Badenoch has 'torn up the consensus' on net zero

In a speech on Tuesday, Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch said reaching net zero by 2050 would be impossible without bankrupting the country. Credit: PA

Kemi Badenoch has torn up the net zero consensus and its not clear what she will replace it with.

At a speech in a swish Kings Cross office on Tuesday, she said that reaching net zero by 2050 was impossible for the UK, without either bankrupting the country or dramatically harming living standards.

"I don't say that with pleasure," the leader of the Conversative Party said. "I want a better future and a better environment for our children, but we have to get real."

She said the party would now look again at the best way to get to net zero.The net zero target - which means emitting no more carbon into the atmosphere than you can take out - was put into law by Theresa May's government and the current government is also signed up.

Speaking in the House of Commons the Energy Secretary Ed Miliband called the announcement "a desperate request for attention", which was "anti-business, anti-jobs, anti-growth, anti-investment and the wrong choice for Britain."

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband called the announcement "a desperate request for attention" Credit: PA

But some Tories are also dismayed at Badenoch's announcement.

Sam Hall of the Conservative Environment Network, said: "This undermines the significant environmental legacy of successive Conservative governments who provided the outline of a credible plan for tackling climate change."Badenoch argues that trying to green the economy at speed was making the UK too reliant on Chinese manufacturing for solar panels and batteries.

Of course the counter argument is that relying on fossil fuels for longer makes the UK reliant on energy imports from other totalitarian regimes around world.Cutting environmental targets also risks undermining the businesses that have sprung up to achieve them. Last week the Confederation of British Industry said the net zero sector was growing three times faster than the economy more widely.The suspicion at Westminster is that this is a political move designed to head off the threat to the Conservatives from the Reform Party .

While this may be true, there is a risk of going too far and pushing away voters in more Lib Dem facing seats in order to win voters who are more interested in immigration as an issue anyway.Kemi Badenoch has certainly won a few headlines by ditching the 2050 net zero target.

She may win a few more for what she said when asked - inevitably - what she did in her own life to reduce her environmental impact: she said she wouldn't be buying a Tesla before adding: "I don't buy many clothes for my children. They will tell you this, and it's also cheaper."But beyond the headline measure, the Tories have still to find themselves a new set of environmental policies to wear.

In the mean time, they have reopened a debate which had appeared settled and where finding a politically safe middle path may not be straightforward.

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