The facts
The Conservative party's policy document, 'The Right Way,' cited an estimate of £957 billion for the UK to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. This figure is nearly double the £478 billion total presented in the Climate Change Committee's (CCC) 2020 data, after accounting for savings. The apparent error seems to have occurred when a spreadsheet's subtotal row was included along with its individual cost components, effectively doubling the figure. The CCC stated they do not recognize the £957 billion figure and reiterated that their most recent analysis estimates the cost of net zero at approximately £110 billion, or about £4 billion annually. The error was first identified by Carbon Brief. The same £957 billion estimate had previously appeared in a report by the Institute of Economic Affairs and an article in The Spectator. The Conservative party and Kemi Badenoch's office were contacted for comment.
Our take
The Conservative party's policy unit is so fucking useless they can't even add up a column without shitting the bed. Their big, scary number for net zero - nine hundred and fifty-seven billion pounds - is just the Climate Change Committee's four hundred and seventy-eight billion pound estimate, fed through a spreadsheet so poorly managed it might as well have been run by a toddler smashing a calculator. They added all the line items, then added the subtotal row on top, like absolute arithmetic cunts who think 'sum' means 'do it twice for good luck.' This isn't a rounding error; it's a half-trillion-pound fuckup they printed and called 'The Right Way.'
The same bogus figure had already been floating around in an Institute of Economic Affairs report and a Spectator article, proving this wasn't a one-off brain fart but a lazy, copy-paste circle-jerk of incompetence. Nobody in the Tory policy hive thought to question a number that magically doubled the official estimate. They just saw a bigger, scarier total and creamed their pants, because a bigger number means a better excuse to do fuck-all about climate change.
Now Kemi Badenoch's office is sitting on this bullshit, waiting for the stench to dissipate, after Carbon Brief had to play forensic accountant to a party that claims fiscal responsibility. The CCC themselves say they don't recognise the nine hundred and fifty-seven billion pound figure and put the actual annual cost at around four billion. But why bother with facts when you can have a fantasy figure that justifies your own cowardice? The Tories would rather publish a lie that fits their narrative than do five minutes of basic maths.
This is the level of rigor we're dealing with: a party that can't manage Excel, let alone the economy. They wanted a headline so badly they accepted a total that exists only because some policy wonk couldn't be arsed to uncheck a subtotal box. The vanity is staggering. These pricks are trying to sell the public on fiscal prudence while their own costings are actively eating their own arse.
Call it a spreadsheet error if you want. It's a fucking confession. It means their entire argument against net zero is built on a mistake so elementary it wouldn't pass a GCSE IT class. They're not serious people; they're clowns with a calculator, and every time they quote this doubled number, they're admitting they're too lazy or too dishonest to get the sum right. The only 'Right Way' here is the path to the fucking job centre for the dickhead who can't use SUM without including the subtotal.
