Boris Johnson lost the support of all his key backers in the final months before his resignation, with the Brexiters and rightwing culture warriors who cheered him to victory the first to melt away, followed by once loyal cabinet ministers. But one group will be lamenting the end of the Johnson era: green Tories have seen the prime minister as their best hope for years, and are concerned that his successor will not live up to his promises.
Johnson’s premiership has brought more major environmental legislation and arguably greater progress on tackling the climate and nature crises than either of his Conservative predecessors in the past decade.
Three landmark acts of parliament – the Agriculture Act, the Fisheries Act, and the Environment Act – as well as a plan for reaching net zero emissions, an energy security strategy and the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow last November, have made for an energetic two and a half years. Johnson has also overseen plans to phase out petrol and diesel cars, a boom in offshore wind, and a pledge to protect a third of the UK’s land and seas.
Sam Hall, of the Conservative Environment Network, said green policies were always central to Johnson, not an add-on. “Despite the political turbulence caused by Brexit and the pressures of responding to the pandemic, the prime minister has delivered an impressive amount of new green policy domestically and prioritised environmental issues in international fora, such as Cop26 and the G7.
“Net zero in particular has been viewed as integral to the government’s levelling up strategy, with a huge amount of new investment set to flow into the UK’s industrial heartlands as a result of our net zero goal. In response to the Ukraine crisis, the prime minister has doubled down on renewables in order to bolster the UK’s energy security and ease the cost of living, although he has not been able to unlock further support for energy efficiency from the Treasury.”
Ben Goldsmith, a prominent green Tory supporter and brother to Zac, the Foreign Office minister elevated to the Lords by Johnson, said: “I have not seen a prime minister before who has placed such importance on the climate and nature recovery. It has been greater than we have seen from any previous government.”
Goldsmith emphasised Johnson’s genuine interest in nature and animal welfare issues, shared by his wife Carrie Johnson. “He has a sense of the sacred,” said Goldsmith. “Nature really matters to him. I’m not sure many political leaders share that.”
Even diehard green campaigners give Johnson credit. Dave Timms, head of political affairs at Friends of the Earth, said: “As prime minister, Johnson increasingly made the climate crisis part of both his personal and the Conservative party’s public narrative. His rhetoric at moments such as the UN climate negotiations, while idiosyncratic, did not shy from acknowledging the level of catastrophe the world was facing, nor the urgency of action needed.”
But campaigners also said Johnson’s green achievements were fragile, flawed and undermined by U-turns and omissions. Along the way there have also been victories for the Tory party’s rightwing Net Zero Scrutiny Group, set up to obstruct climate policies. And alongside announcements such as a “10-point plan” to “build back better” from the pandemic, there have been policy failures and gaps, as well as many measures – road-building, airport expansion, new North Sea oil and gas licensing and a mooted new coalmine – that run counter to Johnson’s professed green ambitions.
“It is a tragedy that he seemed incapable of turning [his rhetoric] into decisive and consistent domestic action across government to address this crisis,” said Timms. “Key departments were allowed to act as if the climate crisis were an optional extra or in the case of Rishi Sunak’s Treasury, actively undermine efforts with tax breaks for short-haul flights, cuts to insulation programmes, and a road-building bonanza.”
The windfall tax on oil and gas companies is another example: the way it is being implemented means it could, perversely, boost fossil fuel production as companies can largely escape the tax by investing in new oil and gas development in the North Sea.
On nature protection, too, rhetoric has outstripped reality, according to Richard Benwell, chief executive of the Wildlife and Countryside Link charity. “Johnson has made some excellent promises … But there remains a major gap between promise and practical action,” he said.
Urgent investment was needed, on water quality and habitat restoration, and to improve the UK’s farmed land, but these were all “unfinished, unenforced and underfunded”, said Benwell, and some proposals would “weaken our most important nature conservation laws”.
Those failures will be what counts, added Timms. “The cost, in economic and social terms, of not acting [on the environment] will completely overshadow money spent now moving us towards a zero-carbon future. Measures like comprehensive home insulation programmes will save money on fuel bills, investing in green energy will free us from the tyranny of volatile fossil fuel prices. Hundreds of thousands of new and long-term jobs can be created, but the longer we leave action the more expensive and more damaging the final bill will be.”
Johnson’s inability to keep a grip on his party has opened up an even greater danger: the prospect that his successor could ditch his green slant to appease the Tory right. His scandals have already given space for some who were always unhappy with green policies to air their grievances.
The Net Zero Scrutiny Group of about 20 Tory MPs has suggested that net zero should be pushed back as it is too expensive, and that more investment in fossil fuels is needed to combat energy price rises. Hall called the Net Zero Scrutiny Group a “noisy minority within the party”, while the Conservative Environment Network counts more than 100 MPs as members. Their impact, however, means the would-be green prime minister leaves a confused legacy, and environmentally minded Tories must scramble to salvage what they can from the policy wreckage.
Their claims have little basis in fact: the UK’s energy price crisis is down to the overreliance on gas fostered by the failure to invest in renewables and energy efficiency, and seeking further reliance on gas just stores up problems for the future. But the anti-green rhetoric gained traction in the rightwing press, and appears to be influencing Johnson’s potential successors: Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have been notably cool on green issues.
Joshua Marks, of the BrightBlue thinktank, which advocates green policies from a Conservative standpoint, warned that Johnson’s failures would mark the UK for years to come. “Johnson envisaged himself as a green tsar whose lasting legacy is the decarbonisation and levelling up of Britain through a transition to a low-carbon economy. With distractions such as coronavirus, I suspect he won’t be remembered as such,” he said.
