Rishi Sunak spent much of last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions attacking Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer over his costly net zero pledges. Perhaps he had forgotten about members of his own party’s frustration with the Conservative attachment to the green agenda.
The prime minister was, however, reminded of this on Tuesday by Craig Mackinlay, chairman of the 50-strong net zero scrutiny group of Tory MPs. He accused Sunak of leading Britain down a “path to ruin” by pursuing net zero targets and urged him to “wake up” before climate commitments cause too much damage.
Mackinlay wrote in The Daily Telegraph:
The rush to net zero presents a severe threat to industries that have long been the lifeblood of our economy. This shameful acceptance of decline from a Conservative government would previously have been unthinkable. …
Do we continue down this path to ruin? Or do we finally wake up and prioritise true British energy security?
With a significant general election around the corner, Sunak has more recently tried to create the impression that his government is softening its targets. But his ministers still celebrate introducing “the most ambitious regulatory framework [promoting decarbonisation] … of any country in the world.” They will still ban the sale of new petrol cars and of new oil boilers in just over a decade. And Sunak still claims to believe climate change is “one of the biggest challenges we face.”
Despite suggestions of some form of row-back on the environment, Ben Habib, deputy leader of the Reform UK Party, said the Conservative government will continue “killing the British economy on the altar of net zero.” He told The European Conservative:
We have turned our backs on domestically available fossil fuels and rushed to renewables and systems reliant other forms of energy without there being enough of such energy and cost effective systems.
Asked whether Sunak is likely to further rethink net zero given increasing pressure from his own back benches, Habib said: “No. He is a bloody fool” and “must be ejected from office.”
