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The ‘Overton window’ is political jargon for what is acceptable to talk about publicly at any one time. The window shifts around – in the 2005 UK General Election, the Conservative Party was pilloried for posters saying “Are you thinking what we’re thinking? It’s not racist to impose limits on immigration.” which seems almost quaint compared to the viciously anti-immigrant rhetoric from a certain ilk of political parties all around the world today. A new policy can open up the Overton window around it: when the Blair Government introduced civil partnerships for same sex couples in 2004, it almost certainly shifted the Overton window enough to allow the Coalition Government to introduce fully equal marriage in 2014.

Once taken as read, climate change and, latterly, Net Zero targets have been under fire of late, particularly on the right of politics. Famously it was Margaret Thatcher who gave the first ever major speech from a national leader calling for action on the climate, and David Cameron literally hugged a husky in Arctic Norway to decontaminate the Conservative Party brand after that 2005 ‘nasty party’ campaign. It was another Conservative PM, Theresa May, who introduced the UK’s Net Zero target (with barely a murmur of dissent) and yet another, Boris Johnson, who launched the country’s EV mandate and the targets to phase out domestic gas boilers.

So many reacted with a certain amount of whiplash when current Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch dropped her party’s support for Net Zero in March 2025. She and many of her shadow cabinet members are on record lauding Net Zero, both its necessity and its desirability, and yet now they denounce it in apocalyptic terms as if it was always a terrible idea but they were just going along with it. They are even excluding party grandees as future election candidates if they support leaving a stable planet for our grandchildren.

Badenoch clearly believes the climate Overton window has shifted, but has it? Since ditching Net Zero, Badenoch has lost a whopping 1200 Council seats – unheard of for an Opposition Party up against an extremely unpopular Prime Minister in Keir Starmer. Yes, many of those seats were lost to the always anti-Net Zero Reform UK party, but are people voting Reform because of climate policy, or because of immigration, or simply to stick two fingers up to the establishment? And how will Badenoch fare against the more charismatic Andy Burnham? Or in the 50 Conservative-held seats where the pro-Net Zero Liberal Democrats are their nearest challengers? Yes, she won a by-election in Aberdeen, home of the UK’s oil and gas industry, but there are only two Aberdeen constituencies and she hasn’t been competitive in any other Parliamentary by-election.

I’m going to stick my neck out and suggest that there won’t be another Conservative Prime Minister until they too tramp across a glacier and throw their arms around an Arctic mammal. Elections are won from the centre and climate policy is square in the Overton window of centrists.