Farage’s new drive for vote to kill off Boris’s ‘ruinous’green agenda
He got us out of the EU. Now the former UKIP chief demands a referendum on Net Zero
NIGEL FARAGE is launching a political movement to campaign for a referendum on Boris Johnson’s controversial Net Zero policy to decarbonise the economy by 2050. The former Brexit Party leader uses an article in today’s Mail on Sunday to announce that Britain Means Business – modelled on his successful campaign for a Brexit referendum – will call for the abandonment of the flagship green policy, which experts claim could cost £1.3trillion.
Mr Farage’s intervention comes amid growing disquiet within the Cabinet over the burden the plan will put on an economy already creaking under the strain of the £400billion Covid crisis and a surge in energy costs exacerbated by the disruption to gas supplies caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In his article, Mr Farage says ‘the political class in Westminster’ has taken the country down a ‘ruinous path’ by committing to the Net Zero target without any public debate being held.
Mr Farage, who has established Britain Means Business with Richard Tice, his co-founder at Leave Means Leave and the Brexit Party, describes the ‘Net Zero delusion’ as ‘a scandal of epic proportions’ which must be challenged.
The former Ukip leader calls for a ‘plebiscite on this act of appalling self-harm’, adding: ‘If we are not careful, the only zero will be the amount in people’s bank accounts as we send our jobs and money overseas.’
He writes: ‘Without any debate, our energy bills have been loaded with green subsidies. Our businesses have been disadvantaged, yet our leaders seem happy to outsource industrial production just as long as they can say it reduces Britain’s CO2 emissions… We will campaign for the five per cent VAT on energy bills to be removed. Green subsidies are shovelled straight into the bank accounts of rich landowners, wealthy investors and foreign-owned conglomerates who own much of the renewable energy sector.’
Mr Farage’s call for a referendum on Net Zero will be seen as an attempt to replicate the success of his campaign for a Brexit referendum, leading to the seismic consequences of the 2016 vote.
His views have found an echo in the Cabinet, with Chancellor Rishi
expressing his concerns to the Prime Minister about the cost of Net Zero.
The independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has calculated the cost of making buildings carbon neutral at £400 billion, while the bill for vehicles would be £330billion, in addition to £500billion to clean up power generation and a further £46 billion for industry.
After energy savings across the economy, this would leave a £400 billion bill for the Treasury.
The OBR also warned that the Government would need to impose carbon taxes to make up for the loss of fuel duty and other levies.
Last week, peers argued that the younger generation should pay for the Government’s Net Zero pledge because they will be the ones living in a carbon-neutral world rather than current billpayers. The peers on the House of Lords Industry and Regulators Committee said the cost should be met from Government borrowing rather than levies on energy
bills – something that Mr Sunak strongly opposes.
The committee said there had been a ‘failure to put in place credible plans’ to encourage firms to invest money in renewable energy and carbon-busting technology, and called for a new Government team to manage the project that would report directly to the Prime Minister.
Ministers have so far rejected calls from Conservative MPs to scrap Government levies on energy bills – which make up some 17 per cent of a household’s total expenditure – despite surging domestic gas and electricity costs.
Mr Farage’s intervention coinSunak cides with an increasingly heated debate within the Cabinet over how to tackle the cost-of-living crisis, with household energy bills set to rise by up to 50 per cent next month.
After Tory Party managers warned the Prime Minister that voters were likely to punish the Government for the increases at the local elections being held in May, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng was tasked with brainstorming ways to reduce the cost of bills. But suggestions that the burden of the green levies could be shifted from household bills to the Treasury were opposed by Mr Sunak.
The Chancellor is concerned that pumping more money into
‘Our energy bills have been loaded with green subsidies’
subsidising household bills could push the soaring inflation rate to historic highs.
Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, economists had forecast that inflation would peak at seven per cent this year; now they fear that – even without extra support – the disruption to global supply chains caused by the conflict could push it to nine per cent or even into double figures.
Writing in today’s Mail on Sunday, Mr Kwarteng argues that the United Kingdom needs to reduce its dependence on oil and gas, which renders us ‘vulnerable to Putin’s malign influence on global markets’.
Mr Kwarteng writes: ‘With gas prices at record highs, and the price of renewable energy plummeting, we need to accelerate our transition away from expensive gas. Now, more than ever, we must focus on generating cheaper, cleaner power in Britain, for Britain. This is how we become energy independent in the long term.’
It comes after nearly 40 Tory MPs from the party’s Net Zero Scrutiny Group wrote to Mr Johnson urging him to reverse the Government’s resistance to tapping into the country’s shale gas reserves through fracking.
‘The only zero will be in people’s bank accounts’