The backlash against net-zero begins

Green grandstanding is starting to grate, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

blocks with different types of energy supply
(Image credit: Getty Images)

First Tony Blair. Then Philip Hammond. Then the floodgates. For the past decade there has been a consensus among politicians (and the general population) that the UK must reach net-zero – by 2050 and by any means possible. Not any more. In an interview with The New Statesman, Blair more or less called our efforts pointless. Hammond said his party had been “systematically dishonest” about the costs of said efforts. And Sunak promised to grant a hundred new licences for North Sea oil and gas while insisting that he is “on the side” of motorists

Much of the media was onside, too. Columnist Camilla Long had a go in The Sunday Times for example. Who’d be a little person these days? she said. “No heating, no eating, no driving, no flying: almost everything the ordinary person enjoys is haram.” In The Telegraph, Camilla Tominey said net-zero risks “turning into a disaster for the West – and more specifically, Western consumers”. 

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.