Conservatives and Reform united on a mission to discredit net zero

Just as Labour forges ahead with its net zero policies, the two main rightwing parties are openly questioning long-settled climate science in what seems to be a mission to discredit and confuse the whole issue.

- Fiona Harvey and Helena Horton

It is a development that would have been unthinkable three years ago, when a four-decade-long, cross-party consensus on the climate held firm.

Now the Conservative leadership has abandoned its commitment to net zero targets and Reform wants to make it the key battleground, after immigration, for the next election. How did we get here?

Reform has always had climate-sceptic tendencies, but the party's attack on climate science has reached new depths. Richard Tice, the party's energy spokesperson, told the Guardian: "Scientists do not all have a consensus on this. Some view things slightly differently... Do I think that [the carbon dioxide humans are putting into the atmosphere] will definitely change the climate? No. There is no evidence that it is."