Rishi Sunak has succumbed to the pressures of the election cycle – and embraced ‘anti-science’

One of the most depressing aspects of the prime minister’s volte-face on net zero is the way it has also trashed what once seemed to be his most politically appealing features.

Rishi Sunak, and it is meant kindly, came to power after the ever-increasing chaos of the Johnson-Truss era as what might be described as the “Honest Nerd”. It’s hardly what he might choose for his election poster, but he did give off an aura of being rational, conscientious, evidence-driven and generally moderate in his approach.

Obviously, anyone was going to look good when set against his immediate predecessors, but still Mr Sunak seemed to have something to be said for him. With Jeremy Hunt as chancellor, he stabilised the public finances and the wider economy. He maintained the policy of aiding Ukraine and offering solid defiance to Vladimir Putin. In the year or so since he became prime minister, he first stopped insulting our nearest neighbours in the European Union and went on to achieve new agreements on cross-channel migration, on Northern Ireland and the Horizon research programme.

His government, albeit marred by unforced errors, sleaze and some poor choices of personnel, has at least been orderly.

Yet now… Mr Sunak has succumbed to the pressures of the election cycle, and embraced a kind of anti-science. It’s an unwelcome transformation. Most of his announcements were concerned with reversing policies that either didn’t exist – like the phantasmagoric seven recycling bins – or which have been twisted and distorted out of all recognition, often as not by all-out climate deniers.

The most egregious out of these green myths is that there will be a “ban” on petrol and diesel cars imposed in 2030. That is a lie. There will be no such ban. Second-hand vehicles with internal combustion engines will continue to be owned, driven, filled with freely available fuel, bought, sold, customised and driven to the coast for a day out indefinitely.

The only thing that will change, admittedly a significant moment, is that sales of new vehicles driven purely by petrol and diesel will come to an end. No one, in other words, was ever going to be forced to drive an electric car or spend upwards of £25,000 purchasing a new one. Only the two out of 10 people buying a car who opt for new will ever face any EV premium, and the expectation is that the price differentials on EVs will dwindle to nothing by 2030.

Analogous myths and legends about gas and oil-fuelled boilers have also been spread, and the significant grants available to help householders make the transition to green heat pumps ignored (though to be fair, Mr Sunak has increased the value of the grant).

Rather than counter such propaganda, Mr Sunak has made a surprising and rather disappointing choice. He has chosen to embrace the mythology, build on it with new nonsense such as the “bacon tax” and weaponise it into a political “dividing line”, solely to wrong-foot Labour. In the process, however, he looks a less straightforward figure than he did.

Even on his own terms there was no need for Mr Sunak to break the cross-party consensus, because Labour couldn’t make much capital on a policy area where there was broad agreement, and the Tories weren’t therefore going to lose any votes on it. Instead, in some desperation, Mr Sunak has made a clumsy grab for advantage. Sadly for him, as many potential supporters may be repelled by his shift as attracted by it. Such is the lack of trust in his party that many won’t take him at his word; and the wilder climate sceptics won’t be appeased by anything he says.

Given that they may be the government in a year or so, there is more than usual interest in the Labour response. Thus far, Sir Keir Starmer and his team are holding the environmental line, and they should be given credit for doing the right thing. The Labour leader has often been criticised for flip-flopping, but in this case he appears to be putting principle – and planet – first. Still, he and his colleagues have a harder job to do now that the government has allied itself with the anti-green propagandists that dominate so much of the mainstream and social media. Labour cannot win on this issue simply by an appeal to environmental conscience – though that will be persuasive with some.

For families caught up in a cost of living crisis there also needs to be a compelling, fact-based, evidentially unequivocal case for how a switch to a greener life will mean that their home will be cheaper to heat, their car cheaper to run and their cost of living will actually fall thanks to plentiful and cheap green energy and accessible, effective electric cars and heat pumps – and how change is going to happen slowly and gradually in any case.

The scaremongering and lies about Ulez in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election showed both how easy it is to misrepresent and discredit green initiatives – and how political advantage can be gained. The challenge is to dispel the fear of huge bills and charges, by dispelling lies and supporting those families who would find it harder to make ends meet. Mr Sunak has chosen to duck that challenge; others who aspire to lead must not.