A former Tory minister has accused Rishi Sunak of “siding with climate deniers” and said he’d be voting Labour.
Chris Skidmore revealed he’d back Keir Starmer’s party on July 4 in a savage blow to the PM. He also accused his former boss of pushing “deliberate misinformation” and “extremist rhetoric”.
Mr Sunak’s green credentials have been in question for months, with his decision to roll back on Net Zero pledges last September. Mr Skidmore, the former climate change tsar, quit in January in protest over new oil and gas licences.
The former minister, who led the Government’s Net Zero review last year, wrote in The Guardian: “Sunak’s decision instead to side with climate deniers and to deliberately politicise the energy transition is perhaps the greatest tragedy of his premiership.
“It has cost us not just environmentally but also economically. It is a decision that will also cost votes, including those in my own constituency. For the first time, I cannot vote for a party that has boasted of new oil and gas licences in its manifesto or that now argues that net zero is a burden and not a benefit.”
He went on: “Instead, like many others who know that we have neither choice nor any more time, and need to tackle the climate crisis now, I have decided that the Labour Party is best placed to achieve economic growth and the green industrial revolution.
“Net zero is one of its five key priorities, and for this reason I will be voting Labour at this election.” He said that Mr Sunak’s move to roll back net zero commitments “risks losing Britain the greatest economic opportunity in a generation”.
“Worse still has been an extremist rhetoric that frames net zero policies as an imposition,” he said. Previous Tory governments “understood” the energy transition was “inevitable and needed to be carefully managed and incentivised”, he wrote.