded indefinitely is now questionable.

Industrial society developed during a unique period of history when dense fossil fuels enabled huge energy surpluses. Those surpluses permitted the growth of mass consumerism, giant cities, global tourism, endless infrastructure expansion and vast bureaucratic states. The government is grappling with the maintenance of this system and has yet to realise that it is unaffordable.

Supposedly “green” technologies depend heavily upon mining, international manufacturing, long-distance transport and vulnerable electricity grids. Recent concerns over electricity system fragility in parts of Europe highlight the growing difficulty of maintaining increasingly complex energy systems that rely on intermittent generation.

This does not mean that UK society will collapses overnight. More likely, it will simplify.

The political implications are profound. Governments can no longer promise prosperity through growth because the underlying energetic conditions which created growth are are no longer available. This explains much of the political fragmentation now occurring across Britain and elsewhere.

Voters sense that established parties no longer control events. Governments inherit problems they cannot solve because the problems are structural rather than ideological.

In this sense, some elections may indeed become “good elections to lose.” Any incoming government, or a rearrangement of an existing one, inherits rising infrastructure costs, failing public services, unaffordable welfare systems, debt burdens, and ageing industrial systems that require vast energy and material inputs simply to maintain current living standards.

The real challenge, therefore, is not how to preserve industrial consumer society exactly as it is, but how to adapt intelligently to a lower-energy future.

This requires a complete rethink of technology itself. Which can only occur if the system of governance is changed.

Future technologies will need to be simpler, repairable, local, durable and less energy-intensive. Instead of assuming that every household needs the constant replacement of electronic devices, endless digital services, and global supply chains, the UK society will have to prioritise technologies that can operate sustainably within local resource limits.

Local food systems, simpler transport, adaptable housing, small-scale manufacturing, practical skills and durable goods will become more valuable than ever-more complex consumer technologies dependent upon fragile global systems.

This is not “going backwards.” It is adaptation.

The industrial age encouraged quantity. The future will have to favour quality, resilience and locality. Much of what industrial society currently calls “progress” may eventually be recognised as temporary surplus-energy behaviour rather than a permanent model for civilisation.

Current UK political approaches (by all parties) will be unable to solve this from the top-down.

The future will depend less on which party wins elections and more on whether the UK society begins to honestly recognise the limits of industrial complexity.