A PROMINENT Labour MP has said that he now no longer believes in a referendum on the Government’s strategy to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Grham Stringer, a leading eurosceptic, was due to appear with Nigel Farage last week to launch an anti-net zero campaign and call for a referendum on the issue but he pulled out.

In his first interview since quitting, he told GB News presenter Tom Harwood that he no longer believed in a need for a referendum.

He said: “I told the organisers of the rally when they asked me to speak at that rally that I actually have my doubts about whether a referendum is the right way forward.

“I supported the referendum…on our membership of the European Union because we’d had a referendum to cement us into the European Union.

“So the only constitutional fair way out of the EU was to consult all the population again and to have a referendum.

“What we’re talking about with net zero really is much more mainstream, non constitutional policies about taxation, it’s about energy policy, and I think is better dealt with in manifestos or general elections rather than a referendum.”

Stringer added that the costs to consumers of net zero will help to strengthen the economies of Russia and China.

“…it’s not only the carbon dioxide going up in the atmosphere, they help the Chinese and Russian economies.

“They help because we’re transferring our industries to those countries – that makes those countries more powerful, also weaker.

“And we we know that Russia has caused a war in Ukraine now, and I am very apprehensive that China will do the same thing in Taiwan, so we don’t want to be strengthening their economy.”