Like Brexit and Covid, rebel Tories are uniting to turn climate change policy into the next culture war – iNews

Something shifted this summer. Climate change went from a distant threat to a clear-and-present danger. Something which once seemed like it would affect our grandchildren was happening to us today.

Flash floods in Germany, Belgium and the UK saw the effects of climate change wash into our homes and local streets. The images of wildfires in Turkey and Greece showed a world on fire, a Dante-like portrayal of the warnings wed received for years come vividly to life.

Little has changedin the science. What were experiencing is a change in psychology. Something abstract has become concrete.

But thats not the only change. A new opposition to climate change action is also taking shape. Were starting to see the contours of a coming Tory rebellion against environmental policy.

Leaked WhatsApp messagesby Red Wall MPs this morning showed several influential figures railing against a green agenda. This will not go down well in Red Wall seats,AshfieldMP Lee Anderson said. Thurrock MP Jackie Doyle-Price replied: The reason we have won Red Wall seats is because Labour lost working class voters over decades as the party has become increasingly metropolitan. We wont keep those voters if they see us behaving in the same way.

Downing Street will ignore them for now. The UK is hosting the COP26 summit this autumn, allowing Boris Johnson to counter the sense that Brexit involves a retreat from the world stage. For the time being, it suits him to portray himself as an environmental crusader.

But committing countries to emissions reduction is the easy part. A viable climate strategy rests with implementation. Thats where things get difficult.

When environmental policy resulted in increased energy prices, David Cameron went from an opposition leader who liked being photographed with huskies to the Prime Minister who reportedly demanded we get rid of all that green crap. Its a recurring theme across the world. Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd lost his premiership due to a carbon tax. In France, increased fuel taxes triggered thegilet jaunesmovement, which threw Emmanuel Macrons government into crisis. In the Netherlands, reduced speed limits prompted a fierce political backlash. In Germany, fuel taxes and coal have become frenzied areas of debate.

In nearly all these cases, political fellow-travelers of the Tory Red Wall MPs on the nativist right have sought tocapitaliseon the discontent. Climate change policy has become a key area of opposition for the Dutch Party for Freedom, the Sweden Democrats and Alternative for Germany.

You can see the same process happening here. In his new slot on GB News this week, Nigel Farage branded theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Changereport climate alarmism andsaidhe questioned the obsession with carbon dioxide and its direct link to global warming.

This message fits easily into the fake binary opposition established by Brexit, of an out-of-touch metropolitan elite versus the authentic people of the country. The Tory MPs on WhatsApp yesterday were busy sharing private polling which showed that 47 per cent of petrol drivers supported the Conservatives, while around 70 per cent of electric car drivers backed Labour.

It also highlights a psychological tendencyon theConservative backbenches which seeks to deny long-term causal effects and present a simplified fairy story in place of complex real-world dynamics. We saw this during the Brexit debates, when prominent Leavers rubbished the idea that customs borders involved bureaucracy and delays, only to now see them brought disastrously to life in UK exports to Europe and trade between Britain and Northern Ireland.

We then saw it during the Covid emergency, when many of the same figures railed against lockdowns, only to then watch cases spiral out of control due to the ensuing delay to government action.

Were now in danger of the precise same thing happening again. The European Research Group of Tory MPs acted as a vanguard of Brexit missionary zeal during the break from Europe. The Covid Recovery Group did the same against the second lockdown. Now a new group is beingformed presumably entitled something suitably Orwellian like the Environmental Research Group to challenge the goal of net-zero carbon emissions.

From the early signs, it will follow the same contours as before. Firstly, a rejection of the empirical reality of complex phenomena infavourof simplistic and emotive sloganeering. And secondly, a concerted effort to split the issue into artificial divides between the metropolitan elite and real people. It will attempt to introduce the culture war into the climate change debate.

That would be a disaster of existential proportions. Climate change is real and we are now seeing its effects. Those consequences will fall on all of us equally, whether were from the north or the south, from a city or a town.Their myths and obfuscations must be tackled now before theyre able to take root.

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Like Brexit and Covid, rebel Tories are uniting to turn climate change policy into the next culture war - iNews