YouSaid · the spoken record

Claire Coutinho

lines on the record: 54
first: 2025-10-17
most recent: 2025-10-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I would happily feed him and try and understand his point of view. I mean, from my perspective, he is the oddest opponent I've had and I don't think he does engage in numbers or facts and figures. For him, I do think net zero is a religion. And anybody who questions it must automatically, their viewpoint must be rejected without any sort of mere interrogation. So I would love to.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What was the most interesting thing I've cooked? Oh, I remember I went through this phase of cooking for charities and different events that people were having where I wanted to do everything for one pound a head. So I remember doing some swanky political evenings and cooking all the canopies for one pounds ahead and getting all my sort of bits and pieces from the yellow sticker bit of the aisle and things like that. So that was quite good fun. I'm trying to think of who's the most fun person I could, but probably Nigela Lawson. I mean, lots of Tories idolise Nigel Lawson, but I love Nigela. I think she's wonderful. I think she's been such a great thing to allow people to enjoy cooking.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gosh, because I think I made some pretty terrible things. I'm not sure I would eat any of the things that I made now. But I still love cooking, but yes, I try not to try new recipes on Delly now.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did orange face paint and all. But we, yeah, there's a whole range of things we did. There was an American psycho evening where I remember someone came in a blood spattered Mac and a great Gatsby evening where we had a big brass band.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, so I had a pop up restaurant. I think everybody has their sort of offbeat ears and their youth and mine was to have a pop-up restaurant called a novel diner where we cooked all the food from different books and we'd sell tickets and you'd get groups of sort of 80 people coming along.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I try not to. I had one debate with Ed that he did at very short notice where I had to bring him in and I think my poor staffer hung on to him for 45 minutes and luckily he survived the experience. But no, I try and keep him out of the commons.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm sure people do say, What on earth are you doing? But I do think when they hear me talk about energy and understand why I'm so passionate about this area, why I feel such a moral mission about it, they can see why I'm here.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No one's accepted that. I think people often, and I do worry about this, people look at politics now and for various reasons they think it's an unattractive career option. And I worry about that because you need to have high quality people coming into this business. You need to have people either with the analytical ability or the communication mobility to understand the country's problems and meet those challenges. And I feel very privileged because I think with energy, it touches people's lives in so many ways.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the moment, the issue, I think, is very serious with reform, which is that they don't have an economic policy. They promised $200 billion of spending pledges in their manifesto, which cannot be delivered. I mean, I look at their energy policy, what they did at the beginning of the year was set out a series of bans and taxes on energy policy. That's going to cut anyone's bills. That's not going to make anyone's electricity cheaper. So I just think, you know, they are not serious when it comes to anything to do with the economy or an energy.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But wait, I think what's really important because there's an important difference between the two of us. What is our duty as an opposition to hold the government to account, but also to make sure at the next election on the ballot paper, there is a party that people can vote for, which is about economic responsibility, which is about serious growth in this country, but which is also tough on immigration and some of the issues that are pulling us apart and dividing us as a nation as well.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Firstly, let me just say on energy policy that reform are basically the mirror image of Ed Miliband. They're both as ideological as each other, and they're both making up promises that they can't deliver to the people. So Ed said, I'm going to cut your bills by £300. Everybody knows that's a complete fantasy. Richard Tyson said, I'm going to cut your electricity bills by a thousand pounds. Do you know why you can tell that that's rubbish? The average bill is £850, so he's saying he's going to give you electricity for free? I think not. So the problem with, I think both of them is that they are approaching all of these things from ideology. And look, the Conservative Party undoubtedly have lost a lot of trust of people. You can feel that, you can see why that's happened. And we have to spend some of this time in opposition looking at why we got things wrong.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, I think obviously I was only in cabinet for the last 11 months and I think what people struggle with on the outside with government, often is what people struggle with on the inside, which is that government has become very big, very remote and very dysfunctional. And actually what you need is wholesale change. And I think too often we went along with a consensus. And for example, take energy. Energy is a great example. The cost of energy in the department is wrong. You know, I've written about this. I won't bore you with all the details, but the cost of energy that they're using, which proves that wind and solar is cheaper, is simply wrong. And everybody in the industry knows that. Now, I'm a mathematician, so when I look at those numbers, I question them. But for too long, I think there are too many parts of policy where we didn't question the underlying consensus.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So emissions would go up domestically, but I would argue not necessarily globally. And this is the problem that we've got. The Climate Change Act makes you specifically focus on your domestic emissions. So if you don't have AI in Britain, that's great for the Climate Change Act, but it doesn't make a bit of difference to global emissions. And this is the truth with energy as well. If we had cheaper energy, by the way, if you had cheaper electricity and you didn't have the bands and taxes and mandates that are coming down the line to force people into electric cars and electric home heating, you'd probably get more people to sign up. So the question of whether it would be a better or worse decarbonization path, I think is actually up for grabs.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, my worry with soda and wind is they use up to 3,000 times more land than nuclear. And like I said, we are a party of nature lovers. I personally am a decade.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the North Sea, you know, we were legislating for in terms of nuclear, there had been no nuclear built for a long time. We started to. And in terms of gas, if it's cheaper, use it. But yes, you need all of these other things like nuclear to be built alongside. And what I would say is this. Yes, I don't think I would have made all the same decisions as my predecessors. But what I think is really important now is that we prioritise the right principles for energy policy and where we had gone wrong, like I said, was we had a system which prioritized decarbonisation over everything else. And that's where some of these other decisions were made.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But we have 35 gigawatts of gas plants in this country. So the choice you have to make is what do you want to pay for the power?”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, if they say that, then they should publish accurate costings because actually gas at the moment is about £55 a megawatt hour. Wind, they've said they're willing to pay up to £117 this year”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so at the moment, all of that is paid for on people's bills. So my view is that we should prioritise cheaper energy. So if at the moment you are going to pay a price for wind which is 40% higher than the current cost for electricity, then I don't think we should be doing that. I think we should be going for the cheapest form of electricity. When it comes to governance.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's good for jobs. It's good for energy security. And what you also get is £12 billion coming into the tax coffers of the UK rather than going to Norway, for example. And the reason that's important is some of the prices that are going on people's bills are actually social policies from the government. And instead of paying from it from the Treasury, because as we know, Richard Reeds doesn't have any money left, she's paying from it from your bills.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“New fields. Yes. I was legislating to protect that when I was in government. So I've always thought if we're going to need oil and gas, we should make the most of our own. I think that is just simple common sense.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I want to use all our North Sea oil and gas. At the moment, we're replacing North Sea gas with imports, which have higher emissions. That's totally bonkers.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I disagree. I think if you have the highest electricity bills in the world, then you have to do something differently. And that necessitates the fact that you're going to make some changes. And I am unapologetic about the fact that I think the choice in front of us is, do you keep making electricity more expensive or do you make it cheaper? And for so many reasons, not least living standards, growth, also decarbonization if you want people to buy those electric cars and electric home heating, then our primary focus for energy policy in this country has to be making electricity cheap.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now that's not happened. So, in the same time that we've halved emissions, China's emissions are up by 300%. And what people are seeing is that we're a country that is losing jobs, that's becoming poorer, that has the highest electricity prices in the world. And this is the problem. Countries around the world, they're not going to listen to you because Ed Miliband is preaching moral leadership. That doesn't persuade them. What persuades them is prosperity. And if you were a country that has poor growth and that has high bills and that has an unhappy electorate, nobody is going to follow our lead. So we have to do things in a different way.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's just look at that. So, we've been doing this for almost 20 years. That's how long the act's been around. And the argument has always been you have to be first, you have to go further and faster than everybody else, and they will follow your lead.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is what I think sold so many people in my party on net zero is because we are a party of nature lovers. We're a party of a What I think has happened is that goodwill, that wanting to do something right, has meant that we put in place a system which was incredibly bureaucratic and it didn't do what it said on the tin. Actually, we're not protecting nature. Nature is not net zero. It's very different things. And in some cases, it's pulling in the opposite direction. And we are not necessarily reducing global emissions. This is the point that changed my mind.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think what she did, which was amazing, was she led the country, and by that I meant she changed opinions. We obviously had this huge economic decline and we had this real loss of agency at the time. And she faced some similar challenges, namely inflation, militant unions, for example, but we've also got some very difficult challenges now.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, exactly. It basically looks at people who might be jobless. They might have addictions. They might be from parts of the country where things just aren't working. And seeing all of that, for me, the solution wasn't what the left always says, which is usually state support. In almost all of the cases that I saw, it was giving people a sense of power, giving people a sense of agency, giving people the ability to control their lives and the people and the relationships around them. And whether that was neighbors or friends or congregations. And that's what I care about. That's what I want to give back to people.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so I was, you know, I think in my fourth year, fourth year of banking, and I left and I took a seventy percent pay cut and I went to work for the Centre for Social Justice. And I remember my dad at the time, he said to me, Claire, you'll never earn the same amount again. And that was about 15 years ago. And every day I wake up and I prove him right. He was bang on the money. But I never looked back. And for me, I think being able to be part of something bigger, have that sense of purpose. And particularly when I started moving away from policy into politics, it was because I had all this time at that point of working with people whose lives were really difficult. That's what the Centre for Social Justice did.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think that is, and again, I think if politicians don't grasp these difficult facts, then other people will. And actually what you've seen in the Middle East is that there is now a growing movement, which is fundamental Islam. And in this country, I think everybody would widely acknowledge that extremism has been a problem and we could all talk about that. But you're also seeing the rise of political Islam. And this is a new and growing thing, and we have to be able to grasp that.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, they were extremely Catholic. We had a holographic picture of Jesus in our living room growing up. But there was things for them to bind into. There was things for us to integrate into. We went to the local school, joined the local church. We'd go to the bake sales and things like that. And at the moment, what I think people are feeling is post-pandemic, people have become more isolated. The country feels like it's more divided. Everything in society needs to be pulling people apart. So part of politics at the moment, I think, has been to celebrate the things that bring us together.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The year when we can all get together as a nation and celebrate the same things, we need to be, I think, very positive about our own culture if we want something for people to integrate into. And I just say this. You know, my family came in the 70s. We joined a local church.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think there's two big problems facing the country. One is growth, which is, you know, we'll go on to talk about energy policy and why I think we need to do those things there. The second is, I think we are in a very worrying space because we're on the edge of being a very, very divided nation. And in order to fix that, you are going to have to do some radical things. And I think, firstly, as many have acknowledged on my own side, the immigration policy that we had, having lots of people come over, particularly from cultures which haven't meshed well, needs to be addressed. We need to send people back who aren't contributing. We need to send people back who are committing crime. And when it comes to integration, being unashamed to talk about love of nation, being unashamed to teach about our history and schools and teach about pride in Britain, celebrating our remembrance Sunday and all of those moments during”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, I haven't been to Handsworth, so it speaks about that area particularly, but there are definitely parts of this country which are not well integrated. And actually, I noticed even in their Hansforth example, there was someone in whatever the article was, I think it was on the BBC, from that area saying, I agree, I agree.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I would. I think this again is where people get things wrong. We can be very clear about what it means to be a member of our nation state. All of those things I talked about that shared history, shared traditions, shared customs. But that shouldn't make us unafraid to use language and speak plainly about things which are worrying. If I was in China and I walked through an area for 10 minutes and all I saw was white faces, I would say, do you know what? I think this area probably hasn't integrated very well. And if I'm in the UK, you know, and bear in mind, I grew up in parts of South London which had a lot of ethnic mixes. But if I walked through an area and I only saw one kind of ethnic minority, I would say, well, this hasn't integrated very well. And that's what Robert was saying.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think that's really important because on the one hand, because I think it's important to look at the landscape and politics, you've got a left who've said pretty much everything is racist, the countryside is racist, we're institutionally racist, you know, we should somehow be ashamed of our history. We need to decolonize the curriculum and not teach Shakespearean schools. And they have forgotten that actually we need to be teaching people about all the things that make us proud to be British if we want to bind together as a nation. And on the other side, you've got people who want to move the line and they want to move the line to white people only. And that is, I think, a small part of politics at the moment, but it's there.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So for me, the thing that makes me more uncomfortable is the fact that you've got so many people in this country who feel a sense of grievance, who feel that they have not been able to show their patriotism and somehow that should that pride in nation is something they should be ashamed of. And that to me is a much bigger problem. You've got many more people who feel that way than who feel that, you know, English should be an ethnicity, for example.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That. If we try and descend into this idea that it's all about ethnicities, then we are subscribing to a world where our nationality is defined by some kind of tribal ancestry, a bloodline, which has not been the English way.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Firstly, undeniably, there's an ethnicity which is English, and we shouldn't try and take that away from anyone. And the reason that they're trying to turn that into some kind of waterline about what it means to be English is that for too long people feel that ethnicity has been pushed to the bottom of the pile. You should be ashamed of it. You shouldn't get any special privileges. You should get to the back of the queue. So that's why it's come about. But I think it's really important to say, and it's important for people on the right to say, that that is not how we define nationhood in this country. And we have not done that for ever. We are a people who are bound by an allegiance to a nation. We share a common law. We share customs. We share heritage. We share history. We share traditions. And that is what makes us a person who's a member. And if we aren't clear about that,”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, I think there is something happening on the extreme right of politics at the moment, which is you have people arguing for an ethno-nationalism. So this idea that you can't be English unless you're ethnically English. And there's two things that I would say about that.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think he probably outstrips me a bit in the nudger, but I do think it's important to care about detail. So for me, I was a massive philosopher. That was my university degree. And what it taught me was you have to try and seek the truth. So when people are presenting you with an argument, you have to look at the assumptions and try and find the truth. And I start there. So what is the truth, for example, about net zero energy policy equalities, whatever it might be? And then you have to work out how to persuade people.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I regularly do the Times Cryptic Crossword. So I'm a puzzle lover. I like to unravel problems. And I think the problem that we've got in politics just generally, let's take a step back from my love of maths. Is that it can be very superficial. I think people look at what's on the label of an act. It says the climate change act. It must address climate change. It must be a good thing. And I'm not like that. I like to go into the detail and say, what is this thing actually doing? How is it actually affecting people?”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gosh, I was. I was. Thank God I married if you're going to bring out these facts about me. But yes, I was, I was. I didn't get a lot of dates, but I was, in fact, co-captain of the maths team.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, God forbid that politicians use evidence. I think when you are making a very different argument as I was, I wanted to make sure that people had facts in front of them. You know, I had a clicker. I had some charts, I had some graphs. But I was trying to show people why we'd had such a change of position. I think it was important to do that with facts.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was a PPS. I had one of the plum PPS positions because I was PPS to the Chancellor. And the thing that finally convinced me, by the way, is someone saying to me, okay, we won't have a further lockdown. That's what it took.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I didn't like the government's lockdown policies. I thought it was going to be terribly damaging for children. And yes, look, if you're asking I did, and it's very funny when you threaten to quit in government, you get sent to everybody in the land. So, yes, I had to have those arguments with the whips, with number 10, with, you know, all of the people who were trying to persuade me otherwise. And I said, you know, no, we simply can't do this.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I feel very personally about this because one of the things I saw in energy overall is who is standing up for the consumer at the moment when people are making these decisions, whether it's politicians or off-gem or the climate change committee or NISO, where is the voice of the consumer?”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two things. Firstly, at the moment, net zero is making climate change worse. Every time a business leaves here for a country that's powered by coal, we don't have coal in the system, by the way. Every time a business does that, you're making emissions worse. What Ed Miliband is doing at the moment is shutting down the North Sea. So instead of using North Sea gas, you're importing gas with four times the emissions. That's making climate change worse. And the problem when I say net zero is a religion, it's that people are so invested in saying that this thing is working, this project is working, you've got to keep going. You can't ask any questions that we are heading down the wrong path.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're a heretic. Exactly. You're a heretic. You have to be excommunicated. And the problem with that is as soon as you get that level of group think, then people start making bad choices. And some of the choices that we're making at the moment, like I said, it's going to make things incredibly expensive and difficult for people to think.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, what is the thing that's happened when it comes to net zero? Is there anybody who dares to ask any questions is pilloried? And even in the department, like I said, I started with pushing back bans. When we had a cost of living crisis, pushing back bans that would have cost people thousands of pounds, and I was almost instantly sued by all of these people in the green lobby.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the things that I had done with him was look at affordability during that energy crisis. We had this big energy crisis and I worked with him in the Treasury. We were looking at how those costs were affecting people's lives. And I've always felt very personally that the thing that we can give to people is a good standard of life. That's what politicians should be trying to do. We should be trying to make sure you can earn well. We should try and make sure that things in the country don't cost you much. And then you could have the personal choice in your life to go and have a good life for yourself. So I always felt very strongly about that. And it's something that we had talked about before in terms of worrying about these costs that we could see coming down the tracks for net zero.”
2025-10-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · Net Zero has become a religion: Claire Coutinho on climate, identity and cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source