The Cabinet Minister who led last year’s historic UN climate summit in Glasgow has indicated that he could resign if the next prime minister is not fully committed to the net zero agenda.
cop26 chairman Alok Sharma said that while it was “definitely a leadership problem”, some of the remaining candidates in the Tory leadership race had been only “lukewarm”.
In an interview with The Observer, he urged them to “proactively” express their support for the net-zero agenda and “green” growth.
I hope every candidate realizes why this is so important to voters in general and why it is important to conservative supporters
“Anyone who wants to lead our country must demonstrate that they take this issue incredibly seriously, that they are willing to continue to lead and take on the mantle that Boris Johnson started,” he said.
Asked if he could resign if the candidates were weak on net zero, Mr Sharma said: “Let’s see, shall we? I think we should see where the candidates are. And we need to see who actually finishes at number 10.
“I hope every candidate realizes why this is so important to voters in general and why it is important to conservative supporters. And I hope, especially with the last two, we will see a very clear statement that this is an agenda that they support.”
Pressing a second time, he added, “I don’t exclude anything and I don’t exclude anything.”
Of the five remaining candidates in the contest, only Kemi Badenoch has said she does not support the UK’s goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050, describing it as “unilateral economic disarmament”.
The others have expressed varying degrees of enthusiasm for the policy, which is unpopular with some parts of the party over concerns about the impact on the economy.
On Friday, Minister of Foreign Affairs Liz Truss said it would impose a temporary moratorium on the green tax on domestic energy bills, arguing there are better ways to reach the net-zero target.