ONLY 16% OF UK VOTERS WANT TO PRIORITISE NET ZERO

 Matt Goodwin: The Sun, 8 September 2023 

If Rishi Sunak is to have any chance of winning the next General Election, then he should be doing a lot more to tap into people’s growing sense of exasperation with the spiralling costs of Net Zero.

That’s the message from my latest ­polling on what ordinary people who took a punt on Boris Johnson in 2019 really think about the expansion of green policies such as the Ultra-Low Emission Zone in London, where the owners of non-compliant vehicles must pay £12.50 each time they drive.

Were you to listen only to the expert class, to London Mayor Sadiq Khan or the new elite who dominate the institutions, then you might be forgiven for thinking that these kinds of policies are incredibly popular among the public. But the reality, as my polling shows, is quite different.

Much like globalisation in the 1990s, or the rise of mass immigration in the 2000s and the 2010s, many people today are becoming sceptical, if not outright opposed, to the spiralling costs of this agenda.

Only one in four say they would like to see a Ulez-type scheme operating in their own local area. The vast majority would not.

But it’s the coalition of voters from across the political spectrum who backed Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party in 2019 — many of whom are the same people who backed Brexit — who are especially opposed to footing the bills for things such as Ulez and the creeping influence of Net Zero.

These voters, remember, are absolutely critical for Sunak’s chances next year.  Sunak is currently only holding on to half of Johnson’s 2019 voters.

Ask people whether they want their leaders in Westminster to prioritise Net Zero even if this increases people’s bills or prioritise lowering their bills even if this undermines the quest to achieve Net Zero and the vast majority strongly favour the latter.

Only 16 per cent want to prioritise Net Zero.

Ask Conservative voters from 2019 — the very people who will determine whether or not Sunak remains in power — and just seven per cent want their leaders to prioritise Net Zero while nearly three-quarters (72 per cent) want them to prioritise slashing the cost of living.

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