On 5 January 2024, Chris Skidmore announced he would resign as the Conservative MP for Kingswood in protest against the government’s energy policy.

Skidmore, the former energy minister who signed the UK’s net zero commitment into law in 2019, styled his departure as a direct response to the government’s Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill. The bill sought to mandate annual licensing rounds for new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea.

In a statement explaining his decision, Skidmore said the bill amounted to a “tragedy”.

He said: “I cannot vote for the bill next week. The future will judge harshly those that do.

“At a time when we should be committing to more climate action, we simply do not have any more time to waste promoting the future production of fossil fuels that is the ultimate cause of the environmental crisis that we are facing.”

The MP also went further, declaring he could “no longer condone nor continue to support a government that is committed to a course of action that I know is wrong and will cause future harm.”

He added: “To fail to act, rather than merely speak out, is to tolerate a status quo that cannot be sustained. I am therefore resigning my party whip and instead intend to be free from any party-political allegiance…

“It is nearly fourteen years since I was first elected as the member of Parliament for Kingswood, and I am especially grateful to my constituents for placing their repeated trust and faith in me… I therefore will be standing down from parliament as soon as possible.”

Skidmore said he now intended to “focus all my energy and attention on delivering net zero and the energy transition.”

Skidmore’s resignation triggered a by-election in his Kingswood constituency, which was held on 15 February.

The result marked the latest in a long series of political blows suffered by Rishi Sunak as prime minister. Labour’s candidate, Damien Egan secured 11,176 votes (44.9%), winning a majority of 2,501. The Conservative candidate, Sam Bromiley, received 8,675 votes (34.9%).

The contest saw a 16.4 point swing from the Conservatives to Labour, overturning the 11,220-vote majority Skidmore secured in 2019.

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It was a by-election in July 2023, in Boris Johnson’s former seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, that was widely regarded to have marked a turning point for the government’s green and environmental policy. The Conservative victory in Uxbridge was attributed to local opposition to the planned expansion of London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) by the London mayor, Sadiq Khan.

Sunak subsequently doubled down on his opposition to ULEZ-style measures and scaled back the government’s net zero commitments. Speaking during the Kingswood by-election campaign, Skidmore referred to the contest as the “opposite of Uxbridge”.

In an interview with the New Statesman, published February 2024, Skidmore expanded on his decision to stand down as an MP.

He said: “I felt, I have to try to reset the narrative in some way, reframe it. I’ve got to throw my own career, political career at least, away as well, knowing that that’s going to have an impact, to try to negate the impact of the first by-election.

“The point here is that this election [in Kingswood] would not have needed to happen if the Conservative Party hadn’t taken the decisions it’s taken to row back net zero and climate action… It’s the opposite of Uxbridge.”

Skidmore later announced he would be voting for the Labour Party at the 2024 general election. In an article for the Guardian, published June 2024, Skidmore accused the Conservative Party leadership of “siding with climate deniers”

He wrote: “We have seen Rishi Sunak decide to prioritise new oil and gas expansion at a time when our fossil fuel industries are in rapid decline and will become stranded assets within decades…

“Worse still has been an extremist rhetoric that frames net zero policies as an imposition. This false narrative is the product of both ignorance and deliberate misinformation. Nobody has ever been told that they must remove their boilers or replace their petrol cars. The energy transition is a transition – an act of shifting from the past towards the future.”

Skidmore added: “Sunak’s decision instead to side with climate deniers and to deliberately politicise the energy transition is perhaps the greatest tragedy of his premiership.”