There’s been an enormous amount of discussion online about the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s decision to put back the ban on the sale of internal combustion engine cars to 2035. Whilst this is welcome news to many in Britain I’m not altogether trusting of Sunak as to whether he’s telling the truth. This is because we’ve seen Sunak bullshit before on the issue of migration both legal and illegal. Sunak’s announcement could merely be cynical electioneering as all that this move does is bring Britain into line with the European Union’s policy. However, if we put that aside then it could represent a welcome return to realism among British politicians. One reason for this, as outlined by the Climate Resistance Twitter account is that the world has changed from when the Green Blob in the Civil Service and in the Quangos created policies like the internal combustion engine, ban which former PM Boris Johnson just rubber stamped. Climate Resistance’s piece is excellent and I would strongly advise people to read it.

Climate Resistance said:

Sunak can see all of these problems. And none of them are going to be solved by banning petrol and diesel car sales in 2030, or by banning boilers. The world is a fundamentally different place now, post-Brexit, post-covid, post-Russia-Ukraine, after 15 years of Climate Change Act failures, and the deindustrialisation of the West. All that carrying on with Net Zero as usual is going to do is, far from strengthening Britain’s position on the ‘world stage’, is further undermine our economy and industries, and political stability.

Nobody else, except countries facing equivalent problems, perhaps, cares about our degenerate political class’s ideological fantasies. Global climate policy is collapsing as global politics shifts, whereas the basis for the UK’s draconian domestic climate policy agenda was ALWAYS global political institutions: the EU & UN etc, not domestic popular support. It’s not 2008 any more. Neither the ROW nor the UK public are as tolerant of being pushed around. And utopian, technocratic, supranational political ambitions look like so much cynical build-back-better bullshit that simply do not wash.

The histrionics that are now the counterpoint to Sunaks mildest possible Net-Zero flip-flop are the chorus of an extremely small, but extremely noisy and over-indulged part of British society that has got far to used to not being slapped down by reality, and, like spoilt infants, they are determined to find the boundaries of their behaviour. They are utterly deranged by ideology, and incapable of allowing their claims to be tested by simple arithmetic. They speak glibly in the most superficial terms about things they know nothing about: how the world must be organised; how the entire economy will be powered; how ordinary people’s lives will be managed. They lie. They try to tell people that banning things and imposing expensive restrictions will make them better off, make them safer and ‘create jobs’. From bottomless bank accounts, they commission idiot wonks at remote think tanks to produce glossy ideological bunk.

https://twitter.com/clim8resistance/status/1704667957350076672

Well said there. Sunak’s moves are indeed of the mildest possible and there’s every possible chance that he will go back on his word should the Tories win the next General Election. However it does give the nation a window of opportunity to get common sense rather than lunatic ideology at the centre of Britain’s energy policy.