Does the Conservative Party care about the environment? All main parties broadly define themselves as pro-planet these days, so the description is perhaps hard to qualify. Within the party — as in any e-coli strewn beach — there are pockets of resistance, such as the “Net Zero Scrutiny Group”, a group of 20 MPs who are now blaming green policies for the cost-of-living crisis. On the whole, though, the Tories are happy to present themselves as essentially green. This dates perhaps to 2006, when David Cameron replaced the Conservative branding, a lit torch, with an oak tree. There was Boris Johnson’s rewilding project (now watered down). There is the Net Zero pledge.
But perhaps what the party says it will do is less revealing than who it appoints to do it. Let’s remind ourselves of the past few environment secretaries: Liz Truss, who made cuts to countryside protections; Andrea Leadsom, who on her appointment asked officials whether climate change really existed; George Eustice, who had received funding from a climate-sceptic think-tank, and Thérèse Coffey, who once voted in favour of selling off the nation’s public forests.
Michael Gove bucked the trend — to the surprise of colleagues, he declared himself reformed as a “full-throated environmentalist” — but only some time after he had been handed the job.
Foxes in charge of henhouses come to mind — or perhaps water companies in charge of water. Under this sort of cover, prime ministers can make all sorts of gestures towards environmental friendliness, all the while knowing their secretary of state will resist.
I have often wondered how environmentalism and conservatism fit together as political agendas. Conservatism is essentially local in spirit: its essential value might be “charity begins at home” — or “secure your own oxygen mask first before helping others”. Self-interest serves the general interest. The urge to look after those closest to us is among our highest instincts.
Environmentalism, on the other hand, is a much more universal value. It requires individuals to make sacrifices for a more abstract cause, the good of all. When it comes to rising temperatures, environmental penalties do not fall directly on the culprits: problems generated by the 4x4 driver in the Cotswolds, say, or burger-eaters in Camden, will show up in Bangladesh or Australia.
It is easy, therefore, to see why Right-wing parties take on anti-environmental policies, even in countries in which voters broadly favour saving the planet. It is of a piece with other Conservative values to say the rights of the truck driver or boiler-owner should trump more conceptual concerns about climate change.
Yet there are some areas where self-interest and environmentalism coincide, and it goes from an abstract problem to a very immediate and local one. One of these is air quality — but this happens mostly in large cities such as London, where Tory votes are waning anyway. The other, though, is water pollution, which affects people in the country — and in particular, in exactly the sort of coastal towns the Conservative Party hopes to hold on to in the next election. It is hard not to care about an environmental problem that shows up quite so viscerally on your very doorstep.
Why isn’t the Government doing more to combat the dumping of untreated sewage into Britain’s rivers and oceans by privately-owned water companies? Coffey was slammed yesterday — again — by our three biggest conservation groups for being too wet on the issue. There is a sense that she is not quite working hard enough to solve it. Has a generally sceptical attitude to the environment within her department overflowed into this issue, politically charged as it is among Tory voters?
Sewage in rivers is a matter not only of importance to environmental zealots but of supreme self-interest to local people. The matter is repeatedly raised during canvassing, according to MPs of all stripes. The Lib Dems say their polling shows 41 per cent of previous Tory voters would be less likely to vote for an MP who did not support a ban on sewage dumping in rivers. Clean water is expected to be a politically charged topic in next month’s local elections — “more important than pot holes”, as one MP put it. The Tories are missing a trick.
