From 2021 onwards, there has been a ‘climate consensus breakdown’ – and a backlash against net zero. This backlash has changed the nature of Conservative-Labour competition around climate change, from one focused around policy performance, to one questioning how ambitious and rapid UK climate policy should be. The two biggest parties also faced electoral competition from both left and right in the 2024 General Election, creating new policymaking dilemmas about how to tackle climate change without fear of losing votes. In this article, Professor Mat Paterson and Dr Paul Tobin suggest strategies to mitigate and tackle anti-net zero narratives head-on. 

• The weakening of pro-climate consensus amongst UK political parties puts the UK at risk of not achieving legally-binding climate targets. 
• University of Manchester research suggests a two-pronged strategy approach that a new incoming government could draw on to tackle the backlash against net zero. 
• Decarbonising British society will require policymakers to adopt a long-term stance to build public support for climate strategy. 

Understanding the breakdown in climate consensus 

Since the adoption of the net zero target, and especially since 2021, a backlash has been organised against net zero and climate policy more broadly. Opposition to climate action remains a niche position in British politics – opinion polls continue to rank climate change in the top most important issues, and citizens think the government should be doing more to reduce the UK’s emissions.  

In October 2021, a group of Conservative MPs created the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG), based around the European Research Group. The NZSG have made several policy interventions against the scope, scale and cost of net zero measures, including positions against the ban of new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030, fracking bans and green levies. 

In February 2023, there were protests against 15-minute cities in several UK cities, while the July 2023 Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection was well-timed for those wishing to oppose climate policy vocally.  

This weakening of the UK’s pro-climate consensus via the Conservative Party’s shift in direction affected Labour’s preparations for the 2024 election, as they sought a ‘bombproof’ manifesto. There has been considerable struggle within the Labour Party following the previously established pledge to spend £28bn per year to pursue net zero, while seeking to maintain fiscal discipline. The £28bn pledge was scaled back in February 2024, although the Labour Party commitment remains to create GB Energy – a publicly-owned clean energy company. However, there are concerns that Labour’s climate strategy is both inadequate to the needs of the climate crisis, and too timid in responding to the challenge laid down by the Conservatives’ shift in approach.  

If the UK is to achieve its legally-binding climate targets, the government needs to make effective policies that reduce emissions rapidly. But how to do this in the new political context? 

Research on the UK’s climate politics at the University of Manchester 

The policy recommendations we propose below were developed during a workshop hosted by The University of Manchester’s Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI). Attendees co-authored a report detailing these proposals, which builds on a wide range of research at the University on climate change politics and policy.  

Research on this topic is also being conducted by members of the Manchester Environmental Politics Group. This research has included analyses of the rise of Anti-Net Zero Populism in the UK, of the relationship between the City of London, the Bank of England, and the Treasury in controlling and funding the path to Net Zero, and of the experiences of Muslim communities as climate actors in the UK. The Tyndall Centre at Manchester is also a central site of research on climate policy.  

A dual strategy policy response  

We propose two strategies for responding to the challenges within the current political situation:  

In Strategy One, we suggest mitigating the dilemmas that political parties face in calculating how climate action may lose them votes to other parties, as well as dealing with the backlash against net zero. There are three principal ways to do this.  

• Political parties can focus on aspects of climate policy around which backlash is difficult to generate (avoiding those things with significant impacts on everyday life). Some potential actions are: upgrades to the electricity grid, supporting the rollout of electric vehicle charging stations, aiding urban heat networks, and supporting retrofitting, such as via beneficial mortgage rates for those that improve their homes’ energy efficiency.  

• Pursue a ‘green industrial revolution’, which generates investment and jobs through technological innovation, and again, minimises changes to daily life. Such policies have begun already, but need to be revived, such as hydrogen heat networks, and British Volt. 

• Designing policies that create irreversible effects, such as zero-carbon infrastructure investments in electricity, housing, or transport that would be too costly to dismantle. 

Strategy Two seeks to attack the backlash directly. At the heart of this strategy is the promotion of net zero strategies that explicitly address social justice and inequality. Here, policies should create benefits of climate policy for low-income households, for example via housing retrofit, public transport, and ‘green jobs’ investments.  

Policymakers should embrace the language of ‘energy security’ clearly to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy. A more long-term stance that identifies winning messages and policies, such as around ‘energy freedom’, or community energy ownership could build public support for future climate policy. 

The next stage of decarbonising British society will be much harder than what has been achieved so far. The emergence of a net zero backlash and a breakdown in the political parties’ climate consensus make this potentially even harder.  

We do not pretend that the two strategies presented above will eliminate all difficulties and dilemmas for those pursuing climate action in the UK. But we hope the explanation of this new context is useful for pushing for enhanced climate action in the UK, and suggest our more detailed report for further information.