Ditch ‘net zero’ commitment and lose 1.3 million votes, Boris Johnson warned
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dennis Ambler
They’re getting desperate!
The Conservatives will lose 1.3 million votes if they water down the commitment to achieve net zero carbon emissions, Boris Johnson is being warned.
A poll carried out by Onward, a think tank close to the party, has found much stronger support for sticking to the 2050 policy than abandoning it,
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/net-zero-climate-boris-johnson-b2064371.html
Polls such as these are totally meaningless. Most people always say they want things like Net Zero, more nurses, more police, etc etc. However, when push comes to shove, nobody wants to pay the bill.
Just look at the hysteria whipped over the new rise in NI contributions. Yet the same people will say they want more spending on the NHS and an end to selling your homes to fund old age care.
Maybe Onward should put it to the test, and ask people whether they are prepared to pay £2000 a year each to fund Net Zero.
Better still, perhaps the government should remove all green levies from energy bills, and send an invoice to every home in the country for £500, labelled “Bill for Climate Policies – 2022”.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
If Boris Johnson ditches the nonsensical ‘Net Zero’ commitment he will gain far more votes than he loses. The public have been taken for fools by the climate activists but they are not fools and know full well that those behind all of the nonsense have vested interests. I suspect Mr Johnson could guarantee his return to power if he ditches ‘Net Zero’ – which is, in any case, impossible to achieve.
Johnson ditching ‘Net Zero’ would mean him ditching Carrie Antoinette. Do you really believe he has the courage to do that?
Surely she’s time-expired by now, anyway?
Is she now a ‘two bagger’ then?
Strewth devon if he really can get turned on by Rayner’s gusset there ain’t enough bags in the world! (probably pushing the moderation to he limit?)
That was my thoughts, it would probably save him from CakeGate too
….and KnickerGate.
As with all such polls, the questions are loaded, in this case, to view CO2 as bad and reductions as good. Load them the other way, i.e. make them, real, e.g. “Would you be willing to pay double your energy bill to theoretically globally prevent 1.5degC rise by 2050, when China and India’s emissions growth are greater than the UK’s total?”, and watch what happens.
But it isn’t a 1.5 degree rise. It’s a 0.5 degree rise from where we are now. And that is supposed to be catastrophe.
Yes, it will be a catastrophe – for alarmists if it doesn’t happen.
“Yes, it will be a catastrophe – for alarmists if it doesn’t happen.”
I doubt it.
If it doesn’t happen they will claim credit for preventing it!
I reckon it would be catastrophe for them if it did happen, because the world would barely notice the difference, and the claims of alarm would be debunked..
“The answers you seek are in the questions you ask”; supposedly a quote from an Indian mystic?
Straight out of the Sir Humphrey Appleby school of polling, no doubt…
The Independent was behind the reporting….. Enough said.
Independent of what, or who? 🙂
Reality.
There is more to be said .. The co founder of The Independent is Matthew Symonds – the father of Boris Johnson’s manipulative wife Carrie …Fancy that ..The current owner of the media outlet is the billionaire Evgeny Lebedev a close friend of Boris Johnson whose father was the oligarch and ex KGB foreign intelligence officer Alexander Lebedev ……It is alleged that Boris who nominated Evgeney for a seat in the House of Lords intervened to pressure MI5 and Mi6 into dropping their opposition to Evgeny’s peerage as a national security concern .. And they obliged Perhaps someone had a word to them about all that money flowing into Londongrad . Well MI6 seems to be singing from the same ‘climate emergency song-sheet .When a Saudi sultan purchased a sizeable shareholder stake in The Independent a raft of articles extolling the Saudi kingdoms ‘ green credentials ‘ and multiple smear pieces on Tommy Robinson began to appear. Now this dodgy poll warning on maintaining the ‘Net Zero ‘ faith ….While the United Kingdom is sitting on decades worth of shale gas reserves that could make the country self sufficient and lower domestic energy prices , who stands to benefit from this utopian ‘Net Zero’ delirium apart from the shady donors to radical green groups , wind turbine manufacturers , Russian gas companies Saudi oil tycoons and associated investors ….?
As always … follow the money!
Not just the money – the nepotism the cronyism and the favors . It was speculated why the scientist Matthew Puncher involved in tracing the polonium poisoning of Putin critic Litvinenko was sent to Russia on inspection tours of a nuclear facility in the Urals knowing his health and life would be endangered ….His death was ruled a ‘ suicide’ .even though US intelligence passed on to their British authorities was never acted on or revealed ….One almost has the impression the witnesses and leads were being eliminated Gosh it must be a matter of time before the United Kingdom [ now a police state like Putin’s Russia , The CHIS legislation has seen to that ] resorts to political psychiatry to deal with whistleblowers and dissidents …Oh yeah…. I forgot about that https://globalresearch.ca/are-people-being-thrown-into-psychiatric-wards-for-their-political-views/32450
Ask them are you prepared to not be able to buy a petrol car and not able to have a gas boiler, You will laso have to pay a fortune for the priveledge of NOT having a choice. Ask that on your poll and see how many of the 1.3 million are then still supportive.
With surveys, the questions asked always are formed to get the desired result for whoever is paying for it. Telling people the present cost of subsidies and projecting future costs is only part of the answer. Asking people if they want to be less well off with high food and energy prices together with unreliable energy supply. Other consequences are; not being able to own a car due to costs of EV’s; pay 15,000 to 50,000 for an inadequate heating system; no efficient and reliable gas boilers allowed; upfront costs of insulating their houses; no cheap vacations; new infrastructure costs (National Grid replacement; local electricity distribution networks to each house; personal and local EV chargers; gas distribution networks and introduction of expensive and dangerous hydrogen gas)
Make the £500 bill voluntary, and see how many pay it. That would be a telling poll.
Ahh the political advice the Prime MInister gets! Always puts him in close contact with reality!😅
It is refreshing to see conservatives being abjectly political for once.
“Ditch ‘net zero’ commitment and lose 1.3 million votes, Boris Johnson warned”
The implication from ‘a think tank close to the party’ is that what’s good for the country isn’t as important as what’s good for Boris.
PublicFirst who allegedly conducted the poll gave yet to publish the tables and questions. Perhaps seb@publicfirst.com might be prevailed upon to oblige as he seems to be the person in charge of polling there. Meanwhole Onward have this article at their website
https://www.ukonward.com/reports/taking-the-temperature/
I think we know who Boris was quoting the other day when you read this delusional statement
iPrevious Onward research has shown how renewables investment over the last decade has actually cut consumer bills.
Which links to this utterly bizarre nonsense propaganda
https://www.ukonward.com/reports/renewed-importance-renewables-cut-bills/
This is right up there with the BBC claim about rising deaths from climate catastrophes. The logic is that now that there is a tiny net repayment from the CFD scheme bills are lower, while ignoring the soaring bills for ROCs and balancing costs. Blackwhite.
On that website is this quote:
“At the last general election more than 30 million voters backed parties committed to net zero. Since then we have made good progress towards this goal while encouraging other countries to do the same. But the global energy crisis and Ukraine conflict has led some to question whether the public still wants the Government to press ahead with the promise that it made in 2019. It is clear from this research that they do. My party would pay a heavy political price if it rowed back on net zero and so it is clear that the only option is to deliver on our promise.” Rt Hon Chris Skidmore MP
Er….as the 3 main parties signed a pact in 2015 and have identical Net Zero policies, how could you vote for anything else?
Cons = 13,941,086
Lab = 10,292,354
LibDem = 3,675,352
SNP = 1,242,380
Green = 876,743
Total = 30 million.
No-one was able to vote for anything other than Net Zero.
What’s the difference between voting Net Zero and a one party state?
IOW, they’ve (all) dug their own graves, and intend to continue laying in them (or is that lying in them?).
A reminder on what really has happened with electricity supplied under CFDs:
It doesn’t look like falling prices to me, but YMMV.
Lose 1.3 million non-thinkers and gain 5 million informed voters
The bill will be much larger than £500 each ?!
Retrofit, heat pump and EV you are not getting much change from £100k !
I believe the real cost is about 7.5% p.a. of GDP until 2050. That’s £2500 for every person (68 million population) per year (not a one-off bill, in fact it works out to £70k each at year 2050) . You can double that cost for people who are both of working age and in productive employment.
Ouch, that hurts
Speculation is fun, KB, but it’s clear Net Zero isn’t remotely possible. Costs aren’t for Net Zero, they are for pretending you can get to Net Zero. Heat pumps and EVs don’t get you any closer. They are Kabuki theatre for the elites.
Only no heat and no cars can gets you closer to Net Zero.
How about putting it to a referendum vote, but only if the true costs are laid bare for all to see?
I bet that the Net Zero loonies would never consent to having their pet projects put under any real-world scrutiny, although trying to get any alternative viewpoints fairly presented will be a massive undertaking.
William: Be careful what you wish for. Any referendum result would depend upon the age limit for voters – I expect fourteen would be chosen because its abouit “their” futures.
Not just that, but school science these days is more indoctrinate than educate, i.e. teach what to think not how to think.
Before you believe the numbers in an opinion poll, it is very important that you look at the way the questions were phrased for the poll. Otherwise good pollsters can give you whatever results you’d like by manipulating the questions. Sir Humphrey Appleby demonstrates this point most aptly to Bernard in Yes Prime Minister …
The PM has just received the results of an opinion poll. It says that 67% people would be in favor of reintroducing conscription. Sir Humphrey asks Bernard to get another opinion poll done in which the results are the opposite. Bernard can’t understand how people can be both for and against conscription. So, Sir Humphrey demonstrates by quizzing him…
“Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers?”
“Yes”
“Do you think there is lack of discipline and vigorous training in our Comprehensive Schools?”
“Yes”
“Do you think young people welcome some structure and leadership in their lives?”
“Yes”
“Do they respond to a challenge?”
“Yes”
“Might you be in favour of reintroducing National Service?”
“Yes”
Now onto Survey 2
“Mr. Woolley are you worried about the danger of war?”
“Yes”
“Are you unhappy about the growth of armaments?”
“Yes”
“Do you think there’s a danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill?”
“Yes”
“Do you think its wrong to force people to take up arms against their will?”
“Yes”
“Would you oppose the reintroduction of National Service?”
“Yes”
Sadly, they don’t make them like they used to do.
Ah, the “Independent”…
The Guardian’s more comprehensive – and IMO far more realistic – poll result however has this to say:
“Few willing to change lifestyle to save the planet, climate survey finds
Exclusive: poll of 10 countries including US, UK, France and Germany finds people prioritising measures that are already habits”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/07/few-willing-to-change-lifestyle-climate-survey
This is how it’s done
Always very slick. One of the best TV shows ever.
When it was first on TV we all thought it was a humourous programme; not an accurate forecast of future government lunacy. How we all laughed.
Delete ‘Yes, Minister’ and insert ‘How to cheat at politics’.
What were the questions? They were bound to be loaded.
This has all the hallmarks of another fake ‘conservative’ party sleight of hand trick. All this has been done many times before to pretend there’s public opinion for a certain policy.
Nobody wants utility bills of £3,000-5,000 per year. This is a fake ‘poll’.
From a straw poll amongst my acquaintances, I would place money on the actual figure being ADDING 1.3 millio votes if he scrapped the whole ludicrous idea!
Who the hell did they ask ?? Most of us with a brain would say the opposite !! I don’t know anybody who believes in “net zero”
The Prime Minister of New Zealand does. Something like this
https://www.mfat.govt.nz/kr/countries-and-regions/americas/mexico/new-zealand-embassy/new-zealand-sets-target-of-net-zero-emissions-by-2050/ and so on , and so on.
The strange thing is it appears net zero policy is unsustainable.
“The Independent” – owned by a Russian oligarch, who also owns The Evening Standard, misinforming the British public, along, it must be said, with all the other MSM publications to one degree or another.
While I agree with most of the comments, we mustn’t forget the public is being subjected to an extensive brainwashing campaign from the Government, BBC and virtually all the media with the exception of GB News and TalkRadio. Nothing will happen with the brainwashed Joe public until they are faced with loosing their heating, their cars, freedom to travel, power rationing and food rationing. Then I don’t know what will happen. Maybe something very nasty this country has not seen before.
“…faced with losing…”
Faced with a belated, dawning realization that all is already lost.
I am not a Conservative – never have been, never will be. So I can’t say I care about their electoral prospects, but I am utterly bemused at their stupidity in persisting with net zero. They will never gain any credit for pursuing these misguided policies from those to the left of centre, since they all support even crazier parties to the left whose “opposition” is not to stand up against the madness, but instead to say it doesn’t go far enough fast enough. Lib Dems, Labour, Greens, SNP, Plaid Cymru will always outflank the Tories on this issue.
While there are no votes to be gained, there are votes to be lost among both traditional Tory supporters and among poor working class people in the new “red wall” seats, with many of whom the net zero policy is very unpopular. Their problem of course is who to vote for instead? Even though Labour is more extreme on the net zero issue, red wall voters might go back to them out of tribal loyalties, since voting Tory has achieved nothing for them. Traditional Tories might well be tempted to vote Reform or UKIP instead, since they at least oppose the net zero madness.
As for me, I suppose I’ll be spoiling my ballot again.
And me – “Global Warming numpties all, not worthy of my vote”
I think I’ll be writing “None of the above – net zero democracy”, not least as we have only Labour, Tories and Lib Dems standing where I live. While I’m here, I might as well shamelessly plug this (hope you don’t mind, Paul):
Do read the Public Affairs Committee on NetZero. “Neither the private sector nor the Civil Service have the skills to deliver the Net Zero Strategy” And much much much more.
Oh, by the way, what is Net Zero? When I top up a United Airlines Boeing at Heathrow, how many trees do I have to plant?
Are we measuring in US or Imperial gallons? 🤣🤣
Actually, afaik, kilogrammes.
(I know this as a result of the ‘Gimli Glider incident’ – a right cock-up over gallons/US gallons and Kg.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+gimli+glider+incident&atb=v314-1&ia=web
The Civil Service does not have the skills to deliver anything except advice, often not very good advice at that ….
The only skills that our ‘Snivel Serpents’ have is to cover their backsides while denying that any of their advice was complete and utter rubbish. And all the while trousering excessively large salaries and god pated pensions paid for by the productive part of the economy
But gain 2.5 million votes.
The polling is meaningless because it doesn’t offer an alternative.
Ask: “If we ditch Net Zero and instead cut taxes by 10% and cut energy bills by 20% would you vote for us?”
Polling a simple ditch/not ditch is not how the word works.
PublicFirst have now published the poll data here
Click to access Public-First-Poll-for-Onward-1.pdf
There are some wonderful leading questions like
Do you agree or disagree with the following: Politicians who oppose Net Zero have been bought out by fossil fuel companies .
With no equivalent about greens.
Interesting, but every page just confirms the entire exercise is about protecting Net Zero policy.
It goes without saying there’d be no need to do any of this if Net Zero really was popular!
They read blogs like this, Guido and ConHome and see the negative BTL comments, but the real punchlines are at the Daily Mail and Telegraph sites, where BTL comments give NZ a relentless kicking.
They know full well NZ is extremely unpopular and this is before the true CoL crisis hits home.
It’s a vicious circle. They do this to *keep* Net Zero popular. It’s classic Goebbels propaganda messaging.
Farage questioned Ed Birkett from Onward about the ‘poll’. However he only established what the ‘first’ questioned asked was, see 1:25.
Do you support governments Net Zero targets? 60% ‘support’. 10% ‘oppose’.
After that he didn’t pursue any other follow up questions, so it’s unclear how many questions the public were asked in total.
It’s at least 119 according to the published data tables. The interesting thing is that the first numbered question reported on is
(1.A) You said you would vote for the Conservative if there was a general election. If this option was unavailable, which party would you vote for instead, if any?
Which clearly was not the first question asked in the poll. I think I will press for a proper list of questions in the order they were asked – or at least ridicule PublicFirst and Onward.
I succeeded in getting them to put up a corrected version on the questions and tables. Available here:
Click to access Public-First-Poll-Onward-1.pdf
Thank you. Will done.
Q15.A “Thinking further ahead, to the future lives of your children and grandchildren, which issues do you think are most important facing the country?”
Top answer? ‘Cost of living’!
Do they realise that’s BECAUSE of Net Zero policies!
It seems to me that much of the polling is really a marketing exercise. First, establish how well the propaganda is being lapped up by the population. Then test various lines to take to see which appear to have greater traction. You can imagine advice going out on how to maximise net zero support by talking about it in the right way and avoiding the wrong messages. Is it really any different from dissecting the popularity of flavours for Sunshine Desserts?
Here’s the Onward report.
Blatantly obvious the sole purpose of the report is to promote Net Zero at all costs, by pretending Net Zero is overwhelmingly popular amongst voters and that the Tories would lose 1.3 million votes if they ditched it.
https://www.ukonward.com/reports/taking-the-temperature/
The report starts with “At the last general election more than 30 million voters backed parties committed to net zero.”. What they don’t say, is that there’s no option, as there’s no main party that opposes the policy.
Exactly. Propaganda from page 1, all the way down.
That poll looks implausible to commenters on this blog, but it may reflect something I’ve noticed for many years, that a significant number of Conservative voters don’t really bother to follow politics. It requires some effort to follow politics, even more so in the 21st Century when the main political parties have all crowded into the so-called “centre ground”. People who don’t put the effort in to follow politics are going to be much more susceptible to being influenced by the pro-Green stance of broadcasters like the BBC. Until GB News appeared in 2021, there was no representation of an anti-Green viewpoint in UK TV broadcasting at all.
An example of the strange behaviour of Conservative voters in regard to Greenery was demonstrated in a poll described in a Breitbart article from 2014, where voters were asked about their preferences regarding government coalition partners in the event that another UK coalition government had to be formed following next year’s 2015 General Election.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2014/12/02/Tories-would-rather-have-coalition-with-Greens-than-UKIP/
“Alarmingly, the survey found the party that the voters would most like to see in a coalition is the Greens, with 52 per cent saying they would be happy and 42 per cent – possibly the ones who follow British politics – unhappy to see them in government.
This could be down to a lack of understanding about the policies of the left wing party which has escaped virtually any media scrutiny and instead relies on soft PR messages such as protecting wildlife and trees with the occasional scare story about fracking.”
In this survey, 52% of Conservative voters were reported to be happy to form a coalition with the Greens following the 2015 General Election, and 42% of voters would be unhappy. As the author of the Breitbart article notes, the unhappy 42% are probably the Conservative voters who put some effort into following politics.
And look what happened in Germany when there was a coalition with the greens!! Their normal, rational, ‘engineering’ approach that produced a strong economy went out of the window. Nuclear irrationally shut down (because of Fukushima) and high reliance on unreliables.
Correction to my previous comment – the Breitbart article is a bit confusingly written. After checking the results of the poll that the article links to, the 52% happy, 42% unhappy statistic refers to all voters, not just Conservative voters.
For Conservative voters in the poll, the correct figures were: 42% happy to see the Greens in a coalition government that might form in 2015, 56% unhappy.
But 42% of Conservative voters being happy with the idea of the Greens being in government is still a disturbingly high figure.