Boris Johnson’s green journey

Boris Johnson’s green journey

 

The UK prime minister’s climate stance is a mixture of sentiment and hard-nosed political instinct.

 

Illustration by Dave Murray for POLITICO

BY ESTHER WEBBER AND KARL MATHIESEN

October 28, 2021 1:00 pm

https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-prime-minister-boris-johnson-climate-policy-cop26-glasgow/

 

In a few days, Boris Johnson will welcome delegations from around the world to the U.K. at the COP26 climate summit and tell them to get their act together to save the planet.

 

He actually has some credibility to make those demands.

 

It was not so long ago that the U.K. prime minister scoffed at wind turbines, his predecessor David Cameron lost patience with “green crap” and members of his Conservative Party questioned the science of man-made global warming on the floor of the House of Commons.

 

Johnson and the Conservatives have evolved since the party took power in 2010. While much has been made of the prime minister’s turquoise-tinged family and his boyish enthusiasm for technology, less remarked on is the calculated political pragmatism at the heart of his green agenda.

 

Race to net zero

Climate policy isn't an obvious fit for the Conservatives, but the party has been turning greener since Cameron became leader in 2005.

 

In opposition, he sought out photo opportunities with Arctic huskies and sent out the message “vote blue, go green.” In power from 2010, his coalition government signed off on the U.K.’s fourth carbon budget, a Green Investment Bank and passed the Energy Act.

 

But Cameron's commitment seemed to wane as his party grew impatient to return to traditional Tory causes, and the next real reckoning came under the turbulent prime ministership of Theresa May.

 

After her disastrous 2017 election cost the Conservatives their parliamentary majority, polling by the Bright Blue think tank of younger voters — with whom the Tories had bombed — put the environment at the top of their priority list.

 

“It became a huge priority for the government in the wake of that election,” said one former adviser to May.

 

Two key things happened to that end. May appointed Michael Gove to the environment brief, where he pushed a series of headline-grabbing announcements on plastic waste and animal welfare.

 

A former government aide said Gove "saw the political space to do something quite bold” by attempting to show that Brexit could improve rather than damage environmental standards.

 

While May was consumed with enacting Brexit, those around her spotted an opportunity to secure her place in the history books and gain a new international toehold for the U.K.

 

Chris Skidmore, then energy minister, recalls: “We knew we could be the first G7 country to do set a net-zero target and if we could get it across the line then it would definitely seal our COP26 bid.”

 

Paul Harrison, May's head of communications at the time, says “she just became totally convinced” in the wake of a landmark Climate Change Committee report “that it could change people's lives in a very positive way.” One of her ministers was less charitable, saying: “It was all she had left.”

 

The all-consuming Brexit monster gave cover to enthusiasts for setting the 2050 net-zero target. “I definitely remember thinking this is effectively a trillion pound deal we’re just waving through,” said one minister involved.

 

 

The target was set without a vote in June 2019. Far from shrugging it off, Johnson came to embrace it.

 

Greening the red wall

Johnson's green roots are well-known. His father Stanley was an environmentalist before it was fashionable and Zac Goldsmith, who advised Cameron on green matters in opposition, is his environment minister. His wife Carrie is not only an animal lover but, more importantly, a well-connected party insider who — like Gove — spotted an opportunity for the Tories to seize the narrative.

 

He's also a huge fan of technological whizz-bangery.

 

“Boris keeps going on about technology solving everything,” said one ambivalent Conservative MP. “It might do. But it might take a heck of a long time.”

 

But more important than Johnson's family background or love of shiny things is his sense of where the political winds are blowing and his determination to win.

 

Over the last 20 years, less than 10 percent of the population on average said that climate change was the biggest problem facing Britain. From 2017 it crept up and, as Ben Page of Ipsos MORI outlines, this summer “we saw pretty much the highest ever level of concern this century.”

 

Page said this presents a clear electoral opportunity for Johnson. “If you’re a die-hard fiscal Conservative then who else are you going to vote for? He has to pick up soft Labour votes and soft Lib Dem votes.”

 

In the 2019 election, the promise to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 was one of his party's six key electoral pledges — alongside hospitals, police, schools, lower immigration and no tax rises.

 

Page said Johnson's approach was similar to that used by former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had a knack for picking winning policies that were at odds with some of the core beliefs of his voting base.

 

“It's a very sort of Blair tactic, basically squatting like a huge rhinoceros in the middle of the road. You can't go around him to the left or the right because you've got to go right off the road and it's a nightmare," he said.

 

An adviser to Johnson’s 2019 election campaign said net zero was not at that time “one of the areas which we thought was decisive to win it” but “what mattered was showing the commitment was realistic.”

 

They contrasted their pledge with the Labour manifesto, which set an eyebrow-raising target of putting the U.K. “on track for a net-zero carbon energy system” in the 2030s.

 

The same aide argued: “The prime minister tends to be quite good at sensing where people are going … It was something that he cared about but also something where if it’s done right, can actually be quite helpful, politically, and electorally.”

 

That “sense” was given fresh impetus by the election result, when the Conservatives won seats they had previously never dreamed of in deindustrialized northern England. Here was an opportunity to broadcast that manufacturing and jobs were most likely to come from green industries and reskilling.

 

Paul Goodman, editor of the ConservativeHome website, said: “We’ve probably had more pro-net zero pieces from Conservative MPs than on any other subject. And I think that's because the hope is that their constituents will gain from new technologies.”

 

Can he keep it up?

The U.K. now has some of the most ambitious climate policies in the world: net-zero emissions by 2050; ending the sale of combustion-engine vehicles by 2030, zero-carbon electricity by 2035; boosting investment in clean home heating, hydrogen, nuclear power and green vehicles — all laid out in a 360-page plan.

 

It was greeted with a typical Johnsonian flourish.

 

"This strategy shows how we can build back greener without so much as a hair shirt in sight," he said. "In 2050, we will still be driving cars, flying planes and heating our homes, but our cars will be electric gliding silently around our cities, our planes will be zero emission allowing us to fly guilt-free, and our homes will be heated by cheap reliable power drawn from the winds of the North Sea.”

 

 

That enthusiasm implies a smooth transition to the sunlit uplands of a green United Kingdom. The reality may be bumpier.

 

While Gove, now housing secretary, and, increasingly, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, are keen backers, Johnson’s influential chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has often seemed reluctant to mention net zero. And there is a whole new awkward squad on the backbenches, the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, who question how the transition will be paid for.

 

Goodman was skeptical of the green transition's political staying power: “I suspect if the choice is between fidgeting with the target or raising taxes further, they will decide to miss the targets.”

 

Amber Rudd, former energy secretary, was more upbeat: "There's no question [Johnson] didn't think that this was important as little as seven or eight years ago. But he has the zeal of a convert."

 

Ahead of the COP26, the U.K.’s political climate evolving to embrace the “green crap” is to Johnson’s advantage — and he has never wasted one of those.