‘Offering to impoverish people!’ John O’Sullivan erupts in furious rant about net zero: ‘Impossible to achieve’

It comes after a record breaking defeat for the Tories which saw big-name MPs like Liz Truss and Jacob Rees-Mogg lose their seats.

O’Sullivan, who previously worked as a speech writer for Margaret Thatcher, said net zero policies are self-defeating in how it offers little to the public.

“They ran out of steam”, he told Steven Edginton in reference to the Tories.

“Net zero was ill-thought out and however seriously you take the threat of climate change, I take it very seriously, though I don’t think it’s an emergency.

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

• Donald Trump confirms JD Vance as his Vice-Presidential pick for 2024 election
• 'The United States is a deeply divided nation and a Trump assassination would have triggered civil unrest'
• Labour warned of 'constitution mongering' with devolved assemblies holding 'radical' views: 'They're a waste of money!'

“It’s something we have time to solve. Even if you take that seriously, as I do, it doesn’t lead to the net zero conclusion.

“There’s a big problem to which they’ve applied a cure which doesn’t work and in fact, makes things worse.

“What the party was offering, and other parties were offering this too, was to impoverish people with higher taxes and higher energy prices to achieve an objective that is impossible to achieve.

“Namely because Britain presents only, I think, two per cent of the carbon emissions and world commissions output. China and India and other countries are proceeding to build gas-guzzling power stations at a rapid rate.”

Labour has stressed its commitment to getting the UK to net zero emissions by 2050, and in recent years this has been a cross-party pledge.

Labour introduced the Climate Change bill in 2008 making it a legal obligation for future governments to cut greenhouse emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.

Both parties wholeheartedly supported the proposal with just five MPs voting against it.

Efforts to impose climate-friendly measures have been ramped up in recent years with Theresa May’s government in 2019 upping the target to 100 per cent of emissions - net zero.

Ex-Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho represented a scale-back from green plans in recent times as she was highly critical of Labour’s “reckless net zero targets”.

But according to O’Sullivan, this was not enough given what he felt was a clear message to voters.

“We were told we would have to make compulsory sacrifices and major changes in our lives”, he said.

“Less travel and so on, for something that was not going to happen. Why would we do that?”