Fury as Farage now wants referendum on govt’s net zero emissions target

The Government must “fight back” against the idea that there is a conflict between the economy and the environment, a senior minister said recently. Now Nigel Farage has taken on the battle against attempts to deal with the climate crisis

Speaking a little more than 100 days after the end of Cop26, Treasury Chief Secretary Simon Clarke rejected claims from sections of his party that rising energy bills and the cost of living crisis means the Government’s net-zero ambitions should be reined in.

Mr Clarke told a meeting held by a cross-party group of MPs on Tuesday that net-zero should not become “seen as a hairshirt movement”.

He said: “We have to avoid that sense that all we are doing is increasing the costs and the challenges that already confront people in their daily lives and that this is just something which is a regrettable necessity.”

Responding to attempts by the Net Zero Scrutiny Group of around 20 Conservative MPs and peers to link the Government’s net-zero policies to the rising cost of living, Mr Clarke said scaling back the UK’s net-zero ambitions would be “positively irrational”.

Farage

Never missing a chance to wade into a debate, Mr Farage has demanded a referendum on Net Zero.

Nigel Farage’s piece was published in the Mail on Sunday (no surprises there). He tweeted out the article writing: “I am launching a new campaign to kill of Boris Johnson’s ruinous green agenda. We demand a referendum on Net Zero. Read all about it in the Mail on Sunday.”