Election 2024: Former Tory tsar to vote for Labour

The former Tory net zero tsar Chris Skidmore has revealed he will back Labour at the July 4 general election.

Skidmore, who quit as a Conservative MP in January over government plans for new oil and gas licences, laid into the Prime Minister over what he called “siding with climate deniers”.

His resignation triggered a by-election in Kingswood, near Bristol, which Labour won.

It makes the former minister the biggest Tory name so far to lend his backing to Sir Keir Starmer’s party, as Rishi Sunak leads his party into the final two weeks of the campaign.  

Writing in the Guardian on Thursday, Skidmore – who led the government’s net zero review in 2023 – mounted a personal attack on Sunak.

He accused him of “extremist rhetoric that frames net zero policies as an imposition”, driven by “ignorance and deliberate misinformation”.

Skidmore said “Sunak’s decision instead to side with climate deniers and to deliberately politicise the energy transition is perhaps the greatest tragedy of his premiership.

“It has cost us not just environmentally but also economically. It is a decision that will also cost votes, including those in my own constituency.

“For the first time, I cannot vote for a party that has boasted of new oil and gas licences in its manifesto or that now argues that net zero is a burden and not a benefit.

“Instead, like many others who know that we have neither choice nor any more time, and need to tackle the climate crisis now, I have decided that the Labour Party is best placed to achieve economic growth and the green industrial revolution.”

He added: “Net zero is one of its five key priorities, and for this reason I will be voting Labour at this election.”

Sunak’s move to roll back net zero commitments “risks losing Britain the greatest economic opportunity in a generation”, Skidmore argued.

“Worse still has been an extremist rhetoric that frames net zero policies as an imposition,” he said.

Previous Tory governments “understood” the energy transition was “inevitable and needed to be carefully managed and incentivised”, he wrote.