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Kemi Badenoch has been accused of breaking a promise made to Tory MPs during her leadership campaign after abandoning the party’s commitment to reaching net zero by 2050.
Speaking to the Observer, Chris Skidmore, who served as a government minister between 2016 and 2020, said that Badenoch had made clear to a group of Tory MPs and other Conservatives at a leadership hustings in 2022, when she was seeking their votes in the race to replace Boris Johnson, that she backed the policy.
Skidmore said he recalled “how she told a Conservative Environment Network hustings of 60 MPs that I organised with [former business and energy secretary] Alok Sharma for the leadership in 2022 that she believed in net zero – and made that promise in private to us all.”
Skidmore, a former Tory energy minister who led a high-level review into how the UK could achieve net zero by 2050, added: “While I was conducting the net zero review, I spoke with her during a cabinet committee meeting chaired by Cop[26] president Alok Sharma and she restated again the importance of net zero for green trade and building international supply chains.
“So the speech [last] week seems surprising, especially as it seems to also U-turn on a 2024 manifesto commitment.”
Another Tory source who was at the 2022 hustings confirmed that, during a private meeting, Badenoch had said she would support the net zero policy, although the source added that she appeared to change her position soon after the hustings.
Badenoch caused dismay among green Tories last week when she unceremoniously ditched the policy, saying politicians needed to come clean with voters that net zero was “impossible” to achieve “without a serious drop in our living standards or by bankrupting us”.
She added: “We’ve got to stop pretending to the next generation. We’ve got to stop government by press release.
“It’s exactly the reason that the political class has lost trust. The only way that we can regain it is to tell the unvarnished truth – net zero by 2050 is impossible.”
After her speech, Theresa May, who introduced the target when she was prime minister, countered that “net zero by 2050 is challenging but achievable… It is supported by the scientific community and backed by the independent Climate Change Committee as being not just necessary but feasible and cost-effective.”
Former Tory cabinet minister John Gummer, who as Lord Deben chaired the Climate Change Committee from 2012 to 2023, said Badenoch appeared not to have talked to anyone in the party who had been involved at the highest levels in examining the feasibility of achieving net zero by 2050, nor did she appear to have taken on board the findings of numerous reports by official bodies.
“You would have thought she would have talked to the Climate Change Committee, which was set up under the Conservatives to provide such independent advice,” said Deben.
Her approach would be “very damaging” and harm “green investment” into the UK, he added, as well as lead to higher electricity prices by making the country reliant on oil and gas for longer.
Ryan Shorthouse, executive chair of the Bright Blue thinktank, which was the first centre-right organisation to call for a legal net zero target by 2050, said that polling over the past decade had consistently found tackling the climate crisis and improving the environment to be among the top priorities for voters under the age of 40.
“There is independent and rigorous evidence showing that net zero emissions in the UK is achievable by 2050, but only if good policies are put in place now to support people on modest incomes with the costs and changes of the transition. There will be unsustainable costs to both our environment and economy if we do not achieve net zero emissions by the middle of this century.
“Grownup politics means moving beyond political posturing and political polling and focusing instead on designing and implementing detailed, pro-market policies to reduce carbon emissions. Conservatives should recognise the significant long-term economic benefits from green growth, especially in coastal and industrial areas, and the importance of passing on a better environment to the next generation.”
Skidmore, who resigned as an MP and from the Tory whip last year after Rishi Sunak’s government announced plans for new annual oil and gas licensing rounds, said that if Badenoch thought that ditching net zero would help win back support for her party, she was mistaken.
“True Conservatives are not reactionaries like Reform – they know that the best way to predict the future is to shape it and not turn your back on it.
“For those voters who are anti-net zero and don’t take climate change seriously, they won’t be turned – after all, it just strengthens in their own minds the case for voting for Reform.
“So it’s a very odd strategy that will cost votes in the local elections, with more moderate Conservatives now likely to turn away from Badenoch, while strengthening Reform at the same time.”
Analysis by the London School of Economics has found that although reaching net zero by 2050 would initially cost between 1% and 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) a year, it will save money by about 2040.
Badenoch herself made this point in parliament in 2022: “Our latest estimates put the costs of net zero at under 2% of GDP – broadly similar to when we legislated for it two years ago – with scope for costs of low-carbon technologies to fall faster than expected.”
A spokesman for the Tory leader indicated that she had made clear her reservations about achieving net zero by 2050 at the time the hustings were held in 2022.
