Nigel Farage is being urged by right wing campaign groups to head a campaign against the government's Net Zero policies in a new referendum.

As both DJ Khaled and Brenda from Bristol like to say, ‘ANOTHER ONE!’ Well, according to the fevered reactionary fantasies of both the Daily Express and Net Zero Watch, a recently formed Tufton Street think tank, another referendum campaign is what they’re hoping for, this time on the government’s climate change policies.

Farage is in “very serious” discussions about launching a campaign to have another referendum about whether Britain should keep its pledge to reach Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050, or rip up the plan and let climate change do what it likes. This is not the first time this has been suggested – in October, OpenDemocracy reported that “Nigel Farage told GB News viewers that a referendum on Green taxes “could well be my latest campaign”.”

Now, this could be wishful thinking, but Mr Farage is absolutely desperate to stay relevant and talked about, so it’s not necessarily unlikely. However, a search of Mr Farage’s Twitter account shows that he has so far never tweeted the phrase ‘Net Zero’. He does however have form in blaming higher energy prices on climate change policies. 

Net Zero Watch, a campaign group formed by the climate science denialists at Tufton Street’s Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), has hit upon ‘the cost of Net Zero’ as an effective campaign strategy to scare people into rejecting policies designed to combat climate change.

The GWPF has been heavily criticised for the inaccuracy of its claims about climate change in the past. The BBC apologised in 2017 when GWPF’s chair, the Tory peer Lord Lawson, claimed in a Radio 4 interview that global temperatures had not risen in the previous decade. The GWPF later acknowledged that data cited by Lawson was erroneous.

Net Zero Watch boast a graphic design style remarkably similar to other Tufton Street groups, and push messages that seem designed to make older, more conservative people terrified about the impact not of climate change, but of policies designed to combat it.

The strategy is interesting because it aims to displace the causes of poverty from low wages and half a century of neoliberal deregulation onto ‘green taxes’ and climate change campaigners. In doing this, it seeks to divide workers, redirecting anger at the cost of living away from government and fossil fuel interests.

This is remarkably similar to the way Brexit campaigners redirected the anger of poor and working class communities away from their own governments and corporations and towards amorphous groups who conveniently couldn’t answer back (Brussels bureaucrats, migrants from other EU countries).

Is there actually any appetite for a referendum on Net Zero? One Savanta ComRes poll found 40% in favour and 34% opposed, and another poll finding 42% support was found to have been commissioned by anti-Net Zero group CAR26.  62% of British people think the UK should be one of the most ambitious countries in its targets for reducing climate change.

The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit commissioned a YouGov poll showing that the “UK public want the government to introduce measures to meet net zero carbon emissions without a referendum by a ratio of more than 2 to 1”. Only 21% of the public thought a referendum was a good idea, while 50% “said that there is no need to hold such a referendum as the commitment was in the government’s last general election manifesto”.

This low level of support isn’t stopping climate change denial groups from trying to increase the public’s fear about the cost of Net Zero. A lot of this discourse popped up around the COP26 climate change conference at the end of 2021, and the idea of a referendum was concerning enough for Paul Mason to write an article titled “A climate referendum is a deadly threat – greens must prepare to fight one now”.

Mason reported that “large parts of the hard Brexit political infrastructure are being reassembled to oppose decarbonisation”.

Unfortunately, as Mason suggests, the government is falling into the trap of the anti-Net Zero lobbyists. By refusing to borrow to spend on the infrastructure necessary to reach Net Zero, the burden of paying for the low carbon transition will fall on consumers. Mason says that: 

“Last month, Sunak decreed that none of the investment costs needed to reach net zero would be borne by the state through borrowing to invest. Instead, said the government’s Net Zero Review, the money would be raised through taxation and through increasing the cost of carbon itself. Either fuel, energy, food and transport will get dearer, or people’s wages will be taxed more, or both.”

This is now exactly what is happening, with rising energy bills exacerbated by taxes to pay for green investment. According to the BBC, “Currently, about 12% of an energy bill set at the level of the Energy Price Cap of £1,277 goes towards funding green energy programmes, such as support for low-carbon electricity generation.”

Fortunately some of the proponents of the Net Zero referendum are not the best at hiding their obvious end goals. Here’s anti-Net Zero group CAR26 director Lois Perry saying the quiet part out loud.

Even without these taxes, the underlying reason for rising energy prices is clear. Production of oil and gas is controlled by a cartel of countries with a lot of power over other states that depend on importing their goods. When China stopped importing Australian coal last year, they switched to imports of Russian gas, sending demand through the roof. Coupled with economies reopening following the pandemic, and you have a simple question of demand pushing up prices.

Oil and gas are finite resources. Switching to clean, renewable sources will need financial investment in the short term, but governments have a choice about who that burden is imposed upon. Should it be the rich and corporations whose carbon footprints are highest, or should it be ordinary people and consumers?

We contacted Nigel Farage asking him if he was planning to campaign for a referendum on Net Zero, but he didn’t reply. However it seems unlikely that the British public is clamouring for another divisive referendum when there’s a general election in 2024.

John Lubbock leads on the Right-Watch project at Left Foot Forward

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