James Alexander is CEO of UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association (UKSIF).
The shifting sands of the UK electorate were laid bare in July, when Labour won on the lowest vote-share of any post-war single party government.
According to the British Election Study’s analysis, the 2024 result was “almost certainly the most volatile” in terms of people switching votes between elections. The UK electorate is more fragmented, undecided and liable to swing than ever. Against this backdrop, it is all the more important for the Conservative Party to recapture the center ground.
Kemi Badenoch, having won a hard-fought leadership contest, should look to climate ambition first.
Climate change featured in some of the conversations during this leadership contest, but always viewed through a narrow lens with very little airtime given to the economic opportunities presented for UK business by the global green shift.
Under Badenoch, the Conservatives would be sensible to return to their greener credentials. Despite some claims to the contrary, our new polling shows that more than half (54 per cent) of former Conservative voters – those who voted for Boris Johnson in 2019 but abandoned the party in 2024 – voted instead for parties running on a comparatively greener platform: Labour (38 per cent), the Liberal Democrats (12 per cent), and the Green Party (4 per cent). By contrast 36 per cent switched to Reform UK.
At its most successful, the Conservative Party built a strong record of climate ambition.
Margaret Thatcher, initially reluctant to engage with the issue, campaigned passionately for awareness of man-made climate change in the latter years of her career, declaring it an “insidious danger” in a speech at the UN General Assembly in New York in 1989.
David Cameron reaffirmed the party’s green credentials ahead of its return to power in 2010, before Theresa May made history as the UK committed to reaching net zero by 2050, and Boris Johnson hosted COP26 as the UK reached its high-water mark of climate leadership.
Again and again, the British public rewarded this pro-climate agenda at the ballot box.
Yet, in recent years, the Conservative Party has turned away from this winning formula.
Their final year in office, in particular, saw a series of U-turns, rollbacks and delays on key climate policies, leading to uncertainty for businesses, investors and consumers – the British public. One such example was Rishi Sunak’s decision to delay the phase out date of high-emitting vehicles, which damaged business and investor confidence in a key growth industry for our economy.
At the same time, voters increasingly want the UK to seize the opportunities of the green transition.
Indeed, by a ratio of 2:1, former Conservative voters are much more likely to return to the party if it were more climate conscious, (35 to 17 per cent). This is because former Conservative voters are not anti-net-zero. They are concerned about the cost of living, economic growth and energy security. Our polling shows that they understand that wind (49 per cent) and solar (43 per cent) are much more likely energy sources than oil (16 per cent) and gas (27 per cent) to lower their energy bills (nuclear scored in the middle, at 34 per cent).
Wind and solar also scored above oil and gas in terms of driving economic growth in the next 5 years.
Hardly surprising, when geopolitical tensions have exposed the economic fault line of our over-reliance on globally volatile oil and gas prices, and amplified calls for greater energy independence.
Voters are intent to gain energy independence from volatile and sometimes despotic overseas sources. 73 per cent of ex-Conservative voters said they wanted the government to cease all imports of Russian gas. Public sentiment reflects the wider economy, where forward-thinking businesses and investors are already taking advantage of the opportunities of the transition, both in the UK and across the world.
The UK can rightly point to being the first country in the G7 to halve our emissions.
The lion’s share of that progress came from transitioning our energy system to incorporate a larger share of renewables. That put us in a global leadership position. That leadership position means investors look at the UK when they think about allocating capital for green energy and infrastructure projects. But they do not look at the UK alone.
Kemi Badenoch must recognise the ongoing global contest for private capital, and all that the UK stands to gain from winning it. Voters do.
Badenoch is right to argue for a green transition which takes businesses and communities with it.
There is a crucial difference between bureaucracy and smart policy that positions the UK to lead the world in a major growth area. What most voters, and indeed, most former Conservative voters, want, is clear: politicians to talk up the transition and position the UK to win the investment and opportunities that come with it.
Failing to do this would not stop the global transition, but risk leaving the UK behind in the race for investment, jobs, growth and energy security. Additionally, it could well keep the Conservatives out of power for a generation.
Kemi Badenoch, as the new Leader of the Opposition, would do well to remember this.
