Angry Tories tear chunks out of each other over fortunes in eco plan civil war
Zac Goldsmith has insisted he will not quit the Tories as he vows to fight to make it a party of “common sense and decency” again.
Angry Conservatives are tearing chunks out of each other as Rishi Sunak’s bonfire of climate policies leads to civil war.
Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch this morning took aim at former minister Lord Goldsmith after he argued the country needs a general election. The Tory peer, who quit as a climate minister in June, demanded: "We need an election. Now."
Lord Goldsmith said it was “cynical beyond belief” for the PM to claim he was stopping measures including a meat tax, which was never being seriously considered. “The PM is pretending to halt frightening proposals that simply do not exist,” he warned. “[Mr] Sunak is chucking the environment into a political fire purely to score points. It is reprehensible.”
But Ms Badenoch hit back with a jibe at her fellow Tory’s vast wealth. "There are lots of Conservative MPs who are speaking very positively about this," she told LBC. "Zac Goldsmith is somebody who cares very much about the environment, he is a friend of mine, but the fact is he has way more money than pretty much everyone in the UK.”
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Lord Goldsmith said he would remain as a Tory in the hope of changing its approach to the environment. He told the Mirror: “The party is a movement and belongs to all of its members. All this means is that I and other members who care about the environment have a lot more work to do to retrieve the party. It has always seemed obvious to me that you cannot be a Conservative without also caring deeply about leaving the planet in the best possible condition for future generations.
“That principle has been abandoned by the current leadership but I don’t believe the electorate will be applauding. One way or another the Party will therefore return to common sense and decency.”
The PM today insisted “very credible" people raised the possibility of taxes on meat, compulsory car sharing, and other restrictive climate measures. Asked on BBC Radio 4 if he was pretending to halt a series of frightening climate proposals, Mr Sunak said: "I reject that entirely. These are all things that have been raised by very credible people about ways to meet our net zero obligations, alongside the very substantive changes that we have announced when it comes to the transition on electric vehicles and how we heat our homes and whether people should be forced, we believe they should not be, to improve the energy efficiency in their homes."
He cited the Committee on Climate Change as the source of the policies, telling the BBC: "If you look at their report it talks about an accelerated shift away from dairy and meat. It said that diets will need to shift away. It also says we have to implement measures to bring that about." On compulsory car sharing, Mr Sunak added: "What it then says euphemistically is one would need to consider demand-side measures to bring that about, which are otherwise known as compulsion or taxes."
Lord Goldsmith is thought to be worth around £300million. His late father Sir James Goldsmith left £1.2billion to his family in 1997.
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