The Real Reason Behind Rishi Sunak's Climate U-Turn

The Prime Minister's abandonment of key Government climate pledges tells us a lot about the politician he really is

Another day, another example of why Rishi Sunak simply isn’t very good at politics.

His disastrous decision to abandon a series of long-term commitments on tacklinh climate change was clearly designed with the sole intention of winning a handful of positive front pages in the Daily Mail.

On that at least he has been successful. The Mail greeted today’s leaked announcement with a splash that was eerily reminiscent of their previous splash celebrating Liz Truss’ catastrophic ‘mini budget’ last year.

However, from that point onwards the reaction has been almost universally negative. At the time of writing, Sunak’s short-term gambit has been condemned by (among others) the UK chief of Ford Motors, the motoring industry’s largest lobbying group, one of the world’s biggest energy giants, the Conservative party’s former Chair of COP, and Boris Johnson. Meanwhile his former Climate Minister Zac Goldsmith has called for an immediate general election in order to quickly eject him from office.

The announcement has also put him completely out of step with the British people. Opinion polling has consistently shown climate change to be one of the public’s top priorities, with most voters wanting more action to tackle it, not less.

This concern about climate change can be found across all demographics and regions with the sort of socially conservative voters that helped the party win big in 2019, being, if anything, even more alert to the threat of climate change than the general population.

So what is really going on here and how has Sunak managed to get himself and his Government into such an almighty mess?