Hi, I'm Anouche. I'm Andrew. And I'm Freddy. And this is the New Statesman's Politics

podcast. In this episode, we'll be discussing Rishi-Soonak's decision to delay key net zero

targets. Hello, I'm Anouche Kellyan, Britain editor of the New Statesman and host of this

podcast. And joining me in the studio, I have our political editor, Andrew Mah, and our

political correspondent, Freddy Hayward. So we're recording on Thursday morning, and at the

end of the day yesterday, Rishi-Soonak gave a speech rolling back on the government's net

zero pledges. And for those of our listeners who missed it, the main announcements were that

he pushed back the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035. He scrapped

plans to force landlords to upgrade the energy efficiency of their homes, watered down the gas

boiler phase out, anti-ruled out any behavior change measures like meat or flight taxes. Where's

all this come from, Andrew? Because you were reporting, actually, that the government was assuring

car companies that the scrapage would come about in 2016. They were assuring BMW as recently

as last week. BMW have just invested £600 million to make electric minis at the Cali plant

by Oxford. And they were doing it on the basis that these were hard and absolute targets

weren't going to move. And for a column I wrote this week, I was talking to an awful lot

of the industry. And they were actually praising Rishi-Soonak for these hard, clear targets,

which they said, put Britain ahead of the rest of Europe, and it gave us a very, very strong

position. And they all said, you know, billions of pounds of investment is pouring into the

EV system, into new charging networks and all the rest of it. And this is a really, really

great moment for Britain. And then at the last minute, he tears it all up and goes in totally

the opposite direction. He has infuriated open-toed sandal wearing lefties like the Ford

Motor Corporation. I think he was aiming this out of eco zealots and he's ended up hitting

...