Talk about politics making strange bedfellows. It seems some unlikely alliances are being formed on this wet Wednesday afternoon, following the news that Rishi Sunak plans to water down his Net Zero commitments this evening. On the Tory side, two of Liz Truss’s former supporters – Chris Skidmore and Simon Clarke –were straight out of the blocks to attack Sunak’s plans.
They were joined by Zac Goldsmith, an ardent Boris-backer who told Newsnight that Sunak was ‘dismantling credibility’ by backtracking on government’s net zero plans, and that this would be looked back on as a ‘moment of shame’. Johnson himself has now come out today and said:
It is crucial that we give those businesses confidence that government is still committed to Net Zero and can see the way ahead. We cannot afford to falter now or in any way lose our ambition for this country.
Yet not all the Johnsonites are on the same page it seems. In a signal of the tensions which underpinned Bojo’s leadership, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg hailed today’s news, telling Radio 4’s World at One programme that:
I’ve never been as much of a net zero zealot as Boris is. I mean, he genuinely believes in a more high wire approach in this area. I like to have a safety net under any high wire and I think what the government’s doing now is using the safety net. And I think it’s absolutely right. I could not be more supportive of what the Prime Minister is doing under these circumstances.
It comes just two days after Liz Truss herself called for the 2030 ban on petrol cars to be dropped. So that’s, er, Truss, Rees-Mogg and Sunak now in favour, with Johnson, Clarke, Skidmore and the Labour party all against. Joined-up government at its finest…
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