From virtue to vice: The Tories are easing up on their own modest environmental targets

Editorial: The PM is taking all the wrong lessons from his narrow squeak of a win at the Uxbridge by-election, and is posturing as the protector of hard-pressed families against the supposed excesses of environmentalism. In doing so, he is playing a dangerous game

Prime minister Rishi Sunak during his visit to the Shell St Fergus gas plant in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire (PA)

The political world is well used to the phenomenon of “virtue signalling” – tokenistic gestures designed purely for show and approbation, usually in relation to progressive causes.

The prime minister has now gone one better and invented what might be termed “vice signalling”, with his latest package of measures designed to show that he and his government are easing up even on their own modest environmental targets.

Fossil fuels, it would seem, are back in fashion, and Rishi Sunak is keen to garner the wrath of the green movement in an effort to prove just how uninterested in the climate crisis he is. He has opened up yet another new front in the regrettable culture wars that divide and disfigure public debate, and seems to relish being seen as a baddie who is sceptical, if not scornful, of the green agenda.