LONDON — Kemi Badenoch’s new-look Conservative opposition is still working out the policies it wants to put before voters. But the U.K.’s net zero target is already firmly in the party’s firing line.
The Tories, while in government, passed legislation to reduce net carbon emissions to zero by 2050. Now Badenoch and her shadow team say the target damages the country — and they want to ditch it.
Setting that aim in 2019 was a “mistake,” argued interim Shadow Energy Secretary Andrew Bowie.
“What’s quite clear is that the setting of arbitrary targets with no clear plan on how to deliver them does not work for the country,” he told POLITICO in an interview, his first since stepping into the role while his colleague Claire Coutinho takes maternity leave.
