Isaac Levido, the strategy guru behind Boris Johnson’s 2019 victory, has spent much of the summer working on the overhaul of Rishi Sunak’s green policies.
One of the goals has been to find that elusive political property: a dividing line with Labour that Tory strategists believe will present voters with a clear choice at next year’s election.
Sunak’s pitch over the coming months will be that he is saving “hard-pressed families from unacceptable costs” of green policies, while trying to present Labour as piling them on.
With the prime minister’s electoral options narrowing, there is a desire to attack the opposition’s £28bn of spending on supporting the transition to net zero.
Sources close to the discussions in No 10 over the past few weeks say this strategy gained traction after the Uxbridge byelection, in which the Tories narrowly held on to the seat.
Tory advisers could see voter opposition to the Ulez tax on high emission vehicles in London – though the final decision to delay the move to electric vehicles and non-gas boilers was taken much more recently.
However, No 10 sources say the U-turn was not about pursuit of short-term political advantage. “This is not about the politics,” Sunak claimed in his speech.
Sunak’s advisers say he has been mulling the U-turn for a long time, and that he was considering a shift even beforeUxbridge. They point to his record of questioning fellow cabinet ministers about the cost of some net zero targets even as chancellor.
No 10 insiders say Sunak ordered the net zero review before the summer break because he wasn’t convinced that all of the measures on cars and boilers were cost-effective and necessary to hit the UK’s 2050 targets. He also failed to get answers to reassure him from officials.
Levido, who is expected to play a major role in Sunak’s election campaign next year, was tasked to work on the political messaging.
The direction of travel was also set when Claire Coutinho, a former adviser to Sunak who became an MP in 2019, was elevated to the role of energy secretary in this month’s reshuffle.
And since the start of the autumn term, the political operation in No 10 has had a shake-up, with Jamie Njoku-Goodwin and Adam Atashzai joining about two weeks ago.
Both were set to work on sharpening the political messaging around the change in policy and Sunak’s landmark speech.
Senior advisers within Downing Street felt the narrative around net zero for the Tories had been too woolly and the new shift would stress that Sunak was prepared to confront tricky choices on behalf of consumers – although campaigners are warning it could actually cost some of the poorest even more, especially renters in draughty homes.
However, one source with knowledge of the discussion raging within No 10 said the decision to delay the petrol and diesel ban in particular had proved finely balanced, with worries about the reaction of business.
One Tory insider said of the mood in No 10: “Not everybody is 100% sure that this is the wisest thing to do. Nobody is actively opposed but there is some nervousness about it.”
They also said this was very much Sunak’s own project. “Rishi is obviously of a Treasury mindset and the Treasury has always been sceptical of these targets. When he became prime minister this was always in the ether,” they said.
“This is not a new thing since Uxbridge or something that has been forced upon him by Isaac or the others: there’s definitely a bit of ‘we need to let Rishi be Rishi’.
“They’ve done the caution bit, it’s not been hugely successful, so we might as well let him do what he wants to do.”
No 10 sources said it was not the case that Sunak had taken any persuading by political strategists, as it was his true belief that the move was necessary, and that it was his own move to order the review.
Nevertheless, the leak of the strategy to the BBC on Tuesday, triggering a backlash from the car industry and some pro-green Tories, did cause “sheer bloody panic” in Downing Street.
A late-night statement from Sunak was issued to signal that changes were on the way, and the prime minister’s speech was brought forward from Friday to Wednesday.
Advisers around Sunak repeatedly stressed that they believed businesses would not be put out when they had heard the nuances of the prime minister’s speech.
Many Tories on the right of the party were delighted by the news, having long lobbied for a watering-down of the commitments on cars and boilers brought in by Boris Johnson. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, was one of them, telling the Guardian he had been pushing for these measures for a long time.
“I haven’t been lobbying privately but I have been making the case for this for some time. I think the measures are extremely sensible and is what I was arguing for during my brief time as energy secretary – that we need a sensitive net zero that takes the cost of living on board.”
He added that Sunak was never particularly wedded to these policies: “I think it is not so much a change of his mind but moving to the inevitable. I don’t think it required much lobbying or a change of heart.”
However, the wealth of voices on the other side – Tories such as Johnson and Alok Sharma, opposition parties, a chorus of businesses, climate experts – illustrate the risks of the path that Sunak has taken.
Labour is likely to seize on the idea that Sunak’s choice has put him on the side of Liz Truss and portray him as her ideological sibling, prone to policies that alarm business and endanger the economy.
“The calculation is that it is worth the knock for the electoral advantage of creating a dividing line. Businesses don’t vote and the consumer element is a big part of it,” the Tory insider said.
“Ultimately the decision was: this is what the PM personally feels plus we can create a dividing line with Labour. That may be right on this particular policy, but the question is: how do voters feel about the government changing its mind?
“The Conservatives like to paint Starmer as the flip-flopper but this blunts that attack.”
