Not wanting to be outdone by the hard-left Scottish National Party, the leader of Britain’s opposition ‘Conservative’ Party, Kemi Badenoch, today called time on net zero. At least that’s what the right(ish)-wing newspapers—always over-egging these matters—would have their readers believe.
The Daily Telegraph headlined its report on Badenoch’s speech on Tuesday with her warning that net zero makes Britain “dangerously dependent” on China, surely suggesting that she will ditch the decarbonisation drive if she ever becomes prime minister. The same would fairly be assumed by readers of The Times’ initial headline, that Badenoch said the “net-zero ‘fantasy’ could bankrupt Britain.”
In actual fact, the Tory leader has not committed to repealing the net zero target, introduced by her Conservative predecessors and drummed up in her own past press releases.
Badenoch claimed only that the specific 2050 target was arbitrary, adding that, despite believing herself to be a “net zero sceptic,” even this was unpleasurable to say. Presumably, this means that under her possible governance, tortuous ‘green’ policies should be expected to be dragged out way past the middle of the century.
She even suggested that another target—perhaps 2051—could be set if her team finds “a better way of delivering net zero.” That team includes Claire Coutinho who, as the former ‘Energy Security Secretary,’ has much to answer for.
Tory officials, perhaps cowed by their own liberal backbenchers, also made it clear that they have not made any “moral judgement” on net zero when really they should have done.
At one moment, Badenoch stressed:
We have to make sure that we think things through and don’t just give announcements without a proper plan to back them up.
There could be no better description of her speech: an announcement without a proper plan. And one which was clearly only delivered to fend off the rise of Nigel Farage’s anti-net zero Reform party.
“This is not,” said Badenoch, “a criticism of green technology.” Indeed it was not. The Tories are just as wedded to net zero as they always have been. They are simply trying, as they have in the past, to pretend that they’re not.
