To one side of Claire Coutinho, there is the Conservative Environment Network, which claims the support of 133 Tory backbenchers – more than a third of the Commons party and half of backbenchers. Plus what might be described as its provisional wing: Chris Skidmore’s Net Zero Support Group.
The former has told Rishi Sunak that backing off Net Zero would cost the Conservatives seats in the south of England. Skidmore has called the Prime Minister’s recent decision to grant new North Sea oil and gas licences “the wrong decision at the wrong time”. Appointed by Liz Truss to review the Government’s Net Zero policy, he criticised the Government’s electricity tax earlier this year, calling for Ministers to move “further and faster” in providing incentives for investment in renewables. Meanwhile, Zac Goldsmith has quit the Government, suggesting that Sunak is “uninterested in the environment”.
To the other side of the new Energy Secretary is the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, with says that it has some 58 Conservative MPs on its books, plus much of the right-wing media and, if our survey of Party members is right, a substantial slice of activists: “The typical panel member…believes that global warming is happening, but isn’t necessarily convinced that human activity is driving it. He supports the Net Zero 2050 target, but not its presence on the statute book, and doesn’t believe that it will be hit. He is strongly opposed to the 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars – and to low traffic neighbourhoods, I wrote recently.
And alongside Coutinho is her patron, Rishi Sunak, who has shifted the balance of policy towards energy security while insisting that the Net Zero targets can nonetheless be met. Michael Gove, who spoke of a “Green Brexit” when Defra Secretary, and says that he has “campaigned on green issues for two decades, has caught the flavour of the change. He wants to relax the deadline for landlords in the private rented sector to make energy improvements to their properties, and is removing anti-pollution EU laws on nutrient neutrality to allow more than 100,000 new homes to be built.
He warned in the wake of the Ruislip and South Uxbridge by-election against “treating the cause of the environment as a religious crusade”. ULEZ is only Net Zero-related in part, but critics of the targets argue that the Government risks a voter backlash of the kind seen recently in Holland. Certainly, the nearer the target is, the more vulnerable it looks. George Eustice, the former DEFRA Secretary, believes that “rural communities are about to have their own version of London’s ultra-low emission zone dumped on them” by Ministers’ plans to ban the installation of replacement kerosense boilers in some homes from 2026.
As if all this wasn’t enough, her new department must deal with the remaining stages of the Energy Bill next week, during which backbench backers and critics of Net Zero will shadow-box. Coutinho can be expected loyally to represent Sunak’s change of gear, while quietly hoping that none of the targets collapse on her watch.
The pressure on Grant Shapps from Conservative backbenchers will push him one way only: I’ve never heard of one who wanted less spent on defence. Coutinho is in a more testing position.
In the unlikely event of Sunak winning a majority at the next election, the new Energy Secretary, his former PPS and a colleague he clearly trusts, looks like his next Chancellor, assuming Jeremy Hunt stays in place until it happens.
If, as is more likely, the Tories go into opposition, Tim Bale argues that the worse the result is for the Conservatives, the larger a proportion of the new Parliamentary Party Sunak’s supporters in the recent leadership elections will be.
Little wonder the new Energy Secretary is, inevitably, already being floated as the next Tory leader. She could be forgiven for thinking that she has enough expectations to live up to already.