Tories will not win by ‘bashing the green agenda’, says Johnson

Boris Johnson has warned that the Conservatives cannot win the next election by “bashing the green agenda”.

The former prime minister said he found the “state of the argument” on climate change “depressing” as he argued the public wanted “cheap green energy” instead of anti-net zero policies.

Earlier this year, Kemi Badenoch committed the Tories to repealing the Climate Change Act and abandoning the commitment to reach net zero by 2050, arguing the target threatened to bankrupt the country.

But speaking to the Smart Society Show podcast, hosted by fund manager Brynne Kennedy and former energy minister Chris Skidmore, Mr Johnson objected to his successor’s move away from net zero.

He said: “Certainly in my party, it’s all about bashing the green agenda, and personally I don’t think we’ll get elected on that.

“I didn’t see us soaring in the polls as a result of saying what rubbish net zero is. I didn’t see a massive leap in support for the Conservatives.”

Mr Johnson is the third Conservative former prime minister to speak out against his party’s turn against net zero.

His predecessor Baroness Theresa May told peers on Monday the move was an “extreme and unnecessary measure”.

And Sir John Major told a Conservative Party lunch on Tuesday that saying “no to climate change” fell outside “the majority of public opinion”.

As prime minister, Mr Johnson backed Britain’s net zero targets, hosting the Cop26 summit in Glasgow in 2021 that saw an agreement to limit the use of “unabated” coal and a commitment to climate finance for developing countries.

Since leaving office, he has suggested that he went “far too fast” on net zero, especially in light of the increase in energy prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking to the podcast, Mr Johnson said the invasion and subsequent energy price spike had been “a big kick in the teeth” that made it “really tough for people like us to make the case for reducing CO2”.

Saying he had “lost none of my zeal” for net zero, he added: “I still fundamentally believe that it’s the right thing to do, even if you can’t get there as fast as we wanted to do.”

But he also said the UK would “have to use some more hydrocarbons for the time being” in order to get energy costs down, arguing this should be the priority for the next five years.

And he warned that the problem of energy costs would get worse “because of the vast demands of AI”, saying: “Unless we can find a way of doing that much more cheaply and effectively, we’re going to be needing even more juice than before.”