Chancellor Rachel Reeves is playing a dangerous game if her headlong push for growth makes Labour look weak on the environment.
Tories are rightly obsessed by the threat Nigel Farage’s Reform UK poses to their party – and Labour cannot afford to take its eye off the Greens.
While Reform won five seats in the July election with just over four million votes, the Green Party sent four MPs to Westminster on the back of nearly two million votes.
The Greens came second in 40 seats – 18 of which were in London . In all but one of these seats they were second to Labour.
It is no wonder that Labour Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan is leading opposition to a third runway at Heathrow. If environmentalists, Left-wingers and Londoners who already irritated by the window-shaking noise and pollution caused by jumbo jets all swing behind the Greens then his party is in grave trouble.
Ms Reeves’s pledge to reduce environmental requirements so developers can “stop worrying about bats and newts” is not music to the ears of people who balk at the idea of concrete being poured over their green and pleasant land.
The Conservatives under David Cameron understood the profound importance of nature to the British voter, telling the electorate in 2006 to “vote blue” to “go green”. The young leader promised “green growth” – a way of boosting the economy without desecrating the environment.
He went into the 2010 election with a promise to stop the third runway at Heathrow and “block plans for second runways at Stansted and Gatwick”.
Mr Cameron wanted to connect Heathrow to a high-speed rail network. The HS2 fiasco has dented Whitehall’s faith in the revolutionary power of rail and now Ms Reeves is backing airport expansion across Britain and has made Heathrow’s third runway a personal mission.
She believes sustainable aviation fuel is a “game-changer” but under current plans this will account for just 10% of jet fuel by 2030.
The Conservatives face a choice. Do they chase the environmental vote in pursuit of a Cameron-style rebirth? Or do they leave this space to the Greens and the Liberal Democrats and instead compete with Reform by intensifying their criticism of net zero policies?
They may try and have their cake and eat it by attacking giant green energy projects that would see fields covered in solar panels and sea views and hillsides altered with the construction of massive wind turbines. Their own rows over housing targets have left them in no doubt that nimbyism is one of the most potent forces in politics.
Kemi Badenoch must also present herself as a champion of farmers. The Conservatives need to win back rural seats which turned red in the summer election – and Labour’s decision to expand inheritance tax on farms has given them a golden opportunity.
Polling in December for the Country Land and Business Association found two out of three rural voters said Labour does not “understand or respect rural communities” – up from one in three before the election.
Meanwhile, ardent environmentalists who believe the “climate emergency” is an existential threat will be aghast at the Chancellor’s priorities.
Veteran ecological campaigner George Monbiot this week gave Ms Reeves a taste of what to expect, writing that “this Government is worse than the Tories”. He claimed that “after just six months in power they have become as terrifying in their cold fanaticism and intolerance of dissent” and asked: “Did you vote for this?”
That is the questions the Greens will be asking on the doorstep in every election. The Chancellor may be striving to shore up the confidence of the money markets but she risks torching the coalition that delivered Sir Keir Starmer his landslide.
