Political elite climate consensus erosion: evidence from the UK Parliament (2017–22)

Climate change has become an increasingly partisan issue. Yet while the focus is often placed on public attitudes and populist anti-climate movements, little research examines how political elites discuss climate change in parliaments – important arenas of formal debate where politicians transmit elite cues that influence voters. We fill this gap by combining computational analysis of 9000 parliamentary contributions with 13 interviews of parliamentarians to study the partisan character of UK parliamentary climate debate between 2017 and 2022. While parliamentary discourse remained predominantly pro-climate, this masks stark partisan and intra-party variation. Notably, divisions within the Conservative governing majority drove greater volatility in support and growing ambivalence towards climate action. The article’s analysis both updates and clarifies conceptions of the UK’s elite climate politics and advances the literature on the politics of climate change by demonstrating how the erosion of elite climate consensuses can proceed through the politics of ‘divided conservatism’ within parliament.