No-one has spent more time opposing Britain’s net zero target than me. I wrote a whole book on it as well as dozens of columns. I have addressed many audiences, on radio, TV and in the flesh. Net zero is a disastrous policy, the most consequential law of modern times, and yet it was nodded through the Commons after a mere 90 minutes of praise – I won’t call it a debate – as a departing Theresa May fought to achieve some kind of legacy. The MPs who failed to debate it had no sense of how it could be achieved nor what it would cost, relying on fantasy figures from the Climate Change Committee, which did not take into account the fact that many of the technologies which would be required to achieve it have yet to be invented. Thankfully, the consensus is over and we now have two political parties who oppose the net zero target.
All this said, I think Kemi Badenoch is wrong to ban Conservatives from standing as MPs unless they agree with her fully on her policy of dumping net zero. That is a position you might expect from an insurgent party like Reform, which is beginning to see its electoral limitations. But the Conservatives have always prospered when they are a broad church. To exclude people who take a different view on an important subject weakens a mainstream party like the Conservatives. It would also appear to exclude every single Tory MP who was in the Commons in 2019 when net zero was nodded through, given that not one of them spoke against it or demanded a vote. I know that Kemi herself now claims she did, but actually she told the Commons that the net zero target would be welcomed by many of her constituents, before making a mild enquiry about the costs.
The Conservatives have always had a green wing, and it should be accommodated. Margaret Thatcher never went as far as banning opponents of utility privatisations. David Cameron didn’t try to exclude MPs who wanted Britain to leave the EU. All Conservative MPs will obviously have to stand on the party’s manifesto, which is going to dump the net zero target, but that is not the same as banning everyone who privately disagrees with it or who urges caution. If no-one was allowed to stand unless they were in personal agreement with every single policy in the manifesto, the Conservatives would have no candidates at all, other, perhaps, than Badenoch herself.
It is a broad range of candidates which ensures that a party’s policies do not drift off into fundamentalism and electoral dead ends. Conservative policy will have to recognise that a large proportion of the population – even if not as high as the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s loaded opinion polls claim – are deeply worried about climate change and want action on carbon emissions. With that in mind, this is what a reasoned and balanced Conservative policy on climate policy would look like:
We recognise that climate change is happening and poses challenges for human societies, not least Britain. We back efforts to reduce carbon emissions and ultimately, hopefully, to eliminate them. However, the legally-binding target of achieving net zero by 2050 is a straitjacket which has greatly harmed our economy, hollowed out our industry and forced unnecessary costs on households. We will abolish it, together with all other legally-binding interim targets. The current net zero target does not, in any case, do much to reduce global emissions because it refers only to territorial emissions. When measured on a consumption basis – which includes emissions elsewhere in the world caused by growing food and making goods for UK consumers – emissions are down only 15 per cent, not 50 per cent, since the mid 1990s. We have merely exported our emissions, not eliminated them. Instead of a meaningless net zero target for territorial emissions we will introduce a non-binding ambition to cut consumption-based emissions as low as is practical to do so. We will help to develop low carbon technologies, including offering tax incentives and investing in them directly where appropriate. We will employ a hard-headed team of venture capitalists to judge where the genuine opportunities lie. But we will not pursue reduction in carbon emissions to the detriment of economic growth.
That is a policy which ought to be able to unite Conservatives from all wings of the party. Badenoch would be wise to consider something along those lines, and stop trying to exclude people who fail wholly to back her own conversion on net zero.
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