June 21, 2024 - 7:00am

The advance of Reform UK under Nigel Farage has been spectacular. But it isn’t the only direction in which the Conservatives are losing support.

According to polling data featured by PoliticsHome, “around one in six 2019 Conservative voters who want to see action taken on the climate said they will switch parties at the coming election.” These are nicknamed the “Turquoise Tories” — a reference to the blue and green political sympathies that millions of people hold at the same time. (Conservatism and conservation, who knew?)

According to the report, Turquoise Toryism is especially strong in seats like North Herefordshire, which is notable because the Ipsos MRP poll published this week shows the seat switching from the Conservatives to the Green Party.

But is it even conceivable that dyed-in-the-wool Tory seats could switch directly to the Greens, a party well to the Left of Labour? Well, yes: it’s been happening in local elections for several years now with increasing numbers of wards and county divisions flipping from blue to green. But there’s not the slightest sign that the Conservative Party under Rishi Sunak has taken the threat seriously.

What’s more, there’s a paler green option in the form of the Liberal Democrats, currently poised to win scores of Tory constituencies across southern England. Then there’s the effect of generational change — not just the very youngest voters, but older cohorts too. As the Telegraph reports, Conservatives are now less popular than the Greens among the under-50s.

One might think that given Brexit, plus the failure to tackle the housing crisis and provocations such as the quadruple lock and the return of National Service, the Tories might at least reach out to younger voters on environmental issues. But, instead, Sunak has gone out of his way to alienate Turquoise Tories.

For instance, he sacked Zac Goldsmith from the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs while shuffling in the likes of Thérèse Coffey and Mark Spencer. In a blow to the UK’s clean tech sector, the Prime Minister dismantled the Government’s industrial strategy and simultaneously eviscerated Natural England (the public body whose job it is to protect what’s left of this country’s biodiversity). Worst of all, he misinterpreted the result of the Uxbridge by-election by authorising a general assault on the climate policies established by Boris Johnson.

The loss of Turquoise Tories isn’t even compensated for by gains among no-nonsense folk who’ve had enough of green extremism. Pro-environmentalism unites the majority of voters, including those in seats the Conservatives captured from Labour in 2019. And even if there is a potential eco-sceptic vote, it clearly hasn’t been mobilised by the Government’s anti-green posturing. The Red Wall, where such voters are supposedly found, is about to collapse back to Labour. Meanwhile, Blue Wall seats in what used to be the Conservative heartlands are in danger. According to Bloomberg, party campaigners are now withdrawing resources from Tory not-so-marginals to save their last crumbling strongholds.

There are many reasons for the fast-approaching rout, not least the wilful failure to control immigration. But prime among the plentiful screw-ups is Sunak’s decision to diminish the green Conservative legacy. Not only was it morally questionable, it was politically useless to boot.


Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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