For the sake of the planet and his party, the prime minister must not try to draw a line dividing the Conservatives from Labour on green issues
While conservative parties in the US, Australia and Canada have allowed opponents of action on climate change to help define their politics, thankfully in Britain successive Tory prime ministers have pushed such views to the fringes of their party. In 1989, Margaret Thatcher became the first world leader to warn the UN of the climate threat. Three decades later, as Theresa May opted to make Britain the first country to put into law the net zero goal of the Paris agreement, not one of her MPs voted against it. Apart from a brief wobble in 2013 when David Cameron, who had told voters “vote blue, go green” and went on to declare “cut the green crap”, this country has enjoyed a remarkable, and very welcome, degree of cross-party unity on the need to decarbonise.
Enabled by this consensus, a boom in offshore wind energy has allowed Britain to rapidly phase out coal use, have some of the cleanest electricity of any country and create thousands of jobs. Last winter, it also kept the lights on as the continent scrambled to find alternatives to expensive gas imports after Russia’s invasion.
