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Could net zero become “the next Brexit”? That is the fear stalking climate advocates as the oil crisis caused by the war on Iran starts to bite.
A powerful coalition of the well-funded Reform party, led by Nigel Farage, the Conservative party, some business interests, and the UK’s right-wing media, are engaged in an onslaught against the longstanding target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Their central claim is that net zero is worsening the oil crisis, and that drilling in the North Sea is the remedy – despite clear evidence that more North Sea oil will do nothing to reduce UK bills, while climate action will reduce bills, and protect the UK from future energy shocks.
While support for net zero remains strong among voters, with more than 60% in favour of climate action, experts warn that the same techniques that won the Brexit referendum for the Leave camp – despite it being the underdog to begin with – are now being brought to bear on the climate.
“These are largely the same people [as those who campaigned for Leave] and they are using similar arguments,” says Shaun Spiers, former executive director of the Green Alliance thinktank. “They are blaming climate action for everything that’s going wrong – the cost of living, the economy – even though it’s clearly not to blame. They think it’s an easy target, it’s easy politics, and they’re presenting [scrapping the policies] to people as a panacea.”
Net zero can also seem remote to people, which does not help, added James Meadway, director of the Verdant thinktank. “Like the EU, net zero is an idea that can seem big, vague, distant, technocratic and not easy to describe,” he says. “People support it, they think it’s a good thing, but there is a distance between net zero and how people live. It’s not something they think of as having an immediate impact on them.”
Even more worrying, for the government, is that while the challengers to net zero are outspoken and confident, the supporters can seem weak. “It’s what we saw with Remain during the Brexit debate – the advocates are often sheepish about speaking positively about it,” says Luke Tryl, executive director of the research group More in Common. “Some Labour politicians seem to regard net zero as a bit of a barnacle they are stuck with, rather than something positive.”
Farage has made no secret of his intention to find a new dividing line in British politics over the climate. He told the Sun on Sunday last year: “This could be the next Brexit – where parliament is so hopelessly out of touch with the country.” Presenting net zero as an obsession of the “elites”, in opposition to the interests of the ordinary voter, is key.
Yet this is not how people see the climate, or at least not at present. “People see that lots of aspects of climate action are just common sense, like renewable energy,” says Sam Alvis, associate director of energy and environment at the Institute for Public Policy Research thinktank. “They want homegrown clean energy, it’s popular. There is a lot of good faith in climate action – the UK public is actually very green.”
One of the problems, according to Tryl, is that the climate is not a “salient” issue for voters at present, ranking about eighth as a concern, below more pressing day-to-day issues such as the cost of living and health. That is a big slip compared to a few years ago, when the UK’s successful hosting of the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021 drove more than half of the public to say the UK should meet its net zero target sooner than 2050, and the record-breaking summer of 2022, when UK temperatures for the first time topped 40C, ensured the climate stayed a top three concern.
Alvis warns that voters who switch to Reform because they are persuaded on their most salient concerns may later end up shifting to Reform’s stance on other issues. “What Reform try to do is bring people into their camp, on issues such as migration and welfare,” he says. “Then they try to get them to adopt other positions, like on climate. There is evidence that this is happening.”
The cost of living has eclipsed longer-term concerns, but the argument that climate action will cut bills – while made forcefully by energy secretary Ed Miliband – has yet to be heard so clearly from chancellor Rachel Reeves and prime minister Keir Starmer. Whispers that Reeves would like to cut the windfall tax on the North Sea and encourage more drilling do not present a unified front.
“I can’t remember when Reeves or Starmer last spoke up in support of net zero,” says Spiers. “They need to persuade people, and they need to do it emotionally as well as rationally – to talk about the threat of the climate crisis, and extreme weather, and what avoiding that means to the UK.”
“If they [the most senior government politicians] were to step up, it could make a big difference,” says Alvis. “Messages only sink in for the public when they are repeated consistently and constantly across government.”
Labour has nothing to lose and much to gain from going “all out” for net zero, adds Robbie MacPherson, a Kennedy scholar at Harvard University and former head of secretariat for parliament’s all-party climate group. “You’ve got to show what Labour stands for,” he argues.
“When you have a half-arsed position, that drives unpopularity. People are not looking for half-baked politicians, they are looking for people with authenticity. When this government stays strong on what it believes in, it wins. Otherwise, it has serious problems.”
