The Conservative Party has abandoned the “impossible” Net Zero 2050 target in a major U-turn, overturning a decades long cross-party consensus on tackling the ‘climate emergency’. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch gave a major speech this morning setting out her reasons for jettisoning the policy and refusing to set a new target. Here are the highlights.
We are living off the inheritance of previous generations. For three centuries every era in our country’s history left a better legacy for our country’s children.
The greatness of the UK is forged by the sacrifices of our ancestors. They built, they innovated and they took tough decisions. They never assumed that prosperity was guaranteed, they made sure it was.
But that has bred an assumption that Britain will always be wealthy. We are a wealthy country but we are becoming weaker through complacency. We are losing our resilience, we can’t make things like we used to, we don’t build as quickly. We are spending too much on debt, too much on welfare and too little on defence.
We are not growing like we should. … We are not creating a legacy for the next generation. Worse than that, we are mortgaging our children’s future by not recognising that the world has changed. We’re making things harder and harder for them across the board. …
We suffered the worst defeat in the party’s history. We replaced the principles-based government that brought us success with the managerialism of Labour and gave our power to quangos and courts.
We assumed that we would always be wealthy so we focused on the status quo rather than the future and now Labour is back. They are already making everything worse.
Jobs are disappearing, taxes are rising, and growth is shrinking. They are vandalising education and they are completely clueless of the need for real reform on regulation.
The public made it very clear that the Conservative Party needed some time away from government. Our job now is to use that time wisely – just as Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron did in the generations past.
And just like the 1970s and 2000s, our party cannot shortcut our way back into office with easy answers or rushed announcements.
We must develop credible plans that reflect the shared conservative values of personal responsibility, citizenship, sound money, family, freedom and so much more.
And we start today. By talking about one of the biggest problems that our country, and our world, will face in the decades ahead and show that Conservatives are in the business again of dealing with reality and the problems we face. …
Cheap abundant energy is the foundation of civilisation as we know it today. We mess with it at our peril but that’s exactly what’s been happening for 20 years and it’s now starting to cause real pain for everyday people and business.
The cost of electricity [is] far too high, much higher than nearby and comparative countries. …. A big chunk of our existing bills are not direct energy costs. People are struggling to pay them, businesses, especially manufacturing businesses, are closing down and there is no real plan for bringing costs down.
That surely cannot hold. It’s fantasy politics built on nothing, promising the Earth and costing it too. …
There has never, ever been a detailed plan. Ed Miliband’s Climate Change Act 2008, no plan. Legislating for Net Zero in 2019, no plan. A multi-trillion, 30-year project touching every single aspect of all our lives was decided in 90 minutes without a single vote.
Of the 22 MPs spoke that day, only two sounded notes of caution. I was one of them. I asked for the plan, I asked for it that day, I asked a few days later. And I waited and waited and waited. 845 days later, one came. And it wasn’t enough. …
We need a serious approach, we’ve got to stop pretending it’s simple and we have got to stop government by press release, announcements without a policy plan.
Anyone who has done any serious analysis knows Net Zero cannot be achieved without a significant drop in our living standards, or worse, by bankrupting us.
Without the rest of the world doing the same we are making our country less safe, less secure and less resilient. Let me give you three truths at the heart of Net Zero. First, the published plans are a completely muddle. It is true that the UK has made the greatest progress on carbon emissions in the developed world but we are only responsible for 1% of global emissions. Even if we hit absolute zero we will not have Net Zero around the world if other countries are following us, and they are not. …
Our success at reducing emissions has also come at a cost, the highest energy bills in the developed world. …
The real reason no one in the Labour Government is talking about a proper overall plan is they know it would reveal just how catastrophic the actual costs would be for families, for businesses and for our economy. …
Second, even where there is a plan, we are behind. Let’s look at one easy example. By 2040 the Committee on Climate Change says more than half of UK homes need to rip out boilers and replace them with a heat pump. There is no way we can do that quickly enough on that timescale. …
Heat pumps run on a lot of expensive electricity and it turns out many people just don’t like them. …
Most of them were installed with some form of government subsidy, or as I prefer to call it, taxpayers’ money. …
The good news is that costs have dropped in the last decade. Here’s the less good news. Ten years ago we were heavily dependent on China for all of the key components. Today we’re even more dependent. Look at the top dozen makers of solar panels, they are nearly all Chinese. …
Those three truths are why I call myself a Net Zero sceptic: muddled plans, unrealistic targets and deadlines, over-reliance on China. We have got to start acknowledging what is in plain sight. Net Zero makes us dangerously dependent on countries that don’t share our values and it is risking our own security. …
It is time to stop pretending that everything will be fine. And I am not debating whether climate change exists, it does. I badly want to leave a much better environmental inheritance for my children and for yours. But it doesn’t look like we are going to get remotely close to Net Zero by 2050. … This is what happens when politics turns into fantasy. Maybe some of it will change, but it doesn’t look promising.
I often say that when you want to help someone, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they need to hear. We have to tell the truth.
The plans for Net Zero by 2050 are impossible. We have to do better than this. That’s why as part of our policy renewal we are going to do something that Labour failed to do in 14 years of opposition. We are going to deal with reality, confront the real problems, answer the real questions and be ready with a plan.
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The Tory plan presumably is to steal Reform’s policies. How dare they after the mess that they created?
Reform should have been saying this and more over the last few months – 1st mover advantage…
I think ditching net zero was in their manifesto.
David Kurten has from the start. Reform has been talking about scrapping it but Heritage Party had as a policy to stop Agenda 2030.
I know they’ve said some similar items – but why not on billboards or, god forbid, on the side of a bus etc? Why are they so low profile on it?
Are you referring to Heritage or Reform? Heritage doesn’t have the financial capital, unless Musk or someone takes an interest.
Mostly meant reform – don’t know so much about Heritage, but thought they looked good last year when I did briefly look. Sadly I think the name / positioning is not going to be ‘dynamic’ enough these days, rightly or wrongly – it feels like ‘staid/safe/don’t change anything cos we don’t like change’…
As I said – rightly or wrongly – the detail behind their thinking may be excellent. Any more thoughts you can share on them?
No mass deportations?
Do some more planning Kemi.
According to the interview between Wotton & Lowe, in some Tory event they told Rupert to avoid the ‘mass’ when talking about deportations. But with thousands invading, and I will use the word invading, we can’t not deport en masse.
Poor Planning and Preparation = Piss Poor Performance = Conservative Government… such as it was.
She has abandoned a specific target. Do not credit her with abandoning the whole daft scheme. That is what she wants sceptics to believe while retaining enough room to persuade green members that she wants what they want, just not quite yet.
I don’t have a problem with the idea of cutting down our reliance on fossil fuels. There is only a finite amount of them available anyway, and one day they will run out, although that certainly won’t happen by 2050.
Nor do I have a problem with introducing cleaner and greener ways of living. But where I differ with the unthinking masses and with the majority of politicians is that we cannot rush to introduce technologies that are untried, so expensive that they will push us into debt (both nationally and personally), or such a poor replacement for the traditional technologies that they result in lower living standards and life expectancy.
Balance is needed. If there’s a call for that, then it’s a good thing.
Some say fossil fuels are from the core of the earth, therefore hydrocarbons. Anyway, the main argument is that carbon dioxide is causing climate change that they cannot prove.
“Cleaner and greener” ways of living. So you are part of the loonie-parade.
That is harsh. I recycle my food waste, directly on the garden, or via the Council, which turns it into plant food which is spread on local fields. Nutritious free fertiliser makes perfect biological and economic sense, with the added benefit of no waste to dispose of. It is cleaner and greener. and not remotely loony
But doesn’t that attract rats to your garden?
Untrue. Fossil fuels don’t exist. Rocks don’t make hydrocarbons.
Clue in.
Abiotic processes create hydrocarbons not dead dinos, not ‘devonian algae’ and by definition these are natural, renewable.
Since 1920 the ‘end for oil/gas is nigh’ song is played every year.
And every year it is wrong.
No indication she’s rejected the “climate change” hoax.
If elected, they will be implementing their own ‘oven ready’ Net-tard zero plan, to ‘get it done’ and save the Gaia. ‘Yes we rejected Net Zero in 2025, but that was the wrong Net Zero. This is the right Net Zero, verified by the WEF’.
Just watch. Since when have the Tories actually done anything to benefit the country? And I am to believe them now?
We were told by successive goverments that we’d lead the world into net zero. So off we went, heading into the vast unknown, setting the example for others to follow, blazing a trail… At last a leader of a major party has looked round and realised that we’re on our own.
That was my thought. Whilst I also agree with the more granular assessment outlined in other comments. Even if partial or conditional, for a “legacy” party leader to say the things she has must be welcomed.
There is also the undemocratic aspect of all this, the fact that it was pushed through in 90 minutes with little debate. Signing us up to legally binding unknowns was reckless to say the least. Wonderful legacy Mrs May, wondered why those speeches paid so well.
Yes it’s so nice to see a leopard change its spots.
The UK has just moved its cztbon emissions off-shore to China for example.
“The public made it very clear that the Conservative Party needed some time away from government. Our job now is to use that time wisely – just as Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron did in the generations past.”
Stop it Kemi, I can’t stop laughing. Thatcher – yes, you’re spot on. But Cameron of hug-a-hoodie and husky-riding in The Arctic wilderness? Was that time spent wisely? The ruination inflicted on us by Cameron (and subsequently) May and Johnson has left the country in a far worse state than they inherited.
Triggernometry podcast held Boris to account NOT! I will take it back because I just saw a clip if I’m wrong but I would put money on it they never lambasted the pig over the mandates that violated the Nuremberg Code.
Still no admission that the science behind the premise of man-made climate change is shaky, to say the least. And for that reason, I’m out.
It might be helpful to differentiate ‘climate change’ from ‘man-made climate change’. This is a nuance which Net Zero fanatics don’t dwell on…
Exactly. When you look at the science as a whole, there is evidence that global temperatures have fluctuated naturally over millennia, not just in the last couple of centuries. I have yet to see any credible scientific evidence that humans have made any significant change to global temperatures and thus to the climate.
Funny thing they were talking about this subject this morning where a Tory MP mentioned “nobody mentions the benefits of CC, to which the girl answered maybe champagne in Kent. Did it not occur to her that the Romans beat us to that!
Of course not! I blame the schools.
It’s a circular argument. Mankind causes global warming, global warming is happening, therefore this proves Mankind is causing it.
Climate does not exist as an observable, tangible phenomenon, it is a statistical analysis of past – over long, long periods… thousands of years – of meteorological data.
Climate change cannot be observed or “happening” as it is an historical data-trend, which is non-linear.
If we wish to know how or whether the climate system changed in current times, we need to wait 5 000 to 10 000 years.
Yes it was all sounding good until that bit wasn’t it – I’m guessing she has to add that, as she thinks the first challenge back will be ‘so the tories deny climate change?’ Line…
Like the word racist, they can’t fall back on that forever.
Kemi, you were doing well until,
“I often say that when you want to help someone, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they need to hear. We have to tell the truth”
Try telling us that the truth is that MMCC is an untruth.
Hypocrisy, hypocrisy, hypocrisy – there’s three truths for you. Praising Cameron for preparing? He took the Miliband lunacy and turbocharged it and then Boris Johnson poured rocket fuel into the engine. The Conservatives spent fourteen years destroying the country and laying the groundwork for Miliband to return and salt the land that they had laid waste to. She now wants us to trust her? Forget it
Tories say they’ll abandon net zero is not the same as Tories abandon it. But a moot point in any case, given the size of Labour’s majority
Climate change and “the environment” are two very different things, you goddam moron!
Boris Johnson revealed the same idiotic muddled thinking in his Triggernometry interview.
It was an astonishing moment. The moment that it became completely apparent that the people in charge don’t make a distinction between climate change and pollution and a clean environment. It’s all one big muddle for them.
This idiot has just shown she doesn’t either.
That’s why are are in the mess we are in.
I’ve checked Google maps and I just can’t find where. “The Environment” is. An island, undiscovered continent, a State somewhere?
In fact despite checking daily, I just cannot see climate out the window – whether it’s nice climate today, better than yesterday. Nor has play at Lords ever been suspended due to bad climate, no flights delayed or cancelled due to bad climate.
We live in a World of abstractions it seems.
Did the Nigerian:
1) Issue a grovelling apology for the climate-change-related bollocks inflicted on the country by the Tories for the 14 years they were in power?
2) Promise to remove from the Party those MPs and associated hangers-on who pushed the agenda?
Rejoice!
“The greatness of the UK is forged by the sacrifices of our ancestors”
Whose ancestors?
Not hers, for sure.
This comment has been deleted. Play the ball, not the man
My comment criticising the Nigerian woman who wants to represent the Indigenous British People as their Prime Minister was also deleted.
So much for Freedom of Speech, and the Human Rights of the Indigenous People of the British Isles, as guaranteed by the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to protect their own culture, language, traditions, religion, ancestral homelands and ETHNIC IDENTITY from destruction by invading alien cultures and ethnicities.
“HYPOCRITE!!!” Heretic.
What, like the sort that you want to shut down and censor whenever somebody posts something you disagree with? Like how you ceaselessly troll me around the comments sections telling me to “stop your endless whingeing!”, merely for posting my view points which are opposed to yours, because apparently YOUR right to free speech trumps MINE? Have you heard yourself, you bloody two-faced, racist, mysoginist prat?
Freedom of Speech?
You wouldn’t understand the concept of free speech if it bit you on your highly unpleasant arse!
Imagine the reaction in Nigeria if a Blonde Swedish Woman decided to run for President of Nigeria and gave speeches to the Nigerians saying…
“The greatness of Nigeria is forged by the sacrifices of OUR ANCESTORS”.
The ancient dinghy divers, not the modern day ones.
Yes, her brazen hypocrisy is just nauseating.
I don’t think they’ve abandoned anything.
Guido’s analysis is more accurate
https://order-order.com/2025/03/18/kemi-net-zero-impossible-by-2050-but-wont-scrap-policy-altogether/
Just like with the ECHR. They were pussy footing for 14 years.
Agree with all the comments but overall verdict is – the Overton Window is shifting. Drip, drip, drip.
You could say Trump started that too. Also regarding Trump, all those Pardons may be null & void because apparently Biden didn’t know anything about it and an Auto pen was used in all the signatures so it is all being passed to a Judge. Don’t know why it wasn’t reported on over here, it’s quite a bombshell that.
Oh absolutely he moved the window a long way.
“..There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” Luke 15.10
This is where you pays yer money and takes yer choice. Does she believe herself. Does anyone else believe her. Is she ‘turning the supertanker’ one degree at a time, slowly opening the truth of Nett Zero and MMGW to full scrutiny. Or is she just wearing Nigels coat of many colours and hoping we don’t notice.
It will be interesting to watch for any movement in the Governments position too. There have been a few minor expediences, but nothing substantial as yet.
That is one advantage Reform have over the Uniparty — Reform have been banging on about scrapping Agenda 2030 from the start. Tories have had 14 years just to start the conversation. But is Farage really up to the job!
This is pretty unconvincing. The plans for Net Zero by 2050 are not only impossible, they were a scam from the start. Fleece common people to make Dale Vince types insanely rich and halfway ossified communists in the UN bureaucracy happy. Nobody needs a better Tory plan how to deal with climate change. A change of the political climate is needed here, namely one which gets rid of all these useless leeches. The weather in future is something people will have to deal with in future, just as we have to deal with the weather today and the claim that we can control the weather somehow, especially, the weather 20 years from now, is seriously preposterous when we cannot even reliably predict if it will or won’t rain from one day to the next.
I have been complaining how in the last week or so, the weather has been colder that your average March in this country.
Ah, that would be the climate collapse. It’s got so hot that it’s become moderately cold. Wake up at the back there.
Hear, hear!
How can anyone be so foolish and gullible as to be taken in by this crass attempt to steal Reform’s policies, as Bill Hickling has said?
”There has never, ever been a detailed plan. Ed Miliband’s Climate Change Act 2008, no plan. Legislating for Net Zero in 2019, no plan. A multi-trillion, 30-year project touching every single aspect of all our lives was decided in 90 minutes without a single vote.”
This was Conservative Party policy for 14 years, as was flooding the Country with millions of non-compatible, net economic cost, welfare dependent immigrants legal and illegal.
The so-called Conservative Party are the entire reason for our social and economic destruction and the return of the Marxist-Socialist Labour.
Get lost Kemi – fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.
It was a stupid attempt to give Theresa May a legacy. Another failure to add to the long list of Conservative failures over the past 15 years.
If the UK has had an energy policy at any time in the lest 3 decades, would they point me to it? The only proper energy minister I recall in that entire time was Amber Rudd. She lowered the renewable subsidies by a huge amount, ending deals on which we had IRR’s of over 15% at a time when interest rates were almost zero, because she could see through the rubbish ideas which Cameron had brought in to placate the Loony Libs
“And I am not debating whether climate change exists, it does..”
Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
I am hoping she means that the climate changes, as it always has and always will. But I don’t think so. I think she means man made climate change. Which, most definitely, does NOT exist, Kemi…