THE UK’S CLIMATE minister has indicated he may resign as some Conservative leadership contenders equivocate on the government’s net zero target, ahead of the final rounds of voting by MPs this week.

The intervention by COP26 president Alok Sharma came as a poll of Tory rank-and-file members, who will have the final say out of the two finalists, gave a surprise double-digit lead to outsider Kemi Badenoch.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss was second, narrowly ahead of former grassroots favourite Penny Mordaunt and ex-finance minister Rishi Sunak, according to the unscientific poll by the ConservativeHome website.

Badenoch, a former junior minister with no cabinet experience, is running on an “anti-woke”, right-wing platform and has said net zero amounts to “unilateral economic disarmament” by Britain.

“Green levies”, backed by Sunak to help pay for the legally enshrined aim of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, have also been questioned by Truss and Mordaunt as Britons struggle with a cost-of-living crisis.

But with Britain facing record-breaking temperatures this week, Sharma told Sunday’s Observer newspaper that the target was “absolutely a leadership issue”, as the candidates wage an acrimonious battle to succeed scandal-tainted Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

“Anyone aspiring to lead our country needs to demonstrate that they take this issue incredibly seriously, that they’re willing to continue to lead and take up the mantle that Boris Johnson started off,” the minister said.

Asked if he could resign if candidates showed weakness on net zero, Sharma said: “Let’s see, shall we? I think we need to see where the candidates are. And we need to see who actually ends up in Number 10 (Downing Street).”

 ’Back-burner’ amid heatwave

Under Sharma’s chairmanship, nearly 200 countries pledged at a UN summit in Glasgow last November to speed up the fight against rising temperatures, after two weeks of marathon negotiations.

But India and China weakened the language of the final text to retain high-polluting coal, forcing tears and an exasperated apology from Sharma as he brought down the gavel.

Asked about Sharma’s threat, Truss supporter and former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith told Sky News: “I’m sorry he feels that.”

Truss still backs the principle of net zero but “we have to just put that slightly on the back-burner whilst we make sure people don’t suffer” from surging inflation, he said.

Asked whether she also still backed net zero, Mordaunt said on BBC television: “Yes, but it has to not clobber people.”

However, campaigners note that the green taxes make up a small fraction of overall energy bills in Britain, which have shot up on the back of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

And they say the current heatwave gripping Europe is a reminder that climate change is an existential threat.