Rishi Sunak feels the heat and U-turns on attending Cop27
Rishi Sunak has caved in to demands to attend the Cop27 climate summit in Egypt with new data showing Britain is on course for its hottest year ever.
The prime minister made a dramatic U-turn having insisted he was too busy dealing with the domestic economy.
Labour said he had been ‘dragged kicking and screaming into doing the right thing’ – amid fears in Downing Street that Mr Sunak risks being upstaged by Boris Johnson.
The former PM turned up the heat on his successor after accepting an invitation to the talks and jibing that climate concerns were now ‘unfashionable’.
Revealing his change of heart, Mr Sunak tweeted: ‘There is no long-term prosperity without action on climate change. There is no energy security without investing in renewables. That is why I will attend Cop27 next week.’
The PM angered environmentalists last month when he removed climate minister Alok Sharma from the cabinet, a year after he had hosted the Cop26 summit in Glasgow.
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Last week, the United Nations admitted there was now ‘no credible pathway’ to keeping global warming below 1.5C, after a summer that saw temperatures hit 40C in the UK for the first time.
And yesterday, the Met Office revealed that every day was hotter than average in the UK last month, reaching 22.9C as late as October 29.
‘The first ten months of 2022 were the warmest on record, tracking ahead of 2014’s warmest year on record for the UK,’ a spokesman told Metro.co.uk.
Mr Sunak’s Cop27 reversal came on the day No.10 announced he was ditching many of his key Tory leadership campaign pledges. He has scrapped plans to revive fracking but his vow to make Britain self-sufficient in energy by 2045 is one of many up for review.
These include cutting 1p off the basic income tax rate, creating 200 community diagnostics hubs, ending NHS waits of longer than a year and blocking housebuilding on green belt land.
The PM’s spokeswoman said he remained ‘committed to the sentiments’ but admitted they are suspended as he struggles to close a £40billion black hole ahead of the November 17 budget.
World leaders including US president Joe Biden, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz have all said they will be attending the summit.
Liz Truss, in her period as PM, reportedly banned King Charles from travelling to Cop27 but he will host a reception for some of the delegates at Buckingham Palace tomorrow.
Labour’s Ed Miliband, the shadow climate change secretary, said Mr Sunak was going to the summit ‘to avoid embarrassment, not to provide leadership’. And Friends of the Earth said he had avoided a ‘remarkable own goal’ as it welcomed his change of heart.
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