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In an alternative universe, Rishi Sunak might have been at the UN General Assembly in New York this week promoting UK leadership on climate change. Instead, the prime minister stayed home to deliver a speech that promised a “more pragmatic approach” to the green transition to “ease the burden on working people” — but which amounted to watering down key policies intended to deliver Britain’s 2050 net zero goal. A ban on new petrol and diesel car sales is delayed from 2030 to 2035, there will be more time to switch from gas boilers to heat pumps; tougher energy efficiency rules for landlords are abandoned. The government’s former net zero tsar is right to suggest this retreat may be the biggest mistake of Sunak’s premiership.
Sunak said that if the government continued down its previous path towards net zero, “we risk losing the consent of the people”. Governments in a cost of living crisis must indeed show they are heeding the pressures on ordinary people or face a potential backlash over green policies.
The best way to address this, however, is through targeted assistance to the vulnerable and those left worse off. Costs of climate measures should be levied as progressively and proportionately as possible. Policies must be well designed, communicated and implemented — areas where successive Conservative governments have fallen down.
Sunak rightly trumpets the fact that Britain has achieved the fastest reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the G7 since 1990. Yet his government had already begun backsliding on its climate agenda by signalling that it would grant hundreds more North Sea drilling licences. It is now going further.
The Tory government is not alone in its shift; many parties in Europe, especially on the right, have moved in a similar direction. But Britain had shown leadership as the first major economy to enshrine a 2050 net zero target in law. Surrendering the moral high ground gives cover to other big economies to slow their efforts and makes it harder to persuade developing markets to do what is needed.
Backtracking is bad, too, for Britain’s economy and competitiveness. It will exacerbate the general uncertainty and lack of trust in the government to stick to its commitments that have led to business investment flatlining since 2016. One industry — carmaking — that has been among the biggest green investors as it prepares for the shift to electric vehicles is left facing a much more uncertain demand picture. Ford’s UK chair said the government had undermined its own “ambition, commitment and consistency”.
As Britain, like the EU, dallies over the switch to EVs, moreover, Chinese manufacturers are stealing a march. And the Biden administration is providing billions of dollars of subsidies to develop green technologies. With its own recent green subsidies to India’s Tata and Germany’s BMW, Downing Street seemed to be edging towards a coherent strategy. Its latest shift muddies all that. The Tories used to see themselves as the party of business but are pushing the UK back down the field in the race to dominate the green economy of the future.
The Conservative premier apparently sees presenting himself as someone who would slow and alleviate the short-term climate transition burden on families as a way to draw a clear divide with the Labour opposition. True leadership, however, would involve finding ways to carry voters with him through the challenges ahead and seizing on the green transition to rekindle growth and spur innovation. This, not backtracking, would be the best way for Sunak to demonstrate that he deserves to keep his job after the next election.
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