Kemi’s stance on net zero is courageous – and correct

Kemi Badenoch secured the Conservative leadership on the basis that she would confront her party and the country with uncomfortable truths. This week, in a speech to launch the Tories’ policy renewal programme, she effectively told Theresa May and Boris Johnson that they were naifs for committing to unachievable climate targets. The decarbonisation of our economy, she said, was a ruinously expensive folly. By stating baldly and unapologetically that it will be impossible for Britain to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 without huge economic pain she has broken a consensus and breached a taboo.

It is difficult for opposition parties to attract attention for policy announcements so far out from a general election, but Badenoch’s clarity is welcome and necessary. Those who genuinely care about conservation rather than virtue-signalling should applaud her approach and urge a debate about costs, trade-offs and alternatives.

As Badenoch pointed out, our parliament has subjected the drive to reach net zero to only peremptory scrutiny. Legislation was passed with barely any attention given to the costs. When the Climate Change Act came before the Commons in 2008 – originally committing Britain to an 80 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050 – just five MPs, all of them Conservative, voted against it. When a statutory instrument was used in 2019 to change the commitment to achieving net zero emissions by 2050 there was not even a vote.

MPs who have supported decarbonisation at every stage may have believed that public opinion was with them, because when asked in vague terms whether they support net zero, people like to say yes. But a closer analysis of public opinion often reveals that net zero is taken as shorthand for reducing waste, pollution and environmental degradation rather than purely meeting carbon emission targets.