Andrew Montford is the Director of Net Zero Watch.
The Conservative Party’s stance on Net Zero is undoubtedly one of the key factors behind the loss of support to Reform UK. Nigel Farage and his team have been able to tap into widespread concern that decarbonisation policy is not only economically painful, but outright irrational.
Tory failures in this area go back at least to the passing of the Climate Change Act in 2008, the bill opposed by just five MPs, despite an analysis presented to Parliament at the time suggesting that the costs outweighed the benefits to the tune of hundreds of billions of pounds.
This refusal of their representatives to take a stand in the face of such stark numbers was a clear signal to Conservative voters that the Parliamentary party’s stance had become rather more religious than reasoned.
Nor was there any improvement during the party’s 14 years in power. Instead, we had had a constant tightening of the decarbonisation targets, culminating in Chris Skidmore’s 2019 presentation to Parliament of Net Zero target, justified by reference to a dossier so dodgy it would have made Alastair Campbell blush.
This target, with all its societal and economic implications, was passed after just 45 minutes of what was euphemistically called “a debate”, with hardly a question asked. The subsequent revelation of just how far the Climate Change Committee had gone to deceive the public and Parliament about the costs failed to raise even a murmur from the Tory benches in the Commons.
Again, many blue-tinged voters will have been left wondering what had happened to the hard-nosed party of the 1980s. The impression that modern MPs were part of a Net Zero cult was hard to avoid.
So can the votes of Net Zero sceptics be won back from Reform? It will not be easy; the parliamentary party remains divided on the subject, and the pitches of the leadership candidates thus far have therefore been very similar to what we heard under Rishi Sunak: to do Net Zero, but slower and better. As Sir Simon Clarke, one of Kemi Badenoch’s backers recently put it:
“There is an authentically Conservative middle path between the damaging state-ism of Labour’s GB Energy and its attack on North Sea oil, and the siren voices of those who call for us to jettison our climate commitments.”
This ugly compromise might allow MPs to bury their differences, but is not a great sales pitch to disenchanted voters.
Will it be any different after the election? Could a determined leader find a climate position that was sceptical enough to draw back voters lost to Reform?
It is unlikely. No matter how sceptical they are, the eventual winner will still need to hold the two wings of the parliamentary party – the green idealists and the true-blue rationalists – together. With the greens so uncompromising on the issue, it is unlikely that they could be persuaded to adopt even something so reasonable as a full, transparent cost-benefit analysis.
For too many MPs, the policy appears to be an article of faith. Contrary evidence would only embolden their critics and make their lives more difficult, so why collect it?
Net Zero is thus likely to remain a dividing line for the Conservatives in Westminster. Farage will be pleased.
