How will next UK prime minister tackle cost of living and environment crises?
The fourth Conservative prime minister in six years will take office next week, facing a set of inflationary economic and social crises not seen since the 1970s.
Energy bills set to top £3,500 a year for the average household are forecast to push two-thirds into fuel poverty by January, while food prices have leapt at the fastest rate for more than a decade, adding nearly £500 and rising to the average annual grocery bill. Key workers are striking or mulling stoppages, and services from health to the courts are on the brink of collapse. Meanwhile, sewage is pouring into our rivers and beaches, a grim metaphor for the state of the nation taking tangible form.
Voices on the right of the Tory party have been quick to seize on the overlapping crises to argue for the final burial of the “green agenda” identified with David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson, and the legally binding target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. David Frost, tipped for a senior role in a Liz Truss cabinet, has led a vigorous attack on net zero, blaming the policy for high energy prices, to applause from rightwing commentators. Get rid of the “green crap”, their argument runs, gas prices will fall, and ministers can concentrate on the really important stuff instead.
Yet to row back on net zero would be to abandon the best hope of dealing with the cost of living, longstanding advisers have warned. Far from being to blame for the energy bills crisis, net zero – which requires energy to be used more efficiently and generated from clean sources – is the way out of it, they argue.
John Gummer, a former Conservative environment minister and chair of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), said: “What we have to do for net zero is what
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