A co-author of the Conservative party’s 2019 manifesto has urged Rishi Sunak to stick with the government’s net zero pledge, warning that watering it down and indulging sceptics will not be a vote winner at the general election.
Rachel Wolf, who wrote the party’s general election-winning manifesto four years ago, and is now a founding partner at consultancy Public First, said there was a “massive risk” of ministers “overinterpreting and misinterpreting” the Tory party by-election win Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where debates about environmental policy dominated the campaign.
The Conservatives’ surprise win in the west London seat last week, where the Tories held onto Boris Johnson’s former Uxbridge constituency with a majority of just 495, subsequently prompted a debate among Conservative MPs about whether the result was evidence that the public wants the government to dilute its plans for achieving net zero by the year 2050. Conservative campaigners had framed the vote for Tory candidate Steve Tuckwell to appeal to significant local opposition to London mayor Sadiq Khan expanding the Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ).
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“There is a massive risk of overinterpreting and misinterpreting the Uxbridge result,” she said.
“There’s a big difference between a policy lke ULEZ, which people can see comes with very tangible costs and feel is unfair, which you can argue is true, and the general net zero policies, many of which don’t have those.
“More importantly, people remain very supportive of net zero and climate policy, and there have been lots of policies over the last twenty years that have come with costs but haven’t caused big electoral issues.”
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