Priti Patel has backed a campaign by The Sun to put the “silent majority” back in control of the green agenda.
Following a narrow win in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election – dubbed a referendum on ULEZ by the local Tory candidate – several prominent MPs have urged the government to re-think their environmental policies.
Former business secretary Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg and Danny Kruger, the co-leader of the New Conservatives, a group of Tory MPs elected since the Brexit referendum, both called for green commitments to be reconsidered, claiming they were “unpopular” and “expensive”.
Rishi Sunak has said he does not want to “hassle” families with extra costs and would pursue net zero policies that were “proportionate and pragmatic”.
But as Marina Purkiss points out here, that has little to do with considerations for voters and everything to do with keeping himself in power.
Priti Patel has also waded in on the debate, saying households and businesses have been “shut out” of the discussions around the environment, climate change and pollution.
“The British people are not cash cows ready to be milked and have their freedoms sacrificed at the altar of a twisted and dogmatic green outlook,” she wrote in The Sun.
She has backed a new five-point plan which includes scrapping ULEZ, delaying the 2030 ban on new diesel and petrol cars and binning “stealth taxes” on motorists.
Responding to the article, Ian Dunt called the former home secretary a “desperate grifter”, saying she is out to create a new social division on the back of a narrow by-election win in Boris Johnson’s former seat.
The ex-PM held the seat with 52.6 per cent of the vote in 2019. In 2023 that had been cut to 45.2 per cent, just 1.6 per cent more than the Labour share of the vote.
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