Sunak and Starmer have outed themselves as cowards through their climate change actions

If you want a first hand view of what a climate emergency looks like, speak to a British holidaymaker just returned from the Greek island of Rhodes. 

They likely won’t recount tales of warm sunshine and ice-creams on the beach – but might instead talk about raging wildfires, searing extreme heat, and sleepless nights on school floors. 

Apocalyptic scenes, showing reddened skies, billowing smoke and fearful faces, won’t soon be forgotten. 

For the people on those islands, every ambulance siren and police car alarm is a visceral reminder that the climate emergency isn’t something to think about in 2050 – it’s happening right now.  

Yet to hear Britain’s politicians over the past week, we’ve been witnessing cognitive dissonance of truly staggering proportions. 

It shows that both government and opposition are more keen to chase votes and cheap headlines than to secure a better planet for future generations, and it has to stop.

Two headlines in one newspaper last week read ‘Tory retreat from green policies to woo voters’, and ‘Khan to rethink Ulez [London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone] after call from Starmer’ alongside bleak pictures from the heatwave and fires in southern Europe. 

It seems like ‘climate emergency? What climate emergency?’ is the tune being sung by the main political parties.  

For almost 15 years, since the pioneering Climate Change Act passed through Parliament in 2008, there has been broad cross-party consensus that climate action was necessary to protect the planet.

That action hasn’t been happening anywhere near fast enough – but at least it felt like the direction of travel was clear. 

Yet following one by-election result in Uxbridge & South Ruislip last week – in which the Tories clung on by fewer than 500 votes, due to the perceived unpopularity of London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s Ultra-Low-Emission Zone (ULEZ) in the capital – that consensus has been thrown up in the air. 

Let’s start by debunking some of the myths around ULEZ – first introduced, lest we forget, by former Uxbridge MP and Mayor Boris Johnson – to clarify what it is, and what it isn’t.  

This is a measure to reduce air pollution and protect the health of children and some of the most disadvantaged people in the country, and ensure everyone has a right to breathe clean air. 

It’s to stop more lives being lost like Ella Roberta Adoo Kissi-Debrah, who tragically died from toxic air 10 years ago, aged nine. 

The ULEZ has already been in place in central London since 2019, and we can look to other cities to see the positive impact. One study from Imperial College London last month even suggested a clear reduction in heart disease as a result of such schemes.

There’s even a £110million scrappage scheme to help drivers upgrade their cars – it should be much more generous it currently is – but these details are to enhance the policy, not end it

Extending ULEZ to outer London will not, it should be emphasised, stop millions from being able to drive their cars. In fact, research by TfL itself suggests just one in 10 cars being driven in outer London are not currently compliant. 

Despite all this, many have made calls since that by-election not just to delay the ULEZ expansion, but also to delay or drop altogether a whole raft of critical green policies, which will help us tackle the climate emergency. 

It was disheartening to see Labour leader Keir Starmer urging Sadiq Khan to ‘reflect’ on the potentially life-saving policy, like a schoolteacher chastising a naughty child.

For the government, Rishi Sunak has been wavering on whether to delay the planned phase-out of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030; while Michael Gove now feels the need to give landlords even more time to make their rental properties more energy efficient. 

Shockingly, Grant Shapps has proclaimed that the UK Government will ‘max out’  North Sea oil and gas reserves.

Too many politicians are learning the wrong lessons from a single by-election. 

The answer isn’t to throw climate policies onto the scrapheap, for fear that they might not be popular (not least when polling shows that they almost always are popular). 

If the public raises concerns about a specific environmental measure, political leaders should be confident enough to highlight its benefits – not cowering away and backing down.

Because the results for the average voter are obvious.  

The annual running cost of an electric vehicle is estimated to be over £500 cheaper than a polluting petrol car. Electricity generated by new wind and solar projects will be cheaper than climate-wrecking coal.

So now is the time for some bravery – not undoing years of hard-fought political consensus for the perceived electoral gain, as Sunak appears willing to do. And not flip-flopping when policies come under even the slightest pressure, as Keir Starmer has demonstrated yet again. 

We cannot risk the climate emergency becoming the next frontier in the ongoing culture war that has gripped both government and opposition. 

If political leaders don’t take this threat seriously, they won’t just be stoking conflict and division in society – they’ll be fanning the flames of wildfires too. 

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

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