Where the politics of climate change are concerned, the Cameroons have been on a long journey which is about to reach, if not its terminus, then a very significant station. Greenery was at the heart of early Cameronism, a means of connecting modernity to the Tory party’s ancestral love of the countryside. Cameron said he wanted to lead “the greenest government ever”. Yet, as I recount in my book on the Coalition, In It Together, Osborne was never persuaded even of the science – the orthodoxy reaffirmed in September by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – preferring the sceptical analysis of his mentor and predecessor at the Treasury, Nigel Lawson. --Matthew D’Ancona, The Sunday Telegraph, 27 October 2013
When Ian MacGregor and I interviewed David Cameron a month ago, on the eve of the Tories’ conference, he specifically denied that he had become “more Lawsonian” and compared the price paid by the taxpayer and consumer for green policies to an insurance premium. Last Wednesday, however, the PM’s announcement suggested that in the three-way debate on greenery between Cameron, Osborne and Clegg, the Chancellor is prevailing. --Matthew D’Ancona, The Sunday Telegraph, 27 October 2013
The losers from this shambolic energy policy are more numerous than the struggling households that are rightly at the centre of political concern. The prosperity of a generation is at risk. Britain cannot afford to hobble itself with overly high energy costs as it embarks on the road to recovery. --Editorial, Financial Times, 28 October 2013
Electricity costs are still certain to rise massively over the next seven years to pay for the shift to renewable energy – even if David Cameron succeeds in his plan to trim green levies. The reason is the new Energy Bill which commits Britain to colossal increases in subsidies for renewables such as wind and solar power. A Department of Energy and Climate Change document says the subsidies will rise steadily from about £2.35 billion now to £7.6 billion in 2020-21. Energy expert Peter Atherton, of Liberum Capital, says green levies are likely to cost households an average of £400 a year just for electricity – minus small reductions Mr Cameron hopes to make by trimming the budget for items such as insulation. --David Rose,
Mail on Sunday, 27 October
The Prime Minister's performance at PMQs underscored what a mess Cameron has got himself into on green taxes and energy. Talk about a walloping. It was 6-0 to Miliband, although the result was not a surprise to the Don't Underestimate Ed Miliband Association, of which I was a founder member. Now, after Cameron announced in the Commons, in that disastrous PMQs, that there is to be a review of green levies, the Prime Minister's team is getting to work trying to find out what on earth their man had in mind. For most of his leadership, the Tory leader has been an enthusiastic advocate of the same green taxes which he now wants to wage war against. --Iain Martin,
The Daily Telegraph, 25 October 2013
The Liberal Democrats will resist Conservative plans to to cut green taxes that add to the public’s energy bills, Danny Alexander has said. His stance has signalled a hardening of the entrenched positions between the two coalition parties over how to cut Britain’s energy bills. It follows a poll that showed public support for David Cameron’s plan to “roll back” green levies on customer bills. Alexander said: “You are absolutely right, our commitments to green energy and our commitments to renewable energy are vitally important and they are not something that Liberal Democrats will compromise on.” --Rajeev Syal,
The Guardian, 27 October 2013
Labour signalled that it would support an overhaul of one of the green taxes pushing up gas and electricity bills yesterday. Caroline Flint, Labour’s energy spokeswoman, suggested the party would back moves to overhaul a scheme that she said was expensive, bureaucratic and poorly targeted. --Francis Elliott and Ben Webster,
The Times, 28 October 2013
Bold undertakings to reduce emissions were popular when they were announced at the height of the boom. Yet that moment of Malthusian anxiety was also one of economic cheer, and little attention was paid to the sacrifices that expensive energy entails. Politicians portray these policies as the inevitable consequence of legally binding commitments. Such wilful naivety gives an unintended meaning to Prime Minister David Cameron’s pledge to lead the greenest government ever. If the UK’s environmental policy is defensible, it should be defended. If not, the government should repeal or renegotiate the laws and treaties in which these commitments are enshrined. --Editorial, Financial Times, 28 October 2013
What on earth was in David Cameron’s head when, amid raucous Commons exchanges on our soaring energy bills, he shouted at Ed Miliband, “we need to roll back the green charges” that the Labour leader “put in place when he was energy secretary”? Mr Cameron must have known that he and his party cheered every single one of the green charges introduced by Mr Miliband when he was energy and climate change secretary. Along with George Osborne, William Hague and most of his present Cabinet, Cameron happily voted for Mr Miliband’s Climate Change Act, committing us all to paying up to £18billion every year until 2050; in fact, the Tories wanted to go even further. --Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 27 October 2013
