UK climate chief could quit if Tory race heats up

Britain’s climate secretary has hinted he could resign as some Conservative leadership contenders question the government’s net-zero target ahead of a hard-hitting TV debate on Sunday and MPs’ final voting sessions this week.

COP26 President Alok Sharma’s intervention came as a poll of Tory grassroots members who will have the final say on the two finalists gave outsider Kemi Badenoch a surprise double-digit lead.

According to the unscientific poll by website ConservativeHome, Secretary of State Liz Truss came second, just ahead of former grassroots favorite Penny Mordaunt and ex-Treasury Secretary Rishi Sunak.

Badenoch, a former junior minister with no cabinet experience, is running on a right-wing “anti-woke” platform and has said net zero amounts to “unilateral economic disarmament” by Britain.

‘Green levies’, backed by Sunak to support the statutory target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, have also been questioned by Truss and Mordaunt as Britons grapple with a cost of living crisis have fight

But as Britain faces record-breaking temperatures this week, Sharma told the Observer newspaper on Sunday that the target is “absolutely a matter of leadership” as candidates wage a bitter battle to succeed scandal-ridden Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

“Anyone who aspires to lead our country must show that they take this issue incredibly seriously, that they are willing to continue to lead and take on the mantle that Boris Johnson began,” the minister said.

Asked if he could resign if the candidates showed weakness at zero zero, Sharma said: “Let’s see, shall we? I think we need to see where the candidates are. And we have to see who actually ends up at number 10 (Downing Street). .”

Under Sharma’s presidency, nearly 200 countries pledged at a UN summit in Glasgow last November to speed up the fight against soaring temperatures after two weeks of marathon negotiations.

But India and China toned down the language of the final text to retain the highly polluting coal, forcing Sharma to tears and a desperate apology as he lowered the gavel.

Asked about Sharma’s threat, Truss supporter and former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith told Sky News: “I’m sorry he feels that.”

Truss still supports net-zero, but “we just have to put that on hold while we make sure people don’t suffer from rising inflation,” he said.

Asked if she still stands for net zero as well, Mordaunt said on BBC television: “Yes, but it mustn’t beat people up.”

But activists are noting that green taxes represent only a small fraction of the UK’s total energy bills, which have skyrocketed due to the Russian war in Ukraine.

And they say the current heatwave sweeping Europe is a reminder that climate change is an existential threat.

The debate has raised Conservative tensions over the direction of economic and environmental policies under Johnson’s successor when the winner is announced on September 5.

International Environment Secretary Zac Goldsmith tweeted that with wildfires in Europe and broken temperature records, “it’s important to reflect that politicians are still being elected who think protecting our planet isn’t cost-effective.”

In the first TV debate of the Conservatives on Friday, climate change hardly played a role. But Sharma will have the opportunity to grill them when he chairs a husting organized by Tory Environmentalist MPs on Monday.

After that, all of the party’s MPs will hold another round of voting to eliminate the last-place candidate – likely backbencher Tom Tugendhat – before moving on to the final two in the coming days.

They will reflect on the outcome of the second TV debate, which will air on the ITV network from 19:00 (1800 GMT) on Sunday, after Mordaunt was attacked in concert by Badenoch and Truss in the first.

Mordaunt, who was Britain’s first woman defense secretary briefly before being sacked by Johnson, has fought back claims that she is now lying about her position on transgender women’s rights – a hot topic for the Tory right.

“There’s a lot of slander in the newspapers,” she told the BBC.