Boris Johnson has warned Kemi Badenoch that the Tories cannot win the next election by “bashing the green agenda”. The former prime minister said he found the “state of the argument” on climate change “depressing” and insisted the public wants “cheap green energy” instead of anti-net zero policies.
His intervention comes after the Conservative leader vowed to scrap the target to reach net zero by 2050. Speaking to the Smart Society Show podcast, hosted by fund manager Brynne Kennedy and former energy minister Chris Skidmore, Mr Johnson said: “Certainly in my party, it’s all about bashing the green agenda, and personally I don’t think we’ll get elected on that.
“I didn’t see us soaring in the polls as a result of saying what rubbish net zero is. I didn’t see a massive leap in support for the Conservatives.”
Mr Johnson, who has suggested he went “far too fast” on net zero since leaving office, is the third Conservative ex-PM to warn against the move.
Speaking to the podcast, Mr Johnson admitted Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent energy price spike had been “a big kick in the teeth” that made it “really tough for people like us to make the case for reducing CO2”.
But Mr Johnson, who backed Britain’s net zero targets while in No 10, insisted he had “lost none of my zeal” on the issue.
He added: “I still fundamentally believe that it’s the right thing to do, even if you can’t get there as fast as we wanted to do.”
But he also said the UK would “have to use some more hydrocarbons for the time being” in order to get energy costs down, arguing this should be the priority for the next five years.
And he warned that the problem of energy costs would get worse “because of the vast demands of AI”, saying: “Unless we can find a way of doing that much more cheaply and effectively, we’re going to be needing even more juice than before.”
It comes after Baroness Theresa May told peers on Monday that the shift against net zero was an “extreme and unnecessary measure”.
And Sir John Major told a Conservative Party lunch on Tuesday that saying “no to climate change” fell outside “the majority of public opinion”.
Mrs Badenoch earlier this month pledged to repeal the Climate Change Act, which put the 2050 net zero target into law, and replace it with a strategy for “cheap and reliable” energy.
The Tory leader warned that the target threatened to bankrupt the country.