Not even the Greens want heat pumps

It has been taking a while to get the quotes. It is hard to pin down the workmen to a specific date. And she might even struggle to find a time when she can let them in. The co-leader of the Green Party Carla Denyer came up with plenty of excuses for why she had not yet managed to get around to replacing her gas boiler with a heat pump.

And yet, if she were being honest, she surely knows that the blunt truth is this. They don’t work, and they are too expensive. In reality, the breath-taking hypocrisy of the Greens is being exposed – and as that happens their support will collapse.

If you were leading the Green Party into a general election where it is hoping to pick up multiple seats for the first time, you might decide it was a good idea to check your own carbon footprint was as low as possible. No big petrol cars, no private jets, and certainly no sign of a gas boiler in the home of any of the movement’s leading figures.

If you want everyone else to replace their heating system, it would seem reasonable to make a start yourself, especially as there are generous subsidies available to get one installed. Mysteriously, however, Denyer has not found the time. “I literally have the quotes in my inbox,” she explained limply in an interview with ITV. It is just that she had been really, really busy with the election.

And yet, in reality, why would anyone be surprised by that. The Greens are very big on grand, virtue-signalling pledges. We can all replace gas boilers with heat pumps, as part of a drive to achieve a net zero economy by 2040, ten years before any other major economy. We can put a wealth tax on assets above £10 million without it making any difference to the economy or losing any entrepreneurs. We can introduce a four day week with no loss of pay, and output will actually go up. We can impose rent controls without it making any difference to the supply of properties on the market. The list goes on and on.

In the alternative universe inhabited by the Greens and their voters, the laws of supply and demand have been repealed, and incentives and price signals mean nothing. Just promise something, and, as if by magic, it will happen.

The trouble is, it is becoming increasingly clear that they don’t actually seem to believe in any of the pledges they make. They ban the development of new fossil fuels, even if it simply means shifting production to other countries and importing it instead.

They can’t even be bothered to install a heat pump. In reality, Green leaders around the world rarely live up to their own rhetoric. Secretly they must know that nothing they advocate works, and if they ever came even close to power, as they have done in Germany, the economy would surely grind to a complete halt. Gradually that is being exposed. Perhaps even some of their supporters will one day realise just how bogus the Green Party has become.