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Rishi Sunak’s environment secretary Therese Coffey has ordered her department to suspend its engagement with Greenpeace, after activists staged an anti-oil protest at the PM’s constituency home.
The largely symbolic display of anger came as former home secretary Priti Patel and ex-Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith raised concerns about Mr Sunak’s security arrangements, following the demonstration on the roof his constituency manor house.
The campaigners draped his home with an oil-black fabric at the prime minister’s North Yorkshire home to protest against the government’s plans to allow licences to be granted for further development of North Sea oil and gas.
North Yorkshire Police said the activists scaled the roof of his home at about 8am on Thursday, while Mr Sunak, his wife and children were on holiday in California, and stayed up until around 1.15pm, when they were arrested, before being released pending further enquiries.
Protester Alex Wilson said: “We’re all here because Rishi Sunak has opened the door to a new drilling frenzy in the North Sea while large parts of our world are literally on fire.”
Former police chief ‘astonished’ protesters were able to protest at Sunak’s home
Peter Walker, who stepped down as North Yorkshire Police’s deputy chief constable in 2003, said he was “absolutely astonished” that protesters gained access to Rishi Sunak’s house, as he called for an investigation.
He told LBC: “It is clearly in my view a major breach of security.”
Watch: Tory minister appears to concede Labour will win next general election
Opinion | Politics is about to get truly ugly as Sunak pollutes climate change debate
Rishi Sunak has “announced a plan to max out on North Sea oil and gas – granting hundreds of new licences for exploration and production while winking at the political editors that this was part of an aggressive new ‘divide and rule’ strategy in the wake of the Uxbridge by-election, writes Alan Rusbridger.
Brace yourself to be drowned by a year of headlines about migrants, trans rights and crime. They are classic “wedge issues”, the unlovely Australian political tactic devised to bludgeon ugly election wins.
But climate change? Isn’t Sunak bigger than to make this most critical of causes the latest front in the culture wars? Apparently not.
Read his thoughts in full here:
Greenpeace has received ‘both kinds of opinions’ over protest at Sunak’s home
Areeba Hamid, co-executive director of Greenpeace, said the group has received “both kinds of opinions” online since its protest at Rishi Sunak’s constituency home.
She told Sky News: “Protests are disruptive by nature, for the amount of comments that we have received online saying we don’t agree with you, an equal amount of people are saying ‘this was brilliant, you made your point, it was peaceful, it didn’t disrupt normal people’s everyday lives, you took it to the home of the decision maker’.
“So there’s both kinds of opinions, also, it’s important to remember that this is just one tactic that organisation like Greenpeace use, I often describe Greenpeace as a Swiss army knife.”
She added: “I think the point that we want to make is Rishi Sunak needs to be held accountable for this decision and we need to hold politicians accountable when they make terrible decisions like these.”
Exclusive: Chris Packham accuses Sunak of playing ‘political football’ with green policies
Chris Packham has accused Rishi Sunak of using the environment as a “political football” as he issues a stark warning to the government’s “astonishing and disappointing” oil and sea agenda.
The wildlife presenter and naturalist has given the major political parties an ultimatum to stop sanctioning future licensing of oil and gas or risk losing votes in a new campaign he launches today.
My colleague Maryam Zakir-Hussain has his exclusive remarks here:
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Calls to review Rishi Sunak’s security arrangements after climate protesters scale his home
Questions have been raised about the prime minister's security arrangements after Greenpeace activists scaled his home in protest at new fossil fuels drilling, our policy correspondent Jon Stone reports.
Health minister Maria Caulfield said on Friday that it would not be “responsible” for her to comment on Rishi Sunak’s security arrangements, as police said there was “no threat to the wider public” from the demonstration.
But former home secretary Priti Patel urged her successor Suella Braverman to launch an immediate review into the PM’s security arrangements.
“This raises some very serious questions around how the home of a sitting prime minister has been accessed in this way, to the extent that political campaigners and activists have been able to trespass on his property and physically gain access,” she told the Daily Mail newspaper.
And former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said he believed security “doesn’t seem to know how to protect the house of the Prime Minister”, adding: “There has to be an inquiry into what the hell was going on.”
Protest was ‘carefully and meticulously’ planned, says Greenpeace
Greenpeace has said it planned its protest “carefully and meticulously” and would not have done it if Rishi Sunak was there.
“It was an empty home, the fact that he wasn’t there was actually national news, everybody knows that he wasn’t there,” said Ms Hamid.
“We made sure, in fact we wouldn’t have done it if he was there because our intention was to draw attention to the fact that what he’s doing on climate is actually a big disaster, rather than to talk about his family or where he lives, so that was the entire point.
“Security is a big part of whatever we do, we planned it carefully and meticulously, we knew he wasn’t going to be there.
“We knocked on the door to make sure that there was nobody there, initially there was no response, then we got a response, we told them who we were. So this was quite a peaceful, calm thing to make a very important point.”
Tory minister appears to concede Labour will win next election
A Conservative government minister has appeared to concede that Labour will win the next election during an appearance on TV news.
Maria Caulfield was accused of a “poor choice of words” after seemingly painting a Labour victory at the next election as an inevitability.
Speaking on Sky News the health minister said people would be afraid of what Labour would do “when they get into government”.
Our policy correspondent Jon Stone has more:
Sadiq Khan’s Ulez support has ‘not touched the sides’, claims minister
Sadiq Khan’s announcement of financial support to ease the impact of the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) has “not touched the sides”, a health minister has said.
Maria Caulfield told Sky News: “I don’t think it touched the sides of people’s concerns. I think he’s reacting to why Labour didn’t win the Uxbridge by-election. £2,000 is nothing if you’re having to replace your car.”
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2023-08-04 13:35:33Z
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