Rishi Sunak has said he will resist “hair shirt” policies designed to reduce carbon emissions and achieve Britain’s net zero pledge, amid an intensifying Tory row over the party’s commitment to tackling the climate crisis.
Tensions have been growing within the party all summer over its green policies, with some cabinet figures and the right of the party calling for a rethink on measures such as the phasing out of gas boilers and the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. The prime minister has also backed “maxing out” oil and gas reserves.
Speaking during the G20 summit of world leaders in India, Sunak again hinted that he wanted to limit the impact of net zero policies on consumers. “Net zero done in the right way can be very beneficial for jobs,” he said. “That’s what we’ve got to make sure that the story is about. The net zero story for me shouldn’t be a hair shirt story of giving everything up and your bills going up. That’s not the vision of net zero that I think is the right one for the UK.”
The Tory party’s position on policies designed to help it achieve its goal of reaching net zero by 2050 has become increasingly fraught.
The right of the party has become emboldened by the Conservatives’ success at the Uxbridge byelection, where a focus on the unpopularity of London’s ultra-low emission zone led to various demands to row back on green commitments that would hit voters.
However, there is now a growing response from the liberal wing, which believes that abandoning the party’s green credentials spells disaster and will further alienate younger voters who are already being put off by the Conservatives. At a gathering of the liberal Tory Reform Group this weekend, senior figures urged Sunak to stick to his net zero pledges.
Damian Green, the former de facto deputy prime minister who chairs the One Nation group of Tory MPs, warned: “The voices wanting us to renege on our commitment to net zero by 2050 are wrong both in policy and political terms.” He added: “We promised this in the 2019 manifesto and we should try to stick to our promises. It’s what the public expects from a Conservative government.”
He also issued a broader plea to Sunak not to shift to the right over immigration, with concerns that the prime minister may be pressured to commit to quitting the European court of human rights (ECHR) should his plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda be blocked by the courts.
A party row over the ECHR is set to be one of the main subplots at the Conservative annual conference, which gathers in Manchester next month.
“There are also things we need to stop,” Green said. “The voices that call for us to leave the ECHR are simplistic and wrong. It wouldn’t solve any legal problems with the Rwanda scheme and it would massively harm our international reputation.”
Despite the political turmoil and the shift to the right under Liz Truss, Green insisted that the “forces of sanity and light are winning” inside Sunak’s government on green policies and immigration.
“There are various ways to influence government policy,” Green said. “Of course it is good for the egos of individuals to rush to the media to threaten rebellion, and that has sadly become the standard mode of behaviour for some groups on the right of the party. This has never been our way and we should not follow their example.
“I measure our effectiveness by what happens in the real world, what affects the lives of my constituents, more than measuring the column inches we can generate. And looking at that measure, the announcement of the UK and the EU signing a deal on the Horizon and Copernicus programmes is a huge win for moderate and pragmatic voices within the Conservative family.”
