UK minister Zac Goldsmith quits with blast at Rishi Sunak’s climate ‘apathy’

LONDON — Zac Goldsmith quit the British government Friday with a stinging attack on Rishi Sunak's environmental record.

In a highly-critical letter to the U.K. prime minister, the environment minister — a key ally of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson — said "this government's apathy in the face of the greatest challenge we have faced makes continuing in my current role untenable."

The exit comes a day after Goldsmith, a longstanding environmentalist, was criticized by a cross-party committee of MPs for his role in backing Johnson.

The privileges committee argued that allies of the former prime minister had led a "coordinated campaign to interfere with" its work investigating Johnson's conduct. Goldsmith was criticized for retweeting a social media post branding the committee a "kangaroo court."

But, in his letter, Goldsmith said the U.K. under Sunak had "visibly stepped off the world stage and withdrawn our leadership on climate and nature."

He added: "Too often we are simply absent from key international fora. Only last week you seemingly chose to attend the party of a media baron rather than attend a critically important environment summit in Paris that ordinarily the U.K. would have co-led."

Goldsmith was the MP for Richmond Park from 2010 to 2019, when he was defeated by Liberal Democrat candidate Sarah Olney. He kept a ministerial job, however, after Johnson handed him a place in the U.K.'s unelected House of Lords.

This developing story is being updated.