As far as the UK government is concerned, its backbenchers are “the most important Members in the House [of Commons]”. This simple insight, from a classic 1976 article by the political scientist Anthony King, could not have been demonstrated more clearly during the previous 14 years of Conservative rule.

While protests from opposition MPs were generally ignored, policy questions from housing to Brexit were often dictated by debates within the Conservative parliamentary party.

Climate policy is no different from any other policy area in this regard. That’s why researchers have started to poll politicians to test their attitudes to the issue in various countries. This has included comparing levels of climate concern among Finnish citizens and elites, evaluating who Norwegian politicians and voters deem responsible for tackling climate change, and assessing what politicians in the US and China believe citizens’ views on climate change are.

In new research I conducted with Alan Wager of the Tony Blair Institute, we used a similar approach to analyse polling of British MPs’ and voters’ attitudes to climate change.

The polling we used was of MPs in the previous parliament, between 2019 and........

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