We are still a few short weeks away from April and the second and third strikes of the bell which will make cost of living resound as the loudest point of domestic political contention in 2022.
The hikes in employers and employee National Insurance contributions are looming.
In addition, we have the rampaging effects of inflation, which is taking us back to historic levels seen a good few decades ago and unknown to this generation. The third horseman of this cost of living apocalypse is the well-telegraphed end to the energy cap for around 22m customers. Unlike the David Cameron years, there is no wiggle room to sort out the ‘green crap’ for short-term political expediency. As the popular TV show would have it, this is going to hurt.
As it stands, the net zero strategy is walled inside the cost of living maelstrom. Questions remain over how immovable are nailed-on commitments for those longer-term feats of necessary engineering – physical, behavioural economic, and social as much as environmental.
And in a manner redolent of the Brexit debate, the route to net zero is being presented among the more libertarian right in terms of a remote elite versus the left behind, or another populist struggle between anywhere and somewhere.
This involves Steve Baker and that section of the Conservative Party that ran the disciplined European Research Group in the Brexit years. Under this new guise, the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, which involves 19 Conservative backbenchers, claims in linking net zero to the cost of living crisis, that it exists to contest the huge economic and social costs involved.
Another Brexit warrior leading the charge is millionaire former property developer Richard Tice. Now the leader of Reform UK, which is the new moniker for the Brexit Party, he is determined to make a culture war of net zero – or ‘net stupid’ as he brands it on the grounds it will impoverish the country by sending UK jobs and money to China.
His argument is that this is a bigger issue for people’s daily lives than even Brexit was and worthy of a national debate and national referendum as an expression of direct democracy. Mercifully, in the light of experience of the May by-election in Hartlepool, it would seem that Tice doesn’t have the message and campaign discipline to complete the long march to a divisive net zero vote.
However, there is reason to understand and be wary of the threat of populist agitation around net zero. Firstly, the gap between economic ambitions and reality remains yawningly vast. To take one instance, a stated ambition is to establish two million jobs in clean growth by 2030. Between 2014 and 2020 the number of people employed in the low carbon and renewable energy sector fell by 28,000 to around 200,000 while turnover flatlined.
Or take domestic heating retrofitting as another example of where the rubber hits the road, something Localis investigated last year. Here the failure to factor in huge regional variations in property costs when offering incentives to homeowners and landlords to do their bit to hit national net zero targets risks deepening economic inequality.
The Government’s Net Zero Strategy states that central and local government will need to work closely together to deliver interim carbon budgets. Government estimates that local authorities are responsible for more than 30% of the emissions reductions needed across all sectors to deliver on carbon budget targets.
However, with all the best goodwill in the world, the local state – in the way it is currently configured and resourced – will be unable to square this net zero circle. Recognising the scale and depth of this problem should force us to confront how it might be possible, and what kind of approach would be needed at the level of place, to adapt many aspects of everyday life to achieve a decarbonised future. We can either think hard and take resolute action at local level or abandon the field of play to the net zero culture war.
Jonathan Werran is chief executive of Localis
@Localis
