Liz Truss’s flagship quest for so-called growth has seen her pledge to take the country down an extreme new track, one for which she has no mandate and very little public support. Much of the public will be looking at the chaos unleashed over the past few weeks and asking: who voted for this?
That’s the question we stood up and asked the prime minster directly as we interrupted her speech in Birmingham today. Because surely it’s not right that barely a month into her premiership, Truss is already shredding the promises that got her party elected.
Greenpeace UK analysis has identified at least seven areas across environmental protection, climate action, workers’ rights and tackling inequality where policies either confirmed or being considered by Truss and her ministers are at odds with the 2019 Conservative manifesto.
People expect to get the government programme they voted for – and one that truly meets the moment of the environmental and cost of living crises we are all facing. This certainly isn’t it. The Conservative manifesto in 2019 was clear when it promised the “most ambitious environmental programme of any country on Earth”. But how does that tally with the Truss government’s moves to potentially abolish hundreds of EU laws protecting wild places and regulating water quality, pollution and the use of pesticides?
We were told this government would reform farming subsidies so that landowners “farm in a way that protects and enhances our natural environment”. And yet ministers have signalled they may be about to ditch these vital reforms, which have been years in the making.
If you’re a voter in Yorkshire or Lancashire, you’ll be livid that the moratorium on fracking you assumed was a done deal after 2019 is back on the table.
It’s simple, really. People voted for strong action on climate and world-leading environmental protections, and also to tackle poverty and inequality, and improve workers’ rights. What they’re getting instead is broken promise after broken promise. It leaves you wondering whether Truss’s government answers to the public or to the hedge fund managers, rightwing thinktanks and fossil fuel giants that are cheering it on.
And it isn’t just us at Greenpeace who are raising these concerns – more than 100 leading businesses have written to the prime minister urging her to stick to the UK’s climate commitments for the good of the economy. Former Conservative leader William Hague has urged Truss to rethink her attack on nature, while former environment secretaries George Eustice and Michael Gove have called on their successor, Ranil Jayawardena, not to ditch a landmark reform of farming subsidies. Meanwhile the US president, Joe Biden, has said he is “sick and tired of trickle-down economics”, which “has never worked”. This came just days before the chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, announced enormous unfunded tax cuts that will disproportionately benefit the rich.
It’s not too late for this government to change direction – many of its proposals have yet to be enacted. And with the chancellor saying the government is now listening, it has the perfect chance to engage with leading businesses, energy experts, former Conservative ministers and even the US president, and change course. One thing’s for certain: if it ploughs on, that chorus is only going to get larger, louder and more difficult to ignore.
Rebecca Newsom is head of politics and Ami McCarthy is a political campaigner at Greenpeace UK
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