Polls show parties could pay at general election for watering down green policies while world burns

The Conservatives and Labour probably would have hoped for a less visceral moment to water down their environmental policies.

While the government decides whether to keep a raft of net-zero policies, the worst wildfires in history are ravaging Greece, with British holidaymakers forced to wade into the sea with their children to avoid the flames.

Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell himself described the scenes from Rhodes and Corfu as a “wake-up call” on climate change, while a scientific study has said the current heatwaves hitting Europe and the US would have been “virtually impossible” without global warming.

This comes after the record for the world’s hottest day was broken three times in a week earlier this month, and last year temperatures in the UK topped 40 degrees for the first time. However you’d be forgiven for knowing any of this was going on when listening to our politicians.

Downing Street has said it will reconsider environmental policies, such as the 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel cars and phasing out gas boilers by 2035.

While last month Labour backtracked on its billion-pound green investment plan, and now Keir Starmer is urging Sadiq Khan to scrap the Ultra Low Emission Zone expansion. 

And all this is on the basis of one by-election in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where Labour lost by less than 500 votes in a traditional safe Tory seat. Prior to the by-election voters told NationalWorld that extension of the ULEZ - which levies a daily charge on the most polluting vehicles - was the key issue for them.

And both Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak are using this by-election result to change significant environmental policies. Sunak said he does not want to heap “hassle” or extra costs on to families as Conservatives on the right of the party pressure him to weaken environmental commitments.

While Starmer has told Khan to row back on the ULEZ expansion, despite toxic air causing the premature deaths of 4,000 Londoners since 2019. 

The question is, are green policies actually unpopular - or is this a single issue in a by-election which wouldn’t be as relevant in a nationwide poll. 

On this the polls are quite clear, voters support environmental policies, and actually think the government needs to go further to stop climate change - not row back.

Ahead of May’s local elections, non-profit the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit carried out polling and research on this exact subject. Three-quarters of those who said they would vote supported the UK’s net zero target, with more than half saying they think the government should be doing more.

And this was particularly pertinent with swing voters - categorised in this research as people who were going to vote differently in 2023 compared with the previous local elections in 2019. These are exactly the people Starmer and Sunak are going to need to attract in a general election.

 Amongst these people, support for net zero was at 70% and was almost the same (67%) in the Red Wall - where the Tories built their current majority on. In the Red Wall, more than half of people thought the government should be doing more about climate change. And out of 2019 Tory voters 66% support net zero.

And in terms of some of the measures Sunak is considering scrapping, 50% of respondents supported phasing out the sale of new gas boilers - and only 22% opposed. 

In another recent set of research, Ipsos and the University of Leeds carried out interviews and questionnaires with 112 participants across the country. Professor Suraje Dessai said the findings have shown “that the public are very concerned about the impacts of a changing climate”.

“They think the nation is unprepared and that action is urgently needed now,” the University of Leeds academic said. 

“For the first time, the public has articulated what a well-adapted England should look like. I hope this work will help the government and other key stakeholders better define the aims and objectives of national adaptation policy.”

The question is whether these views will drive people away from the Conservatives or Labour, as at the moment voter priorities place the cost of living crisis and the economy higher than the environment. While that is unclear, given the popularity of net zero, getting rid of such policies is unlikely to be a huge vote winner either - and more likely to have the opposite effect, according to the polls.

Beyond the depressing short-termism of scrapping environmental policies, climate change is only going to become a bigger factor in voters’ minds in the lead up to the next election. We are only going to get more extreme weather events like those in Rhodes, more 40 degree days in the UK and flash flooding. 

As more members of the UK population are affected by climate change, it will become a higher priority - and they will not forget the politicians who ignored our planet.