The people’s republic of Holborn and St Pancras is not exactly fertile Tory territory. But it was in a swanky office in Keir Starmer’s north London patch where Kemi Badenoch chose to make her big energy speech this morning. Rather than dwell on her long-awaited policy commissions, the Conservative leader spent the bulk of her speech explaining her decision to drop the party’s commitment to net zero by 2050. In something akin to a Tory TedTalk, she bestrode the stage, clicking through various slides, replete with charts explaining how the UK came to have ‘the highest electricity bills in the developed world.’
Virtually every element of current UK policy making in this field came under attack. Wind farms? Dependant on Chinese production from coal-fired power stations. Electric vehicles? Reliant on Beijing’s dominance in batteries. Heat pumps? In less than 300,000 households – owing to their ‘expensive electricity’ and the fact that ‘many people just don’t like them.’ Net zero, she summarised, ‘makes us dangerously dependent on countries who don’t share our values, and it is risking our energy security.’ It was a withering critique that had the crowd nodding along in agreement.
The criticism sometimes made of Badenoch is that she would seemingly prefer to be running a think tank rather than a political party. Today’s speech was an attempt to make both the intellectual argument for abandoning net zero – and sharpening it into a political attack too. Having set out the case against the 2050 target, Badenoch then turned to the most enthusiastic champion in cabinet: Ed Miliband. He ‘spends all of his time making big promises’, declared Badenoch. Having promised to ‘cut household bills by £300’, she claimed that on Miliband’s watch ‘they’ve gone up by almost £300 since Labour came into office.’
Given the reports of tensions between No.10 and Miliband, the focus is likely to prove a fruitful one. With four years to go until the next election, no one was expecting Badenoch to set out a full prospectus today on energy policy for the 2030s. But by putting some clear blue water between the Tories and Miliband, she hopes to show a clear difference in priorities. As one shadow cabinet minister said afterwards: ‘For them it’s about targets, for us, it’s about people.’
One of Badenoch’s great attractions for supporters last summer was her willingness to break with the past. On net zero she has done exactly that: symbolically slaying the target enshrined by Theresa May and pursued by her successors. Thus far, the so-called green Tory backlash has been relatively muted: a reflection, perhaps of how the party’s priorities have changed since 2019.
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