Rishi Sunak hasn’t even formally announced his plans to water down the government’s net zero pledges, but already the backlash has begun. Tory peer Zac Goldsmith, who stormed out of Sunak’s government this summer, described the u-turn as a ‘moment of shame’ for Britain. He called for an ‘election now’ and said the PM’s time in office will be remembered ‘as the moment the UK turned its back on the world and on future generations’.
Labour’s Ed Miliband accused the PM of being ‘rattled’ and ‘out of his depth’ after it emerged the PM was considering postponing a ban on petrol cars and gas boilers. Miliband said the Tories have ‘failed on the climate crisis.’
Predictably enough, Green MP Caroline Lucas is also livid. She accused the government of being ‘economically illiterate’.
‘It is a prime example of environmental vandalism,’ she told the BBC, adding that:
‘The UK has a historic responsibility to go further and faster than many other countries because we were the first country into the Industrial Revolution. That means we have done more to put fossil fuels into the atmosphere’.
Some Tory MPs are also furious. Simon Clarke, no friend of Sunak’s, said his Red Wall consitutents approved of the push for net zero. He said:
‘When the history of this period of Conservatives government is written, our leadership on climate issues will be one of our main achievements…How does it benefit either our country or our party to shatter it?’
Tory MP and Cop president Alok Sharma also criticised Sunak. ‘For any party to resile from this agenda will not help economically or electorally,’ he wrote.
Is Sunak willing to withstand the backlash?
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