Key events
Grant Shapps tells Tories net zero essential for global security
Good morning. Since the Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection, which saw the Tories hold the seat unexpectedly following a voter backlash against the extension of Ulez (the ultra low emissions zone), which will impose extra costs on some drivers, the Conservative party has been toning down its support for green measures considerably. Rishi Sunak even resorted to posing for a photograph in Margaret Thatcher’s old Rover, and promising to “max out” the UK’s oil and gas reserves.
But this morning there has been a bit of pushback from Grant Shapps, the energy secretary. In remarks that may be aimed as much at his party as the wider world, Shapps says there will be no global security without net zero.
Shapps made the comment in an interview with Politico in which he said that the UK will be hosting a global summit on energy security in spring 2024. Shapps said it would discuss the the need to “diversify from fossil fuels” and he declared:
We can’t have global security without net zero … There’s no global security if millions of people are having to uproot because of weather patterns.
The UK, and other countries, would be more secure with alternative sources of energy, he said. “Greater diversity could actually give us much greater security,” he said.
All of this sounds quite obvious. But in the Conservative party, and particularly in the Tory press (the Sunday Telegraph is calling for a referendum on net zero), these are not truths universally acknowledged, as a better writer would have put it.
In his interview Shapps also implied China might be invited to the conference. He said the details had not been finalised, but he declared he wanted it to be “inclusive in nature”. If China is invited, that may go down badly with some in his party too.
We are into the middle of August – normally death valley for Westminster political news – but, in so far as there are stories around, some of them relate to net zero. The TUC has published a report on the potential benefits of having a publicly owned energy company, and George Eustice, the former environment secretary, has given an interview about his call for the government to change its plan to ban the installation of new oil boilers in off-grid homes from 2026. For the third day in a row, Lee Anderson’s call for migrants to “fuck of back to France” is still being talked about. In Northern Ireland Simon Byrne, the chief constable, faces questions from the board overseeing the Police Service of Northern Ireland about the massive data leak. And Labour has accused the government of “catastrophic financial mismanagement”, claiming it has “lost” £251bn from the value of assets created to rescue the banking sector after the 2008 financial crash. Phillip Inman has the story here.
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