The environmentalists in the Tory party who have clustered around the Bright Blue think tank recently performed an extremely canny manoeuvre. They polled the membership, and found extraordinary levels of support for the current European Union regime of environmental regulation among its grassroots.

Rebecca Pow, the Conservative MP for Taunton Deane, used the poll to hook her arguments into the news agenda. “I have found huge support among Conservatives from old to young for protecting our precious environment”, she told the press.

“In this Brexit world we should adopt wholesale the current EU environment legislation relating to areas including water, wildlife, habitats, beaches and climate change and tailor it to our particular needs, as time goes on.”

The industrialists again set the agenda

The split between conservative Conservatives and desperate profit-seeking Tories was brilliantly personified by David Cameron and George Osborne not so long ago. Cameron wooed those threatening to defect to the Green party with, “Vote Blue, Go Green“. Osborne attacked the “environmental Taliban“ to the delight of carbon intensive industry.

Osborne allowed the green rhetoric to continue, knowing that to investors actions speak louder than words. He began the process of “cutting subsidies for solar and onshore wind, abandoning Zero Carbon Homes, announcing plans to sell off the Green Investment Bank, and crapping the Green Deal. In addition we have seen scrapping of £1 billion of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) projects, reducing tax breaks for clean cars and allowing fracking under National Parks.”

May as the ‘strong’ leader of the Tories now has to hold together the two competing halves of the party. The signal at the beginning, was she would serve the industrialist, climate denying wing. This is why on taking office she abolished the Government’s Department of Energy and Climate Change. But mostly, she has tried to ignore this issue.

Lord (Kate) Parminter, the Lib Dem environment spokesperson, wrote in the Ecologist magazine: “Since Brexit, the Conservative government has avoided questions about the future of environmental protection. For example, Government ministers were asked seven times if the government would retain EU air quality limits following Brexit. They still declined to make a commitment.”

It seems May remains beholden to a small, vocal, hardened and influential faction within the Conservative party which is determined to strip away environmental protections agreed in Europe. This faction seems to be getting the most air time.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, a wealthy descendant of Somerset’s coal barons, told a hearing of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee that Britain can and should go “a very long way” towards destroying current environmental standards.

“We could, if we wanted, accept emissions standards from India, America, and Europe. There’d be no contradiction with that. We could say, if it’s good enough in India, it’s good enough for here. There’s nothing to stop that. We could take it a very long way. American emission standards are fine.”

Plans to ditch ‘spirit crushing’ EU regulations?

Andrea Leadsom stood against May in the leadership contest for the climate-denying right wing. She is now Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which is responsible for the imposition of an estimated 25% of all EU environmental regulations.

Leadsom argued that a third of these environmental rules “won’t be easy to transpose” during a hearing of the Environmental Audit Committee in October last year. She denied any “ulterior motive” before asserting: “There are roughly a quarter that cannot be brought immediately into law either because it requires technical attention or falls away, and that’s the bit we will be looking at to see what steps need to be taken.”

She said the Great Repeal Bill would bring comfort to environmental groups and businesses alike, with a smooth transition of EU into UK law, but then added that ” … over a period of time, we will be able to repeal, amend, and strengthen laws at leisure.”

George Eustice MP, the farming minister, has advocated an end to “spirit-crushing” environmental regulations. “The birds and habitats directives would go”, he said, referring to two key pieces of European environmental law. “A lot of the national directives they instructed us to put in place would stay. But the directives’ framework is so rigid that it is spirit-crushing.”

David Bannerman MEP reinforced the message by describing Brexit as “a huge opportunity” to end “over-regulation”, his comments not targeted specifically at the environment. Owen Paterson, one time environment secretary, welcomed the suggested scrapping of the Renewable Energy Directive, adding: “It’s distorting the whole energy market.”

The Express, the in-house magazine of the extreme right of the Tory party, could barely contain its excitement. “The Renewable Energy Directive is thought to be among of raft of EU policies set for the post-Brexit bonfire of Brussels diktats … [It] resulted in the Government spending billions on subsidies for wind and solar farms…”

And while we’re at it, let’s ditch the Climate Change Act!

The Telegraph, jockeying for position as the extreme right newsletter, wants to see the end of EU regulations as just a beginning for its war on bureaucracy;

“[T]here is a great deal of UK red tape that needs looking at, too. The Climate Change Act 2008 was a unilateral decision to commit Britain to cutting carbon emissions by 80 per cent within five decades. It proved that the British are capable of making mistakes all by themselves.”

The industrial core of the Conservative party is also well represented by think tanks and lobbyists. Key among them is Open Europe, which has used donations from rabidly right-wing think tanks to fund anti-EU research.