I’m writing this with my neck covered in a wet tea towel, the fan blowing my face like a question light, and the distinct feeling that my office has been moved inside a panini press.
Outside, the Met Office has slapped a red warning for extreme heat for part of the country and Britain is set to surpass its record June temperature in a swing that would embarrass an athlete. Forty degrees. In England. In a country that has historically considered barbecue to be a very dangerous gamble.
And you know what our political class has decided to do about it? Reverse. Kindly, apologetically, but undoubtedly on the fence.
Allow me to be unduly blunt, because of course the oven makes a man’s patience. In one of the clearest days of evidence we’ve ever had, every major party in this country is busy softening, shaking or tying a single goal designed to stop the thermometer from doing this again. And they all, male and female, do it because they’ve caught a bad case of Faragitis.
This is a bit of a surprise to me honestly. The revolution has been remarkably honest about its position, meaning that net zero is, in the words of deputy leader Richard Tice, “in the dustbin”. The group wants to hack the energy department, end restrictions and, in a phrase imported wholesale from across the Atlantic, “drill, baby, drill”. You can read it in their words on business matters, and I almost respect the clarity. At least you know where you stand with the man who wants to set the future on fire to save four quid on his gas bill this winter.
The line, of course, goes back to Donald Trump, a man who has spent years insisting that wind turbines cause cancer, kill whales and personally ruin his golf course. Farage praises Trump, Reform borrows soundbites, and now, shockingly, everyone borrows from Reform. The Conservatives, once husky-faced for a photo opportunity, last year withdrew their commitment to zero emissions by 2050 altogether, a move even the trade press called reckless. Labor say the right things about coastal air, and then fuss over every real decision to the point that you suspect Ed Miliband is the only true believer left and they keep him in the closet.
Britain’s best political moment: find out what the loudest man in the pub thinks, then run to agree with him before the last orders.
Here’s my problem, and it’s a businessman’s problem rather than a hippopotamus’ problem. The “drill, baby, drill” crowd presents themselves as hard-headed realists and everyone else as woolly idealists. They handled it well upside down. Authenticity is on the other side of the argument.
The Committee on Climate Change, which is not a den of radical radicals, has crunched the numbers and found that the total cost of reaching net zero by 2050 is less than what it would take from a single fuel price shock in 2022. One. For every pound spent, the returns return somewhere between two and four times as much. Fast electrification, heat pumps and electric cars don’t save households, they put money back in people’s pockets. An expensive, truly reckless option, staying connected to something whose price is set by despots and climate systems we don’t control.
And this is before we even get to the story of the real business, which is so big and we always pretend it’s an expense instead of the single biggest growth opportunity of our lives. The UK economy already generates around £105 billion in value and supports more than a million jobs, most of them in small and medium-sized companies, as Business Matters set out in its coverage of the seventh carbon budget. When politicians move to target, they are not protecting business. They kneel down a rapidly growing part of it and give it to the Chinese, the Americans and anyone else who has the motivation to give it up.
I’ve written before that British businesses must not retreat to net zero, and on the hottest day in our recorded history I’m going to say it loud, sweaty and all. Doubling down is not a dare to touch the green. It’s a boring, sensible, profitable thing to do, which is exactly why no politician chasing Farage’s vote can say it.
So here is my humble suggestion. Close fans in Westminster for a week. Let them legislate with forty titles, as we are all trying to work. They will find their beliefs remarkably quickly. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my tea towel needs to be put out.
