Can the Tories' Junking of Net Zero Be Trusted?

The wet-green wing of the party that brought us the fracking ban and windfall tax is still at large

According to the Sunday Telegraph, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch is this week going to pledge “to abolish all green restrictions on [the] fossil fuel industry”. It is, says the paper, the “Tory leader’s ‘drill, baby, drill’ moment”. And it is another welcome step away from the cross-party consensus on climate change and energy that has dominated Westminster since the 1990s. But is this policy U-turn enough of a transition to both counter and explain Britain’s catastrophic plunge into the green abyss? Will the party accept it, and what will the Green Blob do in response?

Aside the more-joy-in-heaven stuff, this welcome development needs careful reading as it currently stands. It is one thing to say "drill, baby, drill”, it is quite another to actually drill. The Telegraph’s emphasis is on the “environmental restrictions on fossil fuel extraction” insofar as they are the remit of the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA). Says the Telegraph: “The party would delete the entirety of its current 12-page mandate and replace it with a single instruction to 'maximise the extraction of our oil and gas'.” The agency will also be renamed to the North Sea Authority – the “transition” now being itself 'transitioned'.