Nisbett, N., Spaiser, V. orcid.org/0000-0002-5892-245X, Leston-Bandeira, C. et al. (1 more author) (2024) Climate action or delay: the dynamics of competing narratives in the UK political sphere and the influence of climate protest. Climate Policy. ISSN 1469-3062
Abstract
It is often argued that political will is needed to make progress on responding to the climate crisis. Political will needs a narrative though, substantiating why political intervention is needed. This paper examines the dynamics of key competing climate policy narratives in the political sphere – normative, i.e. morally underpinned pro-climate action, denial and delay of climate action and other, mostly exclusively economic or technical arguments for climate action – using data of parliamentary debates in the UK between 2017 and 2022 and interviews with politicians and civil servants for complementary computational, time-series and qualitative analyses. We investigate the role played by major external events, focussing on pro-action climate protests, in shaping these competing dynamics, which ultimately underpin climate policy decisions. We find an increase in normative pro-climate arguments used in parliament in 2018/2019 during major climate protests, which become the dominant argument line. And while this increase slowed down during the COVID-19 pandemic, it nevertheless consolidated, reinvigorated by COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, which was also accompanied by resumed climate protests. Analysis suggests moreover that the normative pro-climate action and the denial/delay narratives are coupled. We also find considerable differences between the two major UK parties. The governing Conservatives are split between the pro-climate action and delay/denial camps, paralysing any policy progress, with latest dynamics suggesting delay arguments becoming more dominant. Labour, on the other hand, embraces the normative pro-climate action narrative, though even here delay arguments are occasionally employed. Our interviews with politicians and civil servants confirm our computational analysis that suggests there was a shift in 2018/2019 with an increase of normative pro-climate action narrative. They confirm that flagship UK climate policies, such as the net zero by 2050 legislation passed in June 2019 and Labour’s Green New Deal launch in March 2019, were aided by climate protests.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
Keywords: | Climate policies; parliamentary debates; climate protest; delay discourse; computational analysis; elite interviews |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Politics & International Studies (POLIS) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) MR/V021141/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 11 Sep 2024 15:09 |
Last Modified: | 11 Sep 2024 15:09 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | Taylor and Francis |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/14693062.2024.2398169 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:216994 |