Politics: time-thief

By Richard North - March 19, 2025

Yesterday – apart from the minor detail of Liz Kendall announcing her welfare overhaul in the Commons – was to be Badenough day, with her announcement that meeting the net-zero 2050 targets was “impossible”.

In the nature of the contemporary media, though. the speech was so heavily trailed the day before delivery – typified by the piece in Guardian – that by the time Badenough stood up to deliver, it was all over that day’s media, leaving not very much to report.

Those who are interested can read the whole thing on the Conservative website or even watch it on the video provided (although I prefer not to), delivered under what is to be the generic title of “the policy renewal programme” which will cover many future speeches.

Actually, once I had read the speech, I wished I hadn’t, but once read it can’t be unread. I had, in fact, already seen Pete’s critique so I can’t say I hadn’t been warned, but like so many people (especially Reform supporters) I am reluctant to learn from other peoples’ experience.

At just under 3,000 words, it doesn’t even have the merit of being short, the delivery taking nearly an hour including the questions, concluded by lukewarm applause and a somewhat contrived standing ovation. Inspiring, it wasn’t, taking on the aspect of a rather boring schoolmarm, hectoring a reluctant class that was wishing it was elsewhere.

Inevitably, she starts off with a false note. “For three centuries every era in our country’s history left a better legacy for its children”, she says. “The greatness of the UK was forged by the sacrifices of our ancestors. They built, they innovated, and they took tough decisions. They never assumed prosperity was guaranteed – they made sure it was”.

On a slight point of detail, although she may have adopted this country as her own – while keeping her options open with her dual Nigerian citizenship – she is pushing it a tad when she talks of “our ancestors”. Of Nigerian heritage, a woman who describes herself as a “first generation immigrant” has no business asserting that. Her ancestors are in downtown Lagos. Our ancestors are not hers.

After this false start in a somewhat lengthy preamble, she finally gets to the point of her lecture, declaring that her party, in seeking to “develop credible plans that are based on shared conservative values”, should “start by telling the truth on energy and net zero”.

Every single thing we do in our daily lives is dependent on cheap, abundant energy, she says, noting that, when energy became cheap and abundant, living standards began to rise, health and life expectancy grew. “Cheap, abundant energy is the foundation of civilisation as we know it today. We mess with it at our peril”, she declares.

Yet, she tells us, “that’s exactly what we’ve been doing for twenty years”, and it’s now starting to cause real pain for everyday people and businesses. “The cost of electricity – far too high – much higher than nearby and comparative countries with the real possibility of it going even higher with environmental levies”, she adds.

If this begins to sound like a politician talking sense though – even if they are statements of the bleedin’ obvious – Badenough soon has the remedy for this. “I support the shift to renewables when they make energy cheaper and more secure”, she declares.

This, of course, is the classic oxymoron: under no circumstances do renewables make energy cheaper or more secure. She might as well declare that she is in favour of the night, as long as the sun is shining.

We then get nearly 400 words of rhetorical dirge, where she manages to tell us that renewables “are not a perfect solution and come with their own challenges”, where she then asserts that the main problem is that their provision makes us dangerously dependent on China, a country that doesn’t share our values, risking our energy security.

And that, to her, is also the problem with net zero, in which case “it’s time to stop pretending everything will be fine”. But, she assures us, she’s “certainly not debating whether climate change exists”, it does, says the computer software “engineer”..

Without bothering to explain why, she then plucks out of thin air the assertion that “it doesn’t look like we are going to get remotely close to net zero by 2050” which, she tells us, “is what happens when politics turns into fantasy”.

Again, without troubling us with her reasoning – apart from vague references to ripping out boilers – she asserts that, not only are we not going to get close the the targets, “the plans for Net zero by 2050 are impossible”. Thus, she confidently declares: “We have to do better than this”, adding: “We are going to deal with the reality”.

However, dealing with reality in Badenough’s book means setting up a team led by Shadow Secretary of State, Claire Coutinho, a total airhead who has been a consistent groupie for net-zero ever since she was appointed energy secretary by Sunak in July 2024.

“Few have spent more time trying to unpack the muddled thinking at the heart of the net zero debate than Claire”, says Badenough, She will be supported by shadow secretary of state for Scotland, Andrew Bowie, a former shadow energy secretary, and Lord Offord, formerly a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exports until his party lost the 2024 General Election.

This scintillating team is tasked “with finding and working with the people who know the truth and who can come up with achievable solutions”. These will be people “who can answer from experience” on how “we can deliver cheap and clean energy, without bankrupting businesses, without eye-watering bills for households, without dependencies on hostile or unstable countries”.

That’s it. No actual detail, no recognition that net-zero cannot be delivered at all, without ruinously expensive (and insecure) energy which will most certainly bankrupt not only businesses but the entire nation.

I really should have taken the cue from Pete and not bothered to read this stuff but, since I have, I thought it only justice that my band of readers should suffer as I have done.

Peter, himself, is more assertive. At this point, he says, we needed to hear concrete statements. She needed to say that the Climate Change Act would be repealed. She needed to say the net-zero target[s] would be completely abolished. She needed to call time on renewable energy and scrap the EV mandate. She needed to go to war with the green blob.

Sadly, that was never going to happen, not least because many in her party are as deep in green blobbery as it gets, largely as a backup career plan. As such, Pete says, she is compromised by her own party. She said as much as she thought she could get away with – and fed us crumbs from the table.

As to her statement of support for the shift to renewables, which makes energy “cheaper and more secure”, this is factually incorrect, and if Badenough is not willing to make clear, unambiguous, truthful statements about the state of our energy system, then she is nowhere close to getting a grip on the issues – or her own party.

And that’s the reality, the one that Badenough refuses to address.

However, the media aren’t any better. The Telegraph hails the speech in an opinion piece with the headline: “Kudos to Kemi: Conservatives must be realistic about net zero”.

As one of the few who raised caution when the policy went through Parliament, the paper’s sub-head says, “Ms Badenoch is entitled to preside over its demise”, obviously unaware of her precious change of heart..

Although Peter Lilley commends her for being one of only two MPs in 2019 who dared to query how much net-zero would cost, courtesy of the Guardian we learn that, in July 2022, when she was engaged in the previous Tory leadership contest, her view had changed dramatically.

Contrary to her previous views, Badenoch then backed the government’s target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 and vowed “not to unpick current climate commitments”, in what was described as “an apparent U-turn” at the Tory leadership environment hustings.

The MP for Saffron Walden, we were told, had previously likened the target to “unilateral economic disarmament” but under questioning from Alok Sharma, the Cop26 president, at the hustings in parliament on Monday she said she backed it.

Significantly, at that time, all five remaining leadership candidates had backed net-zero, symbolising the craven Troy attitude to this issues. But crucially, if Badenough can change her views not once but twice, there is no guarantee that she won’t do it again. She is, after all, a Tory.

One can only pity those who attended the speech. Time-thief Badenough cost them each an hour of their lives. But we should pity ourselves more – this vacuity will cost us a great deal more than time.