Establishment beware: ‘Mr Brexit’ Nigel Farage has launched a new campaign with Britain’s ‘net zero madness’ in his crosshairs, calling for ruinous green policies to be put to a referendum.
British political firebrand and Brexit pioneer Nigel Farage has turned his sights on what he calls the UK government’s “net zero madness”, and will now campaign for a referendum on green policies championed by Boris Johnson.
As part of this effort, Farage — alongside Reform UK leader Richard Tice — have launched the cross-party “Vote Power Not Poverty” campaign, which looks to halt current plans looking to decarbonise the UK’s economy by 2050.
“We deserve a national debate and referendum on these life-changing plans,” reads the new campaign’s website, which argues the Net Zero plans are “actually Net Stupid”.
“We all care about the environment and want cleaner air. We all want to do our bit,” the site argues. “But Westminster’s Net Zero is the wrong bit, at the wrong price, in the wrong timeframe.”
“The Westminster Net Zero plans will force us to change the cars we drive, change the way we heat our homes, change how much we travel and what we eat,” it continues.
“It is a radical change in the way we live. We deserve a national debate and referendum on these life-changing plans.”
Nigel Farage — one of the major figures launching the new campaign — has meanwhile stated that his intent is to kill off “Boris Johnson’s ruinous green agenda”.
“We need a referendum on the net zero madness,” Nigel Farage wrote on his social media. Laying into the wealthy elites who often seem most comfortable with the soaring cost of living attached to green levies and policies, he said: “The Richmond Greens don’t have to worry about paying their gas bills — but millions of ordinary people do.”
“We demand a referendum on Net Zero,” Farage also stated.
Vote Power not Poverty’s meanwhile has said that such referendum is necessary to tackle the issue due to the current state of British parliamentary democracy.
“The Government and all the political parties in Westminster are imposing energy policies under the title ‘Net Zero’,” reads the campaign’s website.
“As all the current political parties in Westminster support ever more Net Zero, so parliamentary democracy fails, since there has been no alternative to vote for,” it goes on to claim.
Despite the Prime Minister’s strong backing of the Net Zero plans, a recent report has claimed that Boris Johnson has, in reality, “no idea” how much such a decarbonisation plan would actually cost.
“The government has unveiled a plan without answers to the key questions of how it will fund the transition to net zero, including how it will deliver policy on and replace income from taxes such as fuel duty, or even a general direction of travel on levies and taxation,” the public accounts committee said regarding the government’s decarbonisation strategy.
The report also noted the Johnson administration has “no reliable estimate” of the costs of such a venture.
“Government has too often pursued stop-start strategies which undermine confidence for business, investors and consumers in committing to measures which would reduce carbon emissions, especially when some green alternatives are still significantly more expensive than current options,” the report also claimed.
Meanwhile, a significant plurality of Britons support the idea of having a referendum on the topic of Net Zero, with 42 per cent of people responding positively to the idea in a poll conducted, though a slim majority remains at least somewhat sceptical of such a vote.