Dan Wootton: There must be a referendum on Net Zero

Have you ever lived through a time when our so-called leaders have been more out of touch with everyday Brits than the past seven days of unbridled hypocrisy at the Flop – oh sorry I mean Cop – 26 charade in Glasgow?

Having watched the spectacle with growing rage from afar, I’d go as far to say the political class and media elite have never been this disconnected with the honest hardworking folk they are meant to represent.

Of course, we want to protect our planet – I’ve been a proud environmentalist since I was a child. To be told that we must fundamentally change our way of life by a bunch of preening multi-millionaires who flew in to visit us on carbon spewing private jets is a bad joke gone too far.

Think of what the privileged have expected us to turn a blind eye to this past week.

There’s doddery Joe Biden so bored with the apparent bid to stop the world ending that he fell asleep. There’s the BBC actively campaigning for the end of all coal mining in the UK, throwing impartiality out the window. There’s the Insulate Britain terrorists continuing to stop us going to work, school and hospital – even though they haven’t bothered to insulate their own homes. There’s Prince Charles wading into politics again by encouraging the world to start a “vast military-style campaign” against climate change.

And then there’s the hypocrite in chief – the big boss of Cop26 sponsor Sky Dana Strong.

Even Boris Johnson flew back to Westminster from Scotland on one. Yet his government wants you and me to spend tens of thousands of pounds we do not have to replace our gas boiler with hopeless heat pumps and to replace our petrol and diesel vehicles with expensive electric cars. And that’s just the start.

After the brilliant Brexit vote that granted the great British public freedom from the EU, I thought the era of game changing referendums should be over. But I have changed my mind.

There must be a referendum on Net Zero so Brits are given the chance to democratically endorse the biggest change to how we live in a generation. There is no real political debate going on about such a seismic change – one that will massively increase our cost of living.

No wonder Red Wall voters say they fear being “taxed ridiculously” and “bled dry”, with the worst effects hitting “the people in the middle like them while the very richest and poorest have protection”.

A petition for a referendum on whether to keep the 2050 Net Zero target now has over 16,000 signatures, meaning the government must respond. If it gets to 100,000 signatures, which it almost certainly will, then it will be considered for a debate in parliament.

I know why there is such outrage – because the UK has already more than played our part. We have reduced our carbon emissions faster than any other major democracy – over half in just 30 years and we now contribute less than one per cent of the world’s emissions.

China is at 27 per cent and fast growing. As the brave Tory MP for Shipley Philip Davies wrote in a letter to a constituent that has now gone viral about his government’s plan for Net Zero: “Such action would be utterly futile, virtue signalling, gesture politics which would also bankrupt the country along with many families."

"The estimated cost of getting from less than one per cent of global carbon emissions to net zero is estimated to be £1 trillion in the UK – that is money the country and many of my constituents can ill afford.”

Of course, we want a clean planet. But there’s absolutely no reason that hardworking Brits should pay for it while China and India do what the hell they want.