‘Labour must be prepared to defend net zero – and fight a snap election’

Rishi Sunak has now fired the starting pistol for the November election. Not November 2024 – November 2023! With Labour 18 points ahead in the polls, it takes something as dramatic as breaking the 15-year bipartisan consensus on climate change to create the clear political separation that Tory strategists think they need to have a fighting chance. They see climate change as the issue in 2023 that Brexit was for them in 2019. 

The podium told you all you needed to know; “Long-term decisions for a brighter future” it claimed when what he was actually doing was taking short-term decisions for an impoverished future. Repeatedly, Sunak tried to position everyone else as the zealots and himself as the common-sense, common man. He claimed to be the leader with the courage to take on the vested interests and tell it like it really is – that the pain of your energy bills this winter is all the fault of the green zealots, and anyone who says we should be going faster towards net zero is an extremist.

Sunak’s green U-turn was not about bill payers – but politics

Surely you noticed the Brexit bendy bananas in his speech: seven different recycling bins, a tax on meat, a ban on flying? The fact that none of these were ever legislative proposals apparently did not stop the Prime Minister from scrapping them. But they served to create the illusion of hard-line eco-fanatics trying to force the British public to do things they didn’t want to do. Did the idea that we could abandon our key climate policies and yet still magically achieve our target of net zero not remind you of leaving the EU club but retaining all the benefits?

Of course, it’s nonsense. The latest report from the independent Committee on Climate Change has already warned that there are no credible plans in place to achieve 38% of our existing targets. But it is nonsense that plays to that right-wing agenda that does not want landlords to have to bring their buy-to-let properties up to EPC ‘C’ rating. Please understand, they are not in favour of vulnerable tenants freezing exactly, but they believe that they should just put on another jumper rather than oblige the landlord to fix the windows and insulate the building properly! 

The UK Government has announced a new approach to reaching Net Zero. The CCC has issued its response. pic.twitter.com/ACOO5fJsp3

— Climate Change Committee (@theCCCuk) September 20, 2023

What made this speech the most intellectually dishonest I have ever heard is the fact that his own Treasury review of net zero makes it clear that inaction on climate will cost the public much more than transforming our country to a green economy. The Office of Budget Responsibility has warned him that our gas dependency could cost more than shifting to renewables and that delaying net zero could double the costs. The fact is that offshore wind and solar is now cheaper than gas and that renewables cost the bill payer less. The fact is that Sunak knows all this, but this is not about the economy, it is not about the bill payers. It is about the politics. 

And it was a strategic masterstroke after the Uxbridge by-election

Dishonest as the speech was, it was strategically a masterstroke following on from the Uxbridge by-election and Labour’s U-turn on ULEZ. Labour snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory there by allowing the Tories to determine the policy battleground and, after trying to ignore the issue, by backing down.

All we needed to win, was to change the minds of 250 people: to remind them that Boris Johnson introduced the ULEZ, that Grant Shapps made it a contractual condition of the lockdown deal with Transport for London, that this was Tory government policy and the problem was not that it was being introduced, but that the government, who had given £230m to support other cities’ schemes, was giving not a penny piece to Londoners.

We needed to ask them to listen to the British Heart and Lung Foundation and think of their children’s asthma and the difference that clean air would make to public health. But we didn’t. People want their politicians to stand up for their policies, to argue their corner, not to wilt at the first sign of conflict. Tony Blair used to say: “We’re at our best when at our boldest.” Uxbridge was neither our best nor our boldest.

Labour must expect a snap election – and be prepared to be bold

So, on October 4th, when Sunak stands up in the Conservative Party conference hall in Manchester – unusually this year, being held the week before the Labour conference – be not surprised to hear him announce that he is going to call a general election. To do so would be to extinguish the positive policy agenda Labour were about to air at our own conference in Liverpool and to establish “green crap” as the battleground for the election.

Sunak knows that he has limited time. That is why he chose to make the announcement – to the fury of the Speaker – in the parliamentary recess, completely bypassing the scrutiny of MPs and select committees. The longer this debate is allowed to run, the more the public will see through Sunak’s pretence. The voices of industry and business are already lining up against him to attest that tackling climate change is an opportunity not a cost, that Britain can grow the economy and create more jobs by meeting the challenge. So! Expect a snap election. Expect a short election. But have your arguments ready. Be bold and win.