"We Have Too Little Power, It’s Too Expensive, And We Rely Too Much On Imports" Featuring William Clouston, UK SDP

Today we had the pleasure of hosting William Clouston, Party Leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the United Kingdom. William has served as Party Leader since 2018 and was re-elected in March 2020. He originally joined the SDP in 1982 and spent four years in the Conservative Party, becoming a District Councilor and serving on Tynedale Council. He holds both undergraduate and master’s degrees in Urban Planning and Property Management. We became interested in connecting with William after reading the SDP’s Energy Abundance paper published in September (linked here). Founded in 1981, the SDP is an economically left leaning and culturally traditional political party. Its flagship “Social Market” economic model views the private and public sectors not as opponents but as complementary parts of the same society. We were delighted to connect with William for an insightful discussion on the UK and Europe’s energy policies and beyond.

We covered a wide range of topics in our conversation, beginning with the purpose and motivation for writing Energy Abundance, including Britain’s current energy crisis, marked by too little power, high costs, and overreliance on imports. William shares the history of the government’s role in energy policy and the SDP’s argument for a return to government-led energy development, starting with building gas and coal plants. He discusses reactions to the paper, the urgency of rebuilding domestic energy capacity, and the importance of distinguishing cost and value when considering investing $150 billion in grid stabilization and baseload generation. We compare the UK’s energy landscape to Germany and the U.S., the risk of further productivity decline if energy issues persist, and public awareness of the energy crisis, which remains politically constrained by cultural and institutional apathy. We explore the SDP’s economic and political philosophy, including the party’s support for strategic trade protection and tariffs and its cultural traditionalism, emphasizing family as the foundation of society, nation-states, borders, and conventional values. We touch on how energy debates are often constrained by social norms, particularly around net zero, the SDP’s 10-year energy plan proposing a state-run, vertically integrated utility, the UK’s historical “dash for gas” and current overreliance on renewables, and the party’s support for large-scale nuclear, favoring its “brute force” capacity and proven designs. We ended by asking William for his vision of the UK in ten years. We learned a lot and greatly appreciate William for sharing his deep knowledge of British politics, policies, and culture with us all.

To start the show, Mike Bradley noted that the S&P 500 is up ~2% this week on better than expected quarterly results from the Big US Banks. AI & Electricity mania remain “the” key equity market drivers, which has also pushed the Consumer Discretionary, Technology & Utilities sectors higher this week. On the crude oil market front, WTI has sunk to ~$59/bbl, partly on the Gaza Peace Agreement but mainly due to growing concern with the 2026 global oil supply surplus. Both the IEA and OPEC published their monthly oil outlooks, with the IEA projecting a ~4mmbpd 2026 surplus, which is ridiculously higher than all other estimates. The reason oil prices seem to be moving lower this week (versus previous weeks) is because oil traders are pressing their bearish bets now that crude oil prices have finally broken to the downside. On the energy equity front, one of this week’s biggest Energy/Electricity equity movers is Bloom Energy (up ~30%) on news Brookfield struck a $5B strategic partnership with Bloom to be their preferred fuel cell supplier at Brookfield’s global AI factories. Q3 Energy results kick off this week with most investors expecting to hear a softening frac story but a scaling up of their power business. Most investors