Photo by Alishia Abodunde/Getty Images The proposal to “phase out” gas boilers by 2035 was originally made by the then Conservative government under Boris Johnson, who in 2021 promised a “green industrial revolution” while praising the scientific, technological and organisational strength that had delivered a vaccine for Covid that year. Two years later, prime minister Rishi Sunak announced more funding for heat pumps, but couched his language in cautious terms, responding to the backlash in the UK from right-leaning media outlets and the gas industry, leading him to promise people would never be forced to “rip out their boilers” (which was never a proposal to begin with). Mainstream politicians were also looking at Germany, where the far-right AfD party had run a successful campaign against similar policies on heat pumps and boiler phase-outs. One civil servant who was working on net zero at the time said it felt like the mood had turned and the political consensus had been broken.…