Trusting Britain’s prime minister is a fool’s game. His government has made concrete promises which it will be hard to forget. So can he take the rest of his party with him?
Since the general election in 2019 Mr Johnson has firmly come down on the green side. In a speech to the United Nations in September he urged global leaders to “grow up” and “recognise the scale of the problems we face”. In a statement to the Middle East Green Summit in Saudi Arabia this week he urged the world to go “further and faster” to limit global warming.
Why did Mr Johnson go green? And will his conversion stick when the going gets tough? It is tempting to ascribe the shift to his wife, Carrie Johnson, whose arrival on the scene certainly fits the timing. Mrs Johnson, a former director of communications for the Conservative Party, devotes much of her time to campaigning for green causes, particularly marine life and animal rights.
The older Mr Johnson has been campaigning for environmental causes since he was at Oxford 60 years ago. He held green jobs at the World Bank, the Ford Foundation and the European Commission. He also wrote a succession of books on green issues; focusing, at first, on the danger of overpopulation. Lord Goldsmith is at the heart of the green aristocracy.
Trusting Mr Johnson is a fool’s game. But it is hard to see him resurrecting his ancestral Corbynism. Shrugging off speeches to the. Moreover, Mr Johnson’s government has made concrete promises which it will be hard to forget. The pertinent question is whether he can take the rest of his party with him.
Petersham Nursery Tories think nothing of spending £100,000 on a Tesla and £15,000 on a heat pump,not to mention more on every mouthful of organic cruelty-free food. But the Lidl Tories who voted for Mr Johnson because they thought he was on their side against meddling bureaucrats and their expensive regulations will have a different view. If anything can break the seemingly adamantine link between Mr Johnson and his Tory faithful, it is the long-term cost of his green conversion.
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