The furious Blob will try to destroy Rishi Sunak for his net zero heresy

Tories must get behind the PM’s green pragmatism, and prepare for a Brexit-style battle in the courts

Source - Daily Telegraph - 20/09/23

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Was I wrong about Rishi Sunak? Does he still, despite everything, have what it takes? In a dramatic move that may yet upend British politics, the Prime Minister has declared war on the green establishment, torn up the cross-party, fanatical consensus on how to achieve net zero, defied the useful idiots within his own party – including many of his closest allies – and promised a gentler, more humane, more sophisticated environmentalism committed to protecting consumers. It was the best speech he has ever given, and the first indication that he might, after all, have it in him to forge a new, more conservative vision for Britain. 

There is now clear green water between the parties, making life trickier for Sir Keir Starmer. But I hope Sunak realises just how vicious the backlash will be: the Blob, the cultural aristocracy and myriad pseudo-Tories will unleash every dirty trick in the book to force him to back down. Broadcasters will continue to be hysterically negative, as will the clerisy; he will be accused of hating the “youth”; the Church, the Left-wing think-tanks, big business and charities will continue to condemn him; there will be leaks, resignations, and attempts at ousting him. It will be nasty and frenzied, but he must hold firm. 

Yet by any rational standard, Sunak is merely being pragmatic and realistic: banning pure petrol cars in six and a bit years’ time is a dangerously utopian policy that would guarantee chaos, mass impoverishment, power cuts and a popular revolution. The same holds true for the other policies Sunak is delaying, including the ban on new oil and gas boilers. They are all examples of what the philosopher Rob Henderson calls “luxury beliefs”, ideas performatively adopted by hypocritical jet-setting elites to highlight their high social status, even though they inflict immense costs on those who can’t afford expensive electric cars or spare thousands to replace a boiler with technology that is not yet ready.

As recently as 2017, the original target for the ban on petrol cars was set at 2040. Sticking to the current 2030 deadline, a random date dreamt up by Boris Johnson because it sounded “better”, would represent the final triumph of dogma over reason. Our charging infrastructure won’t be ready, we won’t produce enough electricity and there won’t be enough truly cheap, long range all-electric models available, new or second-hand, to allow those with budgets of just a few thousand pounds to replace their vehicles. Prohibiting new combustion engines from 2035 onwards, as Sunak now wants to do, remains pretty extreme, but it’s at least a policy that stands a chance of being workable. 

The PM isn’t proposing to ditch decarbonisation, or net zero – he just wants to travel to the same destination at a more reasonable speed, while keeping the public onside and avoiding a revolt. He believes in harnessing technology to solve environmental problems while improving living standards, rather than using green challenges as an excuse to impose a hair-shirt, “degrowth” agenda on an unwilling population, via taxes on meat or compulsory car-sharing. In a sensible world, Sunak would be seen as a green centrist aligning our decarbonisation agenda with the likes of the EU and California – rather than trying to go even faster – a policy which the bien pensant establishment would approve of in almost every other area. 

In the neurotic, irrational world in which we live, of course, Sunak’s pragmatism is akin to unforgivable heresy, an intolerable transgression of the boundaries of rightthink. To understand why Britain is now about to return to Brexit-style legal and cultural warfare, one must grasp just how much power our hapless politicians have handed over to bureaucrats. 

The central problem is Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband’s subversive 2008 Climate Change Act. The original idea – a legally binding, 60 per cent net reduction in emissions compared with 1990 levels by 2050 – was hardened to 80 per cent during the process. In 2019, during the dying days of her calamitous premiership, Theresa May increased the legally binding reduction to 100 per cent by 2050. 

Supporters of the Act knew what they were doing: its legal-technocratic infrastructure was deliberately structured to prevent the sort of rearguard, common sense action now being advocated by Sunak. There isn’t just a 2050 deadline, but also five-year rolling carbon reduction targets that must be met by law. These “carbon budgets” must be agreed 12 years’ ahead of time, and accompanied by credible policies – although, scandalously, as the PM noted yesterday, they are not properly debated by MPs. 

The Act created an extremely powerful quango, the Climate Change Committee, to “advise” the Government on where to set the budgets, and how exactly various sectors are squeezed to ensure they are met. The politicians have some room for manoeuvre, but not much. 

The terrible truth is that Sunak is probably overstepping the mark. He has pressed the nuclear button: he has rejected the CCC’s advice and potentially torn up the fifth (2028-32) and sixth carbon budgets (2033-37). The latter was enshrined into law by Johnson in 2021. Sunak’s courage in defying this madness is remarkable, but he must now act strategically if he is to avoid being annihilated. 

Green activists, corporate subsidy junkies and the rest are crying blue murder. They will claim – perhaps rightly, given the inane legislation – that the Government’s policies are unlawful. They will rush to their lawyers. The Left is already planning a raft of judicial reviews to prevent any airport expansion: the CCC has called for a temporary halt, and, longer-term, will surely demand that any increase in airport capacity (such as at Heathrow) be met by a reduction somewhere else (for example, by shutting Manchester Airport). This battle is a harbinger of things to come: the courts may well rule that the delay to phasing out the combustion engine is unlawful.

If Sunak wants to win, he will need to change the law – carbon budgets may need amending, requiring a Parliamentary vote. He may even need to amend the Climate Change Act itself. He will need to whip his MPs: he should learn from the Brexit battles of 2019, when Remainers who defied Johnson were thrown out of the party. If that fails, he will need to include a pledge to legislate for his relaxed deadlines in his 2024 manifesto. 

The public tells pollsters it is pro net zero, but also objects to paying more to go green. The voters are on Sunak’s side, not the Blob’s: the Tory party must support the PM on this critical issue.