The Next Tory Leader Should Commit to Ditching Net-Zero

The Conservatives are either the party of net-zero or the party of low taxes. They can't be both.

(L–R) Kemi Badenoch, Penny Mordaunt, Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, and Tom Tugendhat at Here East studios in Stratford, east London, before the live television debate for the candidates for leadership of the Conservative Party, hosted by Channel 4, on July 15, 2022. Victoria Jones/PA

Commentary

“We’re all Keynesians now,” Richard Nixon reportedly said in 1971 before ushering in a decade of high inflation. In the twilight of his premiership, Boris Johnson’s chief political legacy to the Conservative Party is likely to be cakeism—the political philosophy that denies the existence of trade-offs and asserts that you can have it all. And nowhere does that apply more than his embrace of net-zero, which has been embraced by virtually all the Tory leadership candidates.