Sir Nicholas Stern Quits Treasury Post

An interesting story from The Times. It casts more doubt on how environmental Gordon Brown would be as a PM.

Sir Nicholas Stern, the author of the Government’s report on climate change is to quit the Treasury, after friends said that he was frozen out of Gordon Brown’s inner circle. With embarrassing timing, Sir Nicholas' departure was announced a day after the Chancellor confounded expectations of a big shift towards a new environmental agenda in his Pre-Budget Report.

One well-placed government source told The Times that Mr Brown had to be persuaded within the Treasury even to take the steps he did, such was his lack of enthusiasm for green taxes.

Several Whitehall sources told The Times that Mr Brown did not like some of the advice he received from Sir Nicholas, including some “home truths” about long-term trends in the economy, and he never broke into the Chancellor’s tight-knit inner circle.

His doom-laden report on the risks of failing to address climate change, published in October, caused tensions within the Government by triggering a debate on environmental taxes and leading to calls for big policy changes ... Sir Nicholas’s stark warnings of overwhelming evidence of global warming highlighted differences between Mr Brown — who wanted to avoid unpopular tax rises — and David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, who pressed for green taxes, including a big rise in tax on gas-guzzling vehicles.