Net Zero is driving Britain’s new Winter of Discontent

An exclusive post on how Net Zero is starting to fuel the political backlash

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A brief note from Matt … As we get ready for the start of a new political year here in the UK, we will continue to bring you the best counter-cultural commentary and thinking not just from us but a wider network of friends, advisors, and writers who are all pushing back against the dreary consensus.

A few days ago, we heard from Amarjeet Johal on the challenges that await a new Reform government. Today, we hear from Maurice Cousins, campaign director at Net Zero Watch on how increasingly extreme Net Zero policies are not only damaging the UK economy but becoming key to the political realignment and the next election …

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It is pretty clear that Britain is now rapidly heading into a new Winter of Discontent.

Taxes will rise again in the coming Budget.

Inflation is running at nearly double the Bank of England’s target and eating into wages and living standards.

There is talk of Britain going cap in hand to the IMF again, something Liam Halligan and Matt Goodwin discussed in detail in their recent exclusive post.

And now Ofgem has announced the energy price cap will rise by more than expected. Why is this rise happening?

Ofgem says the proximate cause for the increase is rising “balancing costs”.

This includes the money paid to switch off wind turbines when they overproduce.

These payments are the unavoidable costs from when you try to run a modern economy on intermittent sources of electricity generation.

Elsewhere, Labour’s Ed Miliband has claimed global fossil fuel markets and Vladimir Putin are to blame.

But Ofgem’s own figures show the wholesale gas price in Britain is now below where it was before Russia invaded Ukraine, while industry experts point out that adjusted for inflation gas is cheaper today than in 2013 or 2008.

Analysis by Net Zero Watch finds the cost of producing electricity in gas-fired power stations today is about the same in real terms as it was in April 2015, when the typical bill was roughly £600. Yet today the average household is paying £300 more.

If you really want to know why your bills are surging then you really need to look at what are known as “policy costs”.

These are the intricate web of subsidies and levies that are now demanded by Britain’s extreme Net Zero agenda.

For this year, it also includes explicit redistributive measures such as the Warm Home Discount, where households, many of whom are already struggling with bills, are forced to cross-subsidise others through their energy payments.

In short, when you strip away all the SW1 jargon, it comes down to this: Westminster’s Net Zero policies are the central driver of Britain’s sky-high bills.

Obviously, you would think this fact alone would dominate the national debate.

Wrong.

Instead, our political and media class prefer denial. Rather than confront their own role over the last two decades in driving living standards down, they sneer at the emerging public backlash and choose to pin the blame on the collapse of the green energy consensus on “right-wing populists.”

A recent paper from Bocconi University, for example, argued that Europe’s “consensus” is being shattered from the top down by figures such as Donald Trump and Alternative for Germany.

The Guardian, meanwhile, accuses Nigel Farage and Reform of “weaponising” the cost of living crisis.

The i newspaper portrays Reform’s opposition to Net Zero as an alien intrusion into otherwise settled politics.

And others mutter darkly about “misinformation” or “disinformation”, often while refusing to give tax-paying citizens information about these extreme policies.

The implication of this narrative is clear: voters are being cast as gullible dupes, easily misled into resenting Net Zero by populist trickery. It is a comforting, but false, story for SW1 and the elite class.

Ultimately, politics is downstream from public opinion, not the other way round.

Nigel Farage is not the Pied Piper. He did not create Britain’s growing anger over the cost of living. Instead, as with other issues, he is giving it a voice. And now the weight of evidence is building.

Just look, for example, at how out of touch this political agenda is from ordinary voters.

Earlier this year, when The Economist and pollsters More in Common asked voters what would make them more likely to vote Labour at the next election, more than half of them, 54%, said “lower overall energy bills”. This was, by far, the most popular answer across all 11 policy areas surveyed. Nothing else came close.

Similarly, a survey by Labour Together and YouGov, in 2024, examined how Labour won the general election and showed that voters listed the spiralling cost of living as their top priority. That same poll found half of voters expected Labour to make a noticeable difference within two years.

Even on the environment, the public’s priorities are firmly practical, not abstract.

Polling shows, for example, that when it comes to the environment the British people want sewage spills reduced, rivers cleaned up, and visible pollution tackled, while “meeting Net Zero by 2050” ranks much, much lower.

The British people, in other words, are not complicated on this issue. Ultimately, they want cheaper bills and cleaner rivers and unlike politicians they are not especially bothered by radical Net Zero agendas.

Taken together, this reveals a real blind spot for Britain’s green-obsessed establishment.

For more than two decades, they have consistently mistaken shallow polling support for action on climate change “in principle” as a deep mandate for whatever disruptive and costly policy they attach to it. It isn’t.

Take emissions from meat and dairy, another vexed issue for climate activists.

Agricultural emissions must be cut by around 40% by 2050. But to do this, the UK’s Climate Change Committee is, astonishingly, recommending that, amongst other measures, we shrink herds on farms and consumers cut back on consumption of animal-based products. Seriously.

Influential Westminster think tanks such as the Green Alliance have said this is the most effective way to reduce methane emissions from UK agriculture.

But what do the people think?

Recently, pollsters YouGov found that just one in four Brits say they would give up meat and dairy completely. Nearly two-thirds flatly refused, showing how utterly out-of-touch these Green zealots really are.

Similarly, only one in four Brits say they would be willing pay significantly more for meat and dairy in order to support climate change initiatives.

Or consider the carbon-intensive activity of flying abroad for holidays, which has exploded in recent decades.

Net Zero means we will all have to fly less in the future because so-called “sustainable aviation” technologies are a long way off from being deployed at scale before 2050.

Again, when you look past the extreme elites who are pushing this agenda you find that the people hold very different views.

YouGov, for example, similarly find that the idea of giving up flying for leisure is not popular at all, with only 15% of Brits saying they would be willing to do so.

And then there is car ownership. Net Zero by 2050 means all transport will need to become more “sustainable”.

To be clear, for the private car user this does not just mean substituting petrol and diesel vehicles for electric ones. Not everyone will be able to have a charging point, let alone afford an electric vehicle.

Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, has even banned new housing developments from having parking spaces to reduce demand for cars. Others will follow to meet clean air and sustainable transport targets.

Road space is increasingly being reallocated from cars to cycling, walking, and public transport, making driving less convenient and, in some cases, deliberately more expensive to discourage it.

Yet, again, hardworking, tax-paying Brits are not on board —far from it.

While eco-extremists like to paint a picture of there being widespread public support, on this issue too the country is divided.

In fact, only 25% of Brits say they would be willing to trade in their car for walking, cycling, or public transport.

Time and time again, in other words, when the reality of Net Zero collides with daily life, the public baulks.

To be clear, this is not irrational. It is common sense. Even Labour’s chief strategist Morgan McSweeney has warned his party about the risks of “underweighting” the costs of Net Zero while overestimating voters’ willingness to bear them.

Ironically, that is the very gap where the “greenlash” is now forming.

The growing revolt against Net Zero is not a top-down manipulation. It is a bottom-up rebellion rooted in people’s material and economic reality.

Once again, the Luxury Belief Class are forcing people to pay the costs of extreme policies that will hit working people much harder than they will hit insulated elites.

People do not support policies that make them poorer, their lives less convenient and erode their living standards.

To dismiss it as populist “disinformation” is not only arrogant - it is reckless.

It also helps to explain why the consensus among elites is now starting to collapse from below, and unless Westminster changes course, voters will not just reject Net Zero. They will reject the politicians who forced it upon them, too.

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