Shortly after being elected to lead what remains of the Tories, Kemi Badenoch reset all of their policy processes. The Tories, she said, would not adopt a policy unless they had properly assessed its impacts. Except net zero, that is. That could go straight away.
For Badenoch, ripping up our net zero consensus was an obvious way to chase some of the voters the Conservatives had lost at the general election. But every business I speak with despairs at this move. When they’re looking for stability, rationality, and commitment to growth sectors, they know the Tories aren’t on their side.
Opposition to clean energy isn’t even the vote winner that Badenoch believes it to be. It was rejected at the general election and polling by YouGov consistently finds the public overwhelmingly back the Labour Government’s clean energy ambitions.
This is because the public understand that net zero and our clean power mission are in our country’s best interests. The families I meet on Bournemouth doorsteps remember how just three years ago, their finances were hammered by an energy price spike as a result of Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
The subsequent rocketing in the gas price showed the brutal reality that, under Tory rule, Britain was addicted to fossil fuels to heat our homes and power our grid. As a new(ish) MP I despair with Westminster when it gets distracted from people’s priorities, all to fill ever-shortening news cycles. The public have longer memories – and they will have looked with concern on the latest gas spike causing bills to go up again.
This is why there is an urgent need to move away from fossil fuelled insecurity towards clean power security. That’s why the Government is committed to cheap, homegrown renewable and nuclear energy as the best way to reduce our reliance on foreign fossil fuels, prevent volatile energy markets, and bring bills down for good. An energy system that uses power produced at home will always be cheaper than one which relies on imported, and increasingly expensive, foreign fossil fuels.
What’s more, green jobs are great jobs. We have a once in a generation opportunity to revitalise our towns and cities. Clean infrastructure, whether it’s nuclear, renewable energy, grid infrastructure or home energy improvements, will create jobs and offer opportunities all over our country. It will also tackle the climate crisis.
New nuclear plants, hydrogen plants, and investments in carbon capture and storage (CCS) will re-industrialise parts of our country that have seen under-investment in the past. Decarbonisation is the route to reindustrialisation, and, after more than a decade of stagnation, we have the potential to bring well paid, good jobs to every area of the UK.
No politician can profess to care about living standards and helping constituents to thrive while peddling false narratives about net zero. No number of retweets and column inches can justify an opportunism that robs people of higher earnings, job security, and the opportunity of true prosperity.
Ahead of the local elections, the Tories and Reform have been both sides of the same coin, pushing the narrative that net zero in some way undermines the UK’s economy and has led to the impacts on the steel industry in Scunthorpe. This is simply false.
The high costs that have held back steel and other UK industries have been caused by the high cost of gas, and this has kept our industrial costs higher than in Germany, France and other international competitors. When this was pointed out to Badenoch on national TV, she floundered, unable to defend her position.
Badenoch and Nigel Farage , two sides of the same coin, are trapped by their political obsessions with fossil fuels, stuck in an outdated mindset, and rehearsing arguments that have been resolved years ago. Where does this leave them both? Reliant on foreign fossil fuels, bending the knee to petrostates and dictators, jeopardising our national security in an insecure world.
As much as Farage and Badenoch might like it to be, Britain isn’t America. We have a longstanding consensus, backed by the science and most importantly, by the British people, who rightly respect reasonable, moderate debate and policies.
We as a country know that clean power will deliver cheaper bills, energy security and economic growth in the long-term. That is precisely what this Labour government is committed to making a reality, shutting out the opportunistic noises of out-of-date politicians, and focusing on why we’re all here in Parliament: to do what is in our country’s best interest.
[See also: What is behind Tony Blair’s net zero intervention?]
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