Liz Truss will be a disaster for the for the UK and the climate warns Green Party co-leader. By Adam Colclough

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📸 Chris McAndrew

The Green Party has warned that the new administration led by Liz Truss could further fuel problems around climate change and inequality.


Truss won the leadership of the Conservative Party following a sometimes-bruising internal election campaign initiated by the resignation of Boris Johnson in July, beating rival Rishi Sunak to gain 57% of the votes cast by party members.

Her plans for helping families struggling to make ends meet as the cost-of-living crisis continues are focused on a ÂŁ30 billion package of tax cuts, including to green levies on energy bills.

Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer described reported plans by the incoming prime minister to encourage oil and gas companies to extract more fossil fuels from the North Sea and plans to cut the green levy as “reckless” and demonstrated that Liz Truss was “making an ideological choice to curry favour with friends and Tory Party donors in the oil and gas industry”.

Adding that “Burning more fossil fuels will simply speed up climate breakdown, giving us more extreme heat, floods, storms and food shortages in the UK and across the world”.

The Greens are calling for the new prime minister to act on the immediate impact of the cost-of-living crisis by lowering the energy price cap to where it was in October 2021, launching a nationwide home insulation programme and investing in renewable energy.

This, she said, “will provide the immediate action needed to help people right now, as well as looking ahead to ensure costs and emissions are kept to a minimum in the years to come”.

Despite having won over Conservative Party members, Truss has, so far failed to convince the public she is on their side over the energy crisis and the rising cost of living.

A YouGov poll reported by the Independent found that 67% of all voters and 54% of Tory voters expressed doubts about her plans to help those struggling to make ends meet, only 14% thought she would be an improvement on Boris Johnson.

Speaking about the process by which Liz Truss was elected, in which only members of the Conservative Party had a vote (0.1%of the electorate) Carla Denyer having our most senior politician chosen “by such a small and unrepresentative group of people, is a disaster for the UK and the climate”.

Carla Denyer said that “immediate action” was needed to help individuals and families who are going to struggle this winter and that there was also a need to “look ahead to ensure costs and emissions are kept to a minimum in years to come”.

She added that “We can invest in a cleaner, greener, more affordable future, but doing so was a “political choice”, and that the Greens urged “Liz Truss to take a path that helps create a fairer society while tackling the climate crisis.”