\n<\/p>\n
Boris Johnson has warned the Conservatives they will not win the next election by \u201cbashing the green agenda\u201d.<\/p>\n
The former prime minister said he had not seen the Conservatives \u201csoaring in the polls as a result of saying what rubbish net zero is\u201d.<\/p>\n
Johnson\u2019s intervention comes after Theresa May and John Major criticised the Tories for speaking out against net zero, making him the third former prime minister to step in on this issue.<\/p>\n
Kemi Badenoch has committed the party to repealing the Climate Change Act and abandoning the commitment to reach net zero by 2050, arguing that the target threatens to bankrupt Britain.<\/p>\n
The repeal of the act would remove the need to meet \u201ccarbon budgets\u201d \u2013 ceilings, set for five-year periods, on the amount of greenhouse gas that can be emitted \u2013 and disband the Climate Change Committee \u2013 a watchdog that advises on how policies affect the UK\u2019s carbon footprint.<\/p>\n
Badenoch said she would replace the act with \u201can energy strategy that puts cheap and reliable energy as the foundation for economic growth first\u201d.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the Smart Society Show podcast, Johnson said: \u201cCertainly in my party, it\u2019s all about bashing the green agenda, and personally I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll get elected on that. I didn\u2019t see us soaring in the polls as a result of saying what rubbish net zero is. I didn\u2019t see a massive leap in support for the Conservatives.\u201d<\/p>\n
As prime minister, Johnson backed Britain\u2019s net zero targets and hosted the Cop26 summit in Glasgow four years ago, which resulted in an agreement to limit the use of unabated coal and a commitment to climate finance for developing countries.<\/p>\n
Since being forced out of office, Johnson has said Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine and the energy price spike that came after had been a \u201cbig kick in the teeth\u201d that made it \u201creally tough for people like us to make the case for reducing CO2\u201d.<\/p>\n
Outlining his support for net zero, Johnson said he had \u201clost none of my zeal\u201d, and added: \u201cI still fundamentally believe that it\u2019s the right thing to do, even if you can\u2019t get there as fast as we wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Major, the former prime minister, told a Conservative party lunch on Tuesday that saying \u201cno to climate change\u201d fell outside the \u201cmajority of public opinion\u201d. He also said the party\u2019s current approach to not only net zero but overseas aid and Europe \u201cseriously alienates\u201d most voters, accusing the Tories of a \u201closs of pragmatism, tolerance and nuance\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe, as a party, are ourselves in part to blame\u201d for \u201canxious people \u2026 turning to populist politicians,\u201d he said adding, \u201c\u2026 when our party says \u2018no\u2019 to Europe, \u2018no\u2019 to climate change, \u2018no\u2019 to overseas aid \u2013 it falls out with the majority of public opinion.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuch policies may delight a minority of opinion, but not the broad mass of electors in our essentially tolerant and kindly nation: it seriously alienates many of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis loss of pragmatism, tolerance, nuance \u2012 call it what you will \u2013 has left many long-term Conservative supporters politically homeless \u2026 Whenever our party lurches too far to the right \u2013 or condemns moderate Conservatives \u2013 it pulls us further away from the traditional mass of our vote.\u201d<\/p>\n
May told peers on Monday the move to scrap net zero targets was an \u201cextreme and unnecessary measure\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Boris Johnson has warned the Conservatives they will not win the next election by \u201cbashing the green agenda\u201d. The former prime minister said he had not seen the Conservatives \u201csoaring in the polls as a result of saying what rubbish net zero is\u201d. Johnson\u2019s intervention comes after Theresa May and John Major criticised the Tories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[233,18312,12428,1686,4668,728,4302,3546,736,415,272,3954],"class_list":{"0":"post-31442","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-agenda","9":"tag-bashing","10":"tag-boris","11":"tag-conservatives","12":"tag-election","13":"tag-green","14":"tag-johnson","15":"tag-losing","16":"tag-risk","17":"tag-stop","18":"tag-tells","19":"tag-tories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}