Labour Light: Half of Conservative MP Backbenchers Join Party’s Net Zero Green Agenda Group

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures onboard the Esvagt Alba during a visit to
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Kurt Zindulka

Half of all backbenchers in the Conservative Party have now joined a green agenda group to push ahead with Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Build Back Better vision of decarbonising the British economy.

Despite growing scepticism of the feasibility of the green movement to deliver on its targets without wrecking the economy, 133 Tory MPs have now signed onto the Conservative Environment Network (Cen) after former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt said that he has joined their ranks. The addition of Hunt means that the group now consists of half of the Conservative backbench (non-government) MPs in the parliament.

“I am delighted to join the Conservative Environment Network to champion net-zero and nature conservation,” Hunt said according to The Guardian.

“Now, more than ever, in light of the global gas crisis and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it’s vital we decarbonise the UK’s economy by 2050. We must develop more homegrown clean energy, including renewables and new nuclear. This will lower people’s bills, strengthen our energy security and avoid the worst consequences of climate change,” the former government minister added.

The left-wing paper noted that in comparison to the green group — which claims to have grown by 18 MPs since the start of the year — the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, which is holding the ongoing radical transformation of the economy to account, has only 19 publicly declared members.

Celebrating the sea change within the nominally Conservative Party, the policy director for the left-wing activist group Greenpeace, Dr Doug Parr said: “We have seen Boris Johnson going from harsh criticism of wind power to full-throated advocacy. Half of the Conservative backbenches are now committed to climate action, avoiding the disruptive partisanship on environmental issues seen in the USA, Australia and elsewhere.”

The apparent doubling down on the green agenda from the Tory Party comes amid one of the sharpest cost of living crises in recent memory, driven in large part due to spikes in global energy prices as a result of the dependence of green European on Russian gas.

Although Russian gas only accounts for around three per cent of the UK’s usage, it has not escaped the rising inflation and soaring energy costs, with domestic production of natural gas suffering serious blows from the government over the past decade under Tory rule.

The Conservatives, like the Republicans in the United States, have attempted to cast themselves as the low tax party, however, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has ushered in the highest tax burden in seventy years to supposedly pay off the massive spending spree during the state-mandated lockdowns of the economy.

Currently, around 30 per cent of the household electricity bill for the average Briton is devoted towards either subsidising so-called green energy projects or direct Value Added Tax (VAT) payments to the government. Despite millions of Britons facing the potential of fuel poverty in the coming months, the Conservative government has refused to cut taxes on electricity, merely announcing a 5 pence cut on fuel duty.

While there has been some noise in the British press about Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s desire to increase the production of nuclear power, there have been no firm commitments made. The government has also failed to rescind regulations on fracking, despite the UK having significant untapped sources of natural gas.

On Tuesday, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said that the government will be publishing an energy security strategy “very shortly”. It was reported by The Telegraph that a central theme of the strategy will be a major push towards solar power, with Kwarteng said to be seeking to triple the output of solar by the end of the decade. At present, only around 2.5 per cent of UK energy is produced by solar power.

The government is reportedly seeking to expand solar power farms in the South of England, where they will be seeking to cover 225 square miles of land with panels.

There is likely to be serious opposition to the plan as the area is home to fertile and productive farmland.

On local politician, Tory MP Kevin Hollinrake, said: “I would say, stick it all on rooftops. I fear we are going to take our eye off food production and put it into energy production.

“So we’ll be having a crisis in a few years time over the fact we are buying all our grain from somewhere else and we then just have that kind of security problem [instead],” the North Yorkshire MP warned.

The chairwoman of the Say No to Sunnica Action Group, Catherine Judkins, concurred, saying: “This particular scheme is so poorly designed. The location is wrong; the choice of land it’s using is highly productive agricultural land. And that is why there is a huge amount of local opposition.”

The only country in the world with a meaningful solar panel producing industry is China.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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