Populist politicians are striking a chord with the public in their attack on “the green agenda” because they are right – climate policies are elitist. So says the man standing to be the next leader of the UK’s Green party.
“We should all be angry about net zero,” argues Zack Polanski, currently the Greens’ deputy leader. “The poorest people in our society are being expected to step up to tackle the climate crisis. But it’s the government’s fault, not the people’s fault.”
A cautious approach to net zero is inviting populist opposition, Polanski argues. Instead, we need greater government intervention and an anti-poverty agenda. Tax the rich, he urges, to produce the funds needed to shift to a low-carbon economy, clean up rivers and restore nature. “These problems are the result of political choices, and we can make different political choices,” he says. It’s populism, but in his view genuinely for the people and the planet: ecopopulism.
Polanski has stirred debate at a time when green policies are under attack in various countries, most notably in Donald Trump’s America. In Britain, too, net zero has become a flashpoint. Last week Reform UK took a record number of seats in the local elections. The rightwing populist party’s energy spokesperson, Richard Tice, attacks “net stupid zero” at every opportunity, and its leader, Nigel Farage, has warned council officials who work on climate change to look for new jobs.
Just before the elections, a fracas erupted in Labour over incendiary remarks from Tony Blair appearing to attack the position taken on net zero by Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, and Keir Starmer.
It had all looked very different just a fortnight ago. On 24 April, a week before the local elections, Starmer took on his world statesman role, greeting leaders and high-ranking ministers from 60 countries for an energy security summit at Lancaster House. “We will make energy a source not of vulnerability, but of strength. Energy security is national security,” he said. “Homegrown clean energy is the only way to take back control of our energy system, deliver energy security and bring down bills for the long term. That is in the DNA of my government.”
It was intended to be a landmark speech. Miliband had been facing unfriendly briefings from within the party, some thought to have come from Blair, as well as from the rightwing press, which is relentless in its opposition to net zero and to Miliband himself. Starmer’s unmistakeable gesture of support left Miliband beaming.
What Starmer did not know, however, was that while he was greeting ministers from around the world, his trusted adviser and predecessor as prime minister, Blair, was putting the finishing touches to an intervention of his own.
The next week, Blair’s bombshell hit. In the foreword to a report calling for more investment in nuclear power and carbon capture and storage, he wrote: “Voters feel they’re being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal … any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail.”
In contrast to the meagre attention devoted to Starmer’s speech, the remarks of Blair – who left power 18 years ago, and has well-documented links to Middle East petrostates – made an immediate splash. The Conservatives seized on the row with delight. Reform has been jubilant. Farage announced this week that Reform councillors would refuse training on net zero. Tice vowed to oppose renewable energy developments in Lincolnshire. “I’m now going to write again to [developers] saying now that we’ve won these elections, you need to be under no illusion. This is war,” Tice said. “We will wage war against you people and your terrible ideas.”
No 10 was incensed at the intervention, timed for the eve of the local elections and overshadowing Starmer. Downing Street spokespeople batted away Blair’s attack. Even amid the turmoil of poor local election results and a surge to Reform, the message went out that Starmer was sticking to his plans. A Labour source said: “The prime minister’s words at the [Lancaster House] summit have set the tone for the government’s commitment on this agenda – the party is doubling down on clean energy and climate leadership.”
Polls show that voters back action on the climate crisis. Support for net zero outweighs opposition by two to one: 40% of voters think the UK’s 2050 target is a good policy while only 21% view it as a bad idea, according to More In Common. Two-thirds of voters want the government to either maintain its current pace on the policy or go faster. Even those Labour voters who are willing to back Reform claim support for net zero policies.
Luke Tryl, the executive director of More In Common, told the Guardian: “The idea that Britain has turned into a nation of net zero sceptics is for the birds. Reform voters are more sceptical but it’s not something most of them feel strongly about.”
Holly Brazier Tope, the deputy director of politics at Green Alliance, urged Starmer to be bold. “Labour has a bigger majority than it did in 1945 to deliver this change, but Starmer also understands people aren’t feeling the benefits yet,” she said. “So the government must focus on reducing people’s bills over this parliament, decisively cutting out expensive fossil fuels from the UK’s energy supply.”
MPs nervous after dismal local election results for Labour needed the reassurance, with many to whom the Guardian spoke welcoming Starmer’s stated commitment to net zero. Anna Gelderd, the MP for South East Cornwall, said it presented the party with “a golden opportunity”.
Polly Billington, the MP for East Thanet, said net zero did not come up in doorstep campaigning, and she urged the government to focus more tightly on how green policies could benefit people in their local area, rather than just in an abstract or global sense. “Post [local] elections, we need to maintain our commitment and tell our story in a way that appeals to people who stayed at home or switched away from us, on the right and left,” she said.
The next few months will be crucial in showing whether Starmer will follow through on his strong words, as a series of looming decisions set the agenda for net zero for the rest of this parliament.
One will be the publication of the new industrial strategy. Many sectors of industry are facing tough prospects. The steel industry is being propped up with government help. Automotive manufacturers are worried about tariffs. The renewable energy industry has been rocked by the Danish company Ørsted pulling out of the Hornsea windfarm off Yorkshire – ironically, over high energy costs driven by dependency on expensive gas.
Ministers are squabbling over the flagship housing policy of building 1.5m new homes. A long-awaited “future homes standard” is due soon, which will determine whether those homes are built to the highest possible green standards. This would be good for residents, as it would keep their bills low, as well as cutting carbon emissions, but the costs would have to be paid by developers, who have tried to threaten the government by warning they may not meet the building targets.
For existing houses, a warm homes plan is due later this year, with £13.2bn earmarked for a nationwide insulation programme focused on lower-income households with high energy bills in leaky housing. Green experts view it as crucial to showing that net zero plans can benefit ordinary working people.
More detailed plans for boosting onshore wind and solar power generation are also due, as well as controversial decisions on expanding Gatwick and Heathrow airports, and another milestone will come at the end of October when the government must produce a coherent strategy on net zero, after a landmark victory in the courts last year for Friends of the Earth.
One of the biggest tests for Labour’s resolve, according to Tessa Khan, the executive director of the campaigning group Uplift, will come this summer when the government must set out its response to a court ruling challenging some potential new oilfields, including the Rosebank and Jackdaw projects.
Khan said: “The geological reality is that after 50 years of drilling, we have burned most of the gas in the North Sea. The only ones set to gain from more production are the oil and gas giants who will export what they can and pay off their shareholders with no thought for their workers’ futures as the basin declines. To win this fight, Labour needs to be bolder, not retreat.”
She said a just transition for workers would resonate with voters. “[Labour] needs to support the oil and gas workforce to transition to renewables and guarantee that communities that have suffered years of decline as the North Sea ages get wealthier from its clean power mission. It needs to side with the majority of people who recognise how much fossil fuels are costing us and stand up to the profiteers and their puppets on the right.”
But shifting the economy to a low-carbon footing will require investment. Economists can demonstrate that it will pay off, several times over, and global investors are keen to participate. But in the short term government cash is likely to be needed, and that is where the problem lies.
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is holed up in 11 Downing Street preparing a comprehensive spending review, to be published next month, that will determine how much money goes to each of the government’s priorities over the course of this parliament. Environment spending is already facing cuts, with flood defences, sustainable farming subsidies and the warm homes plan in the line of fire. With the defence budget soaking up even more resources, will anything be left for net zero?
Polanski has an answer: he would fund the green transition through a wealth tax, an idea that is overwhelmingly popular in polls and is gathering adherents in the Labour party too, behind closed doors.
Reeves has set herself firmly against any such violations of her self-imposed fiscal rules. A wealth tax has been ruled out and she has even relented on her threatened crackdown on tax-avoiding non-doms.
Chiselling away at cash promised to insulate the homes of people on low incomes, while refusing to tax the rich in the way that a large proportion of the public want, is a bold strategy in its own way but hardly aligned with the vision Starmer set out last month. If the prime minister is really preparing to go into battle for net zero, as he promised, his real difficulties may lie not with Reform’s surge, his own backbenchers, or even the Green party’s ecopopulists. He needs to look next door.
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