Zac Goldsmith resigned as Rishi Sunak’s Minister of State for Overseas Territories, Commonwealth, Energy, Climate and Environment on 30 June 2023 claiming that UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was uninterested in the environment. This has made reviewing Sunak’s climate credentials relatively easy because there are many news articles doing it for me ;)
Goldsmith says Sunak is apathetic about the environment. It’s hard to disagree by Helena Horton.
There are many similar articles basically saying the same:
He blocked spending on climate and nature when he was Chancellor.
“… Sunak refused to sign a foreword to the Dasgupta report, a review of the value of biodiversity. This review, by the respected professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, was welcomed across the board …”
“He was given a major opportunity to stand on the world stage as the UK’s new prime minister at the UN’s Cop27 climate summit last year, but he flip-flopped on attending, and only flew out to Egypt at the last minute, giving the audience a policy-free speech about how his children care about the environment.”
Authorised the Cumbria coalmine creating more climate destroying pollution.
Sunak and his twat Grant Shapps have repeatedly attacked the Labour Party claiming that “eco-zealots” from Just Stop Oil are “writing Keir Starmer’s energy policy”. Sunak is using the Daily Mail’s eco-zealots taunt and attacking Just Stop Oil’s position as unreasonable.
Since Zac Goldsmith’s resignation Sunak boasted That Oil Funded Think Tank ‘Helped Us Draft’ Crackdown on Climate Protests and wrote an article in Murdoch’s Sun newspaper on 3 July 2023 attacking Just Stop Oil. Let’s take a look at that article.
People want an end to eco-zealot’s disruption – I’ll ensure we do stop it. Firstly Sunak is aligning himself closely with the climate-change denier and climate destroyer Rupert Murdoch. It’s likely that someone at Murdoch’s Sun wrote this article and Sunak has agreed to have it attributed to him.
Sunak claims that Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion attempt to “bypass and undermine” democracy through their tactics and that instead “policy should be decided by those who were elected to do so”.
We don’t permit governments to destroy us and our planet – our very existence – through the ballot box. They don’t have the right to destroy this planet through the ballot box.
[ED: Fekk I forgot: Sunak has never been elected Prime Minister anyway and has no mandate to do anything.]
Sunak also doesn’t represent us the electors – he represents the fossil fuel industry and the ultra-rich (may well be the same few people). He’s admitted as much by saying that big oil helped frame the anti-protest laws.
Sunak doesn’t actually mention his daughters in the Sun article which also lead me to suspect that it was not actually written by him or his staff. Mentioning his daughters is the “I couldn’t be such a cnut, I’ve got young children” sop. He is such a cnut.