By Liam Kavanagh and Rupert Read
The lying, semi-corrupt and woefully-adrift Conservative leadership having been ushered out of office this summer just gone, new blood will soon flow into the Conservative leadership, perhaps into the Party at large. If this blood is to bring new vitality, and health, it will need to run green: young voters overwhelmingly want eco-seriousness [https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/climate-change-could-have-significant-impact-on-voter-behaviour], as they stand otherwise to reap the whirlwind. Conservatives could actually take a lead on the environment – especially if Labour is complacent, and doesn’t reverse the backtracking on its climate pledges which has serially occurred over the last several months [https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/08/labour-cuts-28bn-green-investment-pledge-by-half]. Conservatives could do this most especially, as we will explain, by proposing a national adaptation plan.
It would be in everybody’s favour, to everyone’s benefit, if the following fact were understood immediately by both parties: Two parties– in fact, most or all parties– competing to respond to genuine climate reality are what we really need. And we need it very badly. Regrettably the post-Sunak Conservatives will likely still have the chance to be the first such party. Labour is, as of this writing, mostly still doing the usual – putting on a brave face and trying to look busy while a perilous situation deteriorates further.
‘But surely this a pipedream; aren’t the Conservatives moving further and further away from green?’
It is worth noting that there have been a few moments over the past 16 years when the Conservatives have moved clearly towards green, most notably perhaps:
>Cameron sought to detoxify the Conservative brand prior to the 2010 election by going green, with the help of Jules Peck and Zac Goldsmith. As well as ‘hugging a hoodie’ there was Cameron ‘hugging a husky’…
>Theresa May sought to establish a legacy in the twilight of her administration by setting the world’s first ever net zero target.
>She was assisted in this legacy-building by the relatively strong record of Michael Gove as DEFRA Secretary during her administration, including not least his meeting with Extinction Rebellion and next day allowing Parliament to pass a motion declaring a Climate and Environment emergency, unopposed.
These moments have, however, sometimes had the feel of being temporary expedients. And they have been outweighed by the sadly still-hegemonic general drive towards economic growthism at any cost, especially lately under Truss and Sunak, and by a growing willingness to seek to culture-war-ify the environment for the sake of an allegedly vote-winning appeal among wedges of the populace. We say ‘allegedly”, for there is virtually no evidence, outside of the isolated instance of the Uxbridge by-election (and even there, a seat that Labour have never won, not even in 1997, there was a huge swing from Con to Lab – and by the way it did finally go Lab in the general election just concluded), that this wedge appeal works, and there is good counter-evidence that the Conservatives stand to – and do – lose more votes than they gain by running against the tide of history on nature and climate.
Moreover, the crucial point to understand about the current situation – and this is a big motivation for our having written the current piece – is that in this election, the Conservatives have for the first time been very seriously threatened (at a general election) from the Right, by Farage’s ‘Reform’ Party, and this makes it impossible for the Conservatives any longer to win votes even from a climate-delaying section of the public by having the clearest anti-climate policies: because they will always be outflanked by Reform on this front. [https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/14/reform-split-right-leaning-vote-tories-uk-election ] This means that for the first time in a long time, there is a very real motivation for the Conservatives to return for good to their historic mission: to conserve. By doing so, they can start once again to appeal to something other than a shard of hard-Right opinion, and signal their seriousness at becoming a Party of Government again. What’s more, they can step up to destiny, in the kind of way that their and this country’s greatest hero did, in 1940. They can find a one-nation spirit again, as well as the internationalist consciousness that animated not just Churchill but Thatcher, as exhibited in her pathfinding oratory on rising up to meet the climate threat in the latter part of the 80s. [https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107346 ]
We suggest two key moves which will manifest precisely such spirit and such pathfinding. These moves will appeal to Conservatives and actually allow them to grab the initiative on environmental responsibility: an adaptation plan and advocacy for UK leadership of new ecological diplomacy. They are eye-catching and bold, as befits a party out of power. We would equally encourage Labour to adopt these measures (see our companion-piece to this one, on Labour and climate), but stiff competition may be the best way to induce Starmer’s timid government to move.
Labour has governing to do and should be making moves on climate and nature now that will help it maintain an electoral majority for decades, as we recently recommended. But it has gone backwards in the last two years, just as the Conservatives have, albeit not as far. Tory environmental leadership may sound unrealistic to some readers, but anybody who pays enough attention to climate news should know that those who choose to lead on adaptation now are likely to be soon proved to be prescient and strong leaders by events on the ground. Entering Opposition, perhaps (if they don’t retrench to sensible and green-leaning centre ground, as they did under Cameron) for a long time, the Tories really do have a chance now to seize the initiative on this front.
A National Adaptation Plan:
Adaptation is, unfortunately, a pretty fresh issue, and matches Conservative voters’ priorities on realism, local and community focus, international leadership, and protecting the UK. Tragically, humanity has clearly now missed staying within the 1.5 C over-heating maximum goal [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68110310 ] and the UK is slated to feel some severe consequences, according to recent science. Adaptation is about doing what we can to protect our way of life with national adjustments to a changing climate — and the food shortages and economic instability that go along with it.
The UK can lead internationally by preparing domestically. There is literally nothing that Britain can do to speed worldwide emissions reductions better than to provide news-watchers worldwide the sobering site of Britons starting to batten down their home-hatches in unison, in anticipation of the chaotic coming climate future. That prudent course of action would more strongly signal to the world as a whole that it must get serious about stopping climate decline than every speech given at climate meetings in the last 20 years.
Adaptation presents Conservatives with a chance to channel Churchill (and we’ll return to develop this key comparison further), whose starkly truthful takes on affairs are at this time sorely needed. By taking up that role, a pioneering Tory may not choose for themselves the most obvious route to election in the short term, but may well set themselves on path to the leadership of the party and more when next it comes to or towards power.
Adaptation would also provide Tories a chance to run against the elitism of those who are still ‘protecting’ the public from bad news about their children’s future. Sadly the political class that conservatives like to call “the liberal establishment” has made a decision that the public cannot handle the truth on climate and continues to spout on rubbish about everything basically being ok, assuming or at least asserting that we are staying in the safe zone (i.e. below the 1.5 degrees guardrail) in order to protect people’s feelings. Polls show [Public concern about climate change and pollution doubles to a near-record level | Ipsos] that voters would prefer their childrens’ future were protected, and adaptation planning which faces and prepares for the future is a way to bring this priority into focus. Britons must be reminded of their ability to face adversity — polls already show that we expect it. [‘I realise how serious it is’: voters in England support action on climate crisis | Climate crisis | The Guardian]
Adaptation – resilience-building, collective preparedness – appeals straightforwardly and viscerally to many, including crucially to those neglected thus far by the climate movement / progressive activists: it appeals, that is, to working class people and the underprivileged and marginalised generally, to the disengaged: it appeals to those battling with bills, with cold / uninsulated / damp / at-risk homes; it appeals to many conservatives, and civic pragmatists, and to ‘elites’ who are waking up to how bad things are.
If you want to fuel greenhouse gas reduction, aka ‘mitigation’, moreover then there is now no better way to do it than by way of resourcing adaptation. For when the crisis feels real and pressing, then people will be more prepared to act on all aspects of it— including to stop it getting worse, at source.
So adaptation, framed right, as transformative and strategic, is not at all shying away from— nor an ersatz replacement for— mitigation: it is quite simply the best route to it. This, crucially, is how to differentiate the agenda being offered here from the stupid alternative being offered by the likes of Richard Tice of Reform: he says that one should engage merely in narrow, defensive, incremental, shallow adaptation [https://x.com/bbcquestiontime/status/1781094379207143647]. Such as just endlessly building higher hard flood defences. But such shallow adaptation only enfeebles one’s critical systems even further. It is like building the sides of a bath ever higher, instead of turning off the taps or pulling the plug out. What is badly needed is adaptation that is synergistic with mitigation. And then it can serve this purpose that we have just adumbrated: being the best wake-up call possible.
By thoroughly supporting adaptation, you provide the best support and leverage possible, simultaneously, to mitigation.
Ecological diplomacy – Become the voice of ambitious Realism about International Solutions
To become leaders on emissions reduction (as well as adaptation) Tories do not need to ask voters to pay huge taxes to reduce emission to zero with no guarantee of any impact on their future. The average voter is in favour of devoting a significant percentage of GDP to reducing climate-deadly emissions, but only if other countries do the same. Tories can give voters what they want.
Tories should declare the COP process a failure [There should be no more Cop climate summits. We need an alternative that could actually work – Rupert Read] and push for new and more serious processes. Processes that could actually work, by way for instance of proceeding via coalitions of the willing, aka ‘climate clubs’, rather than proceeding only at the pace of the most recalcitrant snail-nation. International treaties must send delegates to negotiate with binding power, so that all countries leave any negotiation table committed; and for treaties that themselves bind.
This is what happens in the trade treaties, for example such as established the WTO and GATT or which establish intellectual property rights. If such seriousness were adopted around climate and others were commitments to reductions across the world, voters will be willing to suffer the pain of reducing climate-deadly emissions. Though adaptation is needed in any case, Britain’s safety ultimately requires an international treaty at speed. Without diplomacy, which looks for the common interest beyond free-riding, ecological diplomacy as it is known, humanity will fail. But without recognition of the practical impossibility of achieving meaningful, sufficient agreements for the common interest among all nations at once, no real progress can be made. This point of course one eminently suited to conservative political philosophy, which is pragmatic to a fault.
Rhetoric about meeting the commitments of the 2015’s ‘breakthrough’ Paris treaty has become stale and non-credible after 9 years. Each country knows that every other country suffers no consequences for failing to meet its commitments. We all know that, in that situation, no country will have faith in others, and therefore no country will do it.
Again the toughness to tell the stark truth is needed, and those who were invested in Paris’ rhetoric and fanfare are unlikely to be the first to admit its failure. It falls to others to lead. The Paris agreement essentially built a climate Maginot line that provided a false sense of safety but has easily been breached. The UK has enough of a voice to be heard, and the independence of national mind to say so. Whatever you think of Brexit, it does show that Britain is willing to go its own direction, which could even yet be a greener direction. That independence of mind is what is needed to change humanity’s future.
Economic Growth is so twentieth century as a rallying cry – Control Inflation through Adaptation
A key moment of the whole Brexit debate was when Nigel Farage was confronted with a journalist who pressed him on the point that economists were predicting lower economic growth if we left the EU. Farage paused a moment before replaying that if that was the price for taking back control, it was a price worth paying. At that moment, a lot of the wind went out of the sails of growthism as an ideology. For good.
There are things that matter more than growth. This should in fact be obvious to all genuinely conservative-minded people. (We’ll come back to this point below.)
There are also things that are more credible, now, than (fairytales of) endless growth:
An objection to the adaptation plan will no doubt be that it doesn’t sound growth-orientated enough. However, though higher incomes would be welcome, after 14 years of a de facto near steady-state in the UK economy for all but the very rich, most voters take growth-promises less and less seriously. Adaptation that prioritises food security can control food and energy prices, which are a real economic concern.
In other words, to deal with the cost of living crisis, and satisfy citizens and voters, don’t follow Labour into (eco-destructive) fantasies of turbo-charging growth; rather, get serious at last about insulation and retrofitting, about helping people grow more of their own food, about changing land use to prevent so much flooding, and much much more. This is how we conserve what we’ve got.
Governments have been promising greater growth while delivering stagnant living standards for two generations. Pro-growth soundbites have grown tired as Liz Truss found whilst being outlasted by a lettuce. No Tory will make growth talk sexy again except by actually delivering growth rates like the twentieth century — but no politician can credibly promise this.
Meanwhile, voters are getting concerned as what they have are in many cases economic concerns, especially about price rises, are high and faith in global stability is low. Unfortunately this concern about stability is unlikely to abate. To the contrary, in fact. Politicians must adapt to an increasingly uncertain landscape. Being prepared for threats and building down people’s exposure to them will become more and more popular as threats appear and…grow on the news. Conservative understand the need to address fears, and changing weather is a deeply reasonable source of fear.
Further, what progressives call capitalist, conservatives might call consumerist. Feelings that our way of life is too hectic and suffers from misplaced priorities run high. Conservative politicians should prepare for an uncertain future in which the global economy may well badly falter by asking how they can help quality of life increase while weathering economic chaos. The answers the future needs may be more about smaller businesses and smaller government, stronger community, and security and stability. This again is an adaptation agenda – and can be a Conservative agenda.
Environmental Responsibility Really Can be a Conservative Issue, Again
Conservatives cannot undo the irresponsible record of recent governments, but they can move past it. Let’s remember that Labour’s constitution included a commitment to common ownership of industry (i.e. socialism) until 1995 [https://politicsteaching.com/2023/10/02/what-was-clause-iv-and-what-did-new-labour-do-to-it-2/ ]. Blair’s New Labour managed to leave behind this record and embraced the limited government ideals of the Right, but combining these with a sense of social justice. Tories can equally well embrace the climate concern that has recently been seen, strangely, as a preserve of the Left but approach it from their own moral and philosophical standpoint, which would include an emphasis on pragmatism and localism and a somewhat more minimalist approach to government. Conservative voters often share deep concerns about nature, about preserving what we have, about heritage and family. All of these are now under threat; all of them can be…conserved.
But only if the kind of agenda we have outlined here is taken seriously.
The modern obsession with ‘progress’ has been a key part of the problem, so far as the degradation of nature and our climate has been concerned. That is, it is precisely the tendency of… ‘progressives’ to assume that we can change and remake the way the world is as much as we like and not suffer the consequences that lies at the root of the terrible environmental predicament gripping our world. True conservative philosophy, taking the responsibility of stewardship both seriously and humbly, could be a key part of the way out of this dire mess. ‘Do not fix what is not broken’ is a dictum that could have been applied to our relationship to the Earth. It is literally a conservative dictum. It is not too late for it, even now.
Conclusion: How the Conservatives can regain leadership on nature and climate
Taking a step back now, to think once more about why this question of the Conservative stance on climate and nature matters to everyone, and not just to Conservatives…
Most NGOs (non-governmental organisation) are focussed firmly on seeking to influence Labour, the new Government. That is understandable, but to some significant extent mistaken, as a strategy. Because it isn’t a strategy. Strategic vision necessitates looking longer ahead.
It is possible that the Conservative Party will be destroyed by recent events and the rise of Reform. But taking the long view, it is unlikely. It is much more likely that at some point it will be back. The imperative, looking toward that time, is to reverse the culture-war-isation of climate, transport, pollution, etc. This will be very hard, but it is not impossible. The key reason why is, ironically, the rise of Reform itself.
For the first time, as we indicated earlier in this piece, the Conservatives are now genuinely afraid of an enemy to their Right. So far, under Sunak, this has led to them running further to the Right themselves. But that is not a viable strategy, as this election result has shown. You cannot out-compete Reform at venal and vicious populism. They will always be prepared to be even bigger liars than Sunak or whoever succeeds him is, about climate and much more. The only way forward is for the Conservatives finally to realise that only by pivoting back to where the #ClimateMajority sits do they have any chance of re-establishing their fortunes.
In the Climate Majority Project, our strategy is to build a change of political culture, centring depolarisation while truth-telling, such that in the 2030s the parties are falling over themselves to outcompete each other – and competing with the Green Party – on nature and climate. That is an epochal change. It will not come easy, if at all; it will come only on the back of the great pain that we are all going to be waking up into as the climate and biodiversity situations continue to deteriorate, for a good while yet, even in the best case scenario. An adaptation plan, and moving to embrace ecological diplomacy, and dropping obsessive economic-growthism, would constitute getting real about climate decline — and would themselves powerfully act to start to counter that pain.
We’ll close therefore by addressing two constituencies absolutely directly:
>>Environmentalists and those serious about leveraging green action through the political process: it is a mark of your seriousness that you are ready to hug a Tory. Think beyond the (weak) prospects of a Starmer-led Government actually leading on climate and nature; understand that such leadership will only occur if it is driven by wide culture-shift and citizens who care, and by competition with other Parties, especially of course the Conservatives. To move the whole agenda in the way that is required if we are to have a future, to shift the Overton window dramatically, there is no way forward except by way of shifting the Conservative Party. Labour have been dragged away from what were at one time quite strong climate-commitments by Sunak-led attacks. That must never happen again. The only way around the polarisation that Just Stop Oil and the hard Right have weaponised on climate and energy is via engineering a more or less civil debate between the main parties in this country on who has the best credentials to address the greatest, ever-growing, threat that we face.
>>Conservatives: To say the most critical point of all plain, one more time: You simply cannot out-compete Reform on climate. You can however detoxify more deeply than Cameron ever did; and start to win over the occasional young voter at last; and regain respect from the electorate (and abroad); and signal seriousness about appealing to the centre-ground (for there already is a climate-and-nature majority)… if and only if you seek to regain leadership in this area. You can then win again. You can become climate-Churchills. You can go down in history.
The struggle for the soul of the Conservative Party, post-defeat, is already well underway. For the first time in a long time, there is a real chance that in that struggle the likes of the Conservative Environment Network will for the first time in a long time not be on the defensive. We hope that our reasoning is persuasive on the absolutely pivotal point: let Reform race to the bottom on climate and dally with conspiracy theories denying air pollution and alleging that anything eco is a plot by authoritarians. Rediscover your soul and the rest is history. The world really does await its climate Churchill.
Imagine how this could look: imagine Britain adopting a transformative adaptation strategy. Imagine the spiral of seriousness and enthusiasm that this would bring about: imagine more and more people recognising and mucking in with their common vulnerability and their common task, with its rich echoes of World War II, the great time — still in living memory — of legend and of common national commitment in our nation’s story. Imagine now how this turn of events would ripple around the world: imagine other countries actually looking at Britain as a leader again …imagine how this will move them, too.
You are imagining the world becoming safer, even in the teeth of immense climate-driven challenges. And you are imagining something that Conservatives could lead on. This would couple beautifully with the turn towards ecological diplomacy outlined earlier in this piece – and place us on a path towards a future, at last.
A shortened version of this blog was published by Green House Think Tank on September 21, 2024
