LONDON — Former British Prime Minister Theresa May laid into her own political party Monday night, accusing it of taking a populist tilt to the right that risks emboldening Nigel Farage.
May criticized the Conservatives’ decision to repeal the Climate Change Act 2008, which requires the government to cut carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050, as an “extreme and unnecessary measure” that would “fatally undermine” Britain’s leadership on climate issues.
The U.K. committed to reaching net zero under May’s administration, something Tory Leader Kemi Badenoch has since called “impossible.” Badenoch has also advocated extensive oil and gas extraction from the North Sea.
“This announcement only reinforces climate policy as a dividing line in our politics, rather than being the unifying issue it once was,” May told fellow members of the House of Lords. “And, for the Conservative Party, it risks chasing votes from Reform at the expense of the wider electorate.”
May also lambasted the “villainization of the judiciary” by politicians “peddling populist narratives” and said this would “erode public trust in the institutions of our democracy and therefore in democracy itself.”
Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick, who narrowly lost the Tory leadership contest last year, used his conference speech earlier this month as a tirade against “dozens of judges with ties to open-borders charities” and said “judges who blur the line between adjudication and activism can have no place in our justice system.”
Though May recalled “frustrating” experiences coming up “against the courts” as a minister, she urged her party to “tread carefully.”
“Every step we take to reduce our support for human rights merely emboldens our rivals and weakens our position in the world,” the former prime minister said. “Those politicians in the Western world who use populism and polarisation for their own short-term political ends risk handing a victory to our enemies.”
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