The sun was shining on the capital as thousands of pro-EU supporters gathered in Central London on September 23, for the second National Rejoin March (NRM).
Protesters, waving, not just EU flags, but flags from across Europe, including Spain, Ireland, France, and Wales, congregated on Park Lane, where they made their way to Parliament Square.
Speakers from six countries took to the stage, in an event that was supported by 70 affiliated partner organisations. Orators included former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, who said there is an absolute need for the UK to rejoin the EU and it is always welcome back. Terry Reintke, MEP, said the growing citizens movement for rejoin is being followed very closely in Brussels, where Britain is ‘missed a lot.’
“As Jewish New Yorkers committed to racial justice, we believe apartheid is indefensible,” said one protester. “Palestinians deserve to live with dignity and freedom.”
A pair of democratic socialist New York state lawmakers joined more than 250 Jewish demonstrators and allies on Friday afternoon outside United Nations headquarters in Midtown Manhattan to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s General Assembly speech defending his far-right government’s apartheid policies.
New York state Sen. Jabari Brisport (D-25) and state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani (D-36) joined activists from Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Adalah Justice Project, and other human rights defenders as Netanyahu—whose government is widely considered the most extreme in Israeli history—addressed world leaders inside the U.N. building.
During his speech, Netanyahu displayed a map of the Middle East without Palestine, while claiming he has “long sought to make peace with the Palestinians.”
The protesters said there can be no peace under apartheid.
“As Jewish New Yorkers committed to racial justice, we believe apartheid is indefensible,” asserted JVP’s Jay Saper. “Palestinians deserve to live with dignity and freedom.”
Brisport—who in May introduced the Not On Our Dime! Act, which would prevent state-registered charities from funding violations of the Geneva Convention by Israeli settlers—said: “In Brooklyn we have a saying, ‘Spread love, it’s the Brooklyn way.’ Netanyahu has spread hate and displacement. And that has no place in our city.”
The senator has previously drawn attention to the more than 700,000 Israelis living in over 250 illegal settlements built on Palestinian land in the unlawfully occupied West Bank, with the backing of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Many of the illegal colonies are funded by New York-based organizations.
Last year, the Israeli government forcibly displaced more than 1,000 Palestinians from their homes in what many critics have called acts of ethnic cleansing. Hundreds more Palestinians have been displaced this year to make way for Jewish settler-colonists.
There have also been multiple deadly settler rampages through Palestinian towns this year, revenge attacks that a wide range of critics—from Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) to conservative U.S. Jewish groups and an IDF general—called “pogroms.”
Jews for Palestinian Freedom Say: Netanyahu Not Welcome Here, All Out to the U.N., Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, East 47th Street & 2nd Avenue, Manhattan, New York, NY, 4:38pm, Friday, September 22, 2023.#nyc nyc h/t: @protest_nyc
“We should refuse to host a man who has openly lauded the ethnic cleansing of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, who gave the green light for bombing campaigns that left large parts of Gaza uninhabitable, a man who approved killing sprees that riddled streets with Palestinians wounded and killed,” Adalah Justice Project communications and strategy director Sumaya Awad told the demonstrators.
According to the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 200 Palestinians this year, making it the deadliest year for Palestinians since the final year of the second intifada, or general uprising, in 2005. The advocacy group Defense for Children International Palestine says 45 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis so far this year. At least 30 Israelis have been killed by Palestinian militant attacks in 2023.
Through it all, the U.S. continues to give Israel—the 13th-wealthiest nation in the world per capita, according to the International Monetary Fund—billions of dollars in nearly unconditional annual aid.
"Today, @jvpliveNY is taking to the streets to protest Netanyahu and Israel's apartheid government. It's time the US government ends the flow of $3.8 billion—every single year—to the Israeli military."
“Earlier today, someone asked me, ‘Why should New Yorkers care about what’s happening halfway across the world in Israel?'” said Mamdani, a co-sponsor of Brisport’s bill. “There are 3.8 billion reasons for us to care: Same as the number of dollars that go from the U.S. to Israel in military aid every year.”
“As Americans,” he added, “this is a fight that recognizes our complicity in this apartheid regime in Israel.”
Influential right-wing groups are set to host events featuring major polluters, days after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak watered down green targets.
Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil’s You May Find Yourself… art auction. Featuring Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch.
A number of oil and gas firms have been announced as the hosts of stands and events at this year’s Conservative Party conference.
The conference, which is being held from 1 to 4 October in Manchester, will play host to the likes of BP, British Gas’ parent company Centrica, petrochemical giant Valero, and Drax – the UK’s largest CO2 emitter.
Events hosted by the companies will cover a range of energy and climate issues, and will feature senior Conservative MPs and ministers.
A range of influential right-wing organisations will co-host the panels. They include the Spectator magazine and groups based in and around Westminster’s Tufton Street, home to a network of opaquely funded, free market think tanks with a history of criticising climate action and pushing for more fossil fuel exploration.
This news comes as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this week announced several delays to the government’s net zero policies. Sunak announced on Wednesday that a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles will be pushed back from 2030 to 2035, while he also watered down schemes to phase out gas boilers and scrapped new energy efficiency regulations on rented homes.
Dozens of organisations will be running stalls at the Tory conference, including a number of fossil fuel firms and major polluters. These include oil giant BP, petrochemical manufacturer INEOS, and Drax, which operates the UK’s single most polluting power station and has actively attempted to influence government energy policy in its favour.
A “Hydrogen Zone” stand which “showcases what the hydrogen economy could deliver for the UK by 2030” will also exhibit projects from a number of gas extraction and distribution companies including RWE, Centrica, Cadent, Northern Gas Networks, National Gas, SGN, and Wales and West Utilities.
DeSmog has previously revealed that the Conservative Party received £3.5 million in donations from fossil fuel interests and climate science deniers in 2022, while two-thirds of the directors in charge of the party’s multi-million-pound endowment fund have a financial interest in oil, gas, and highly polluting industries.
The CPS
The Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), a Tufton Street think tank, is hosting two separate events at the conference in partnership with gas companies.
Valero, the US-based downstream petroleum company which operates an oil refinery in Pembroke, Wales, is hosting an event with the CPS entitled “How do we decarbonise and remain competitive?” featuring Conservative MPs Gareth Davies and John Penrose.
French gas giant EDF and German-owned energy firm E.ON will also be co-hosting a CPS event asking how energy can be made cheaper. The panel will include Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury Gareth Davies.
The CPS has supported the expansion of fossil fuel exploration. In response to the release of the government’s new “energy security” strategy in April 2022, the think tank included ending the ban on fracking for shale gas in a list of “significant missed opportunities” by the government, along with onshore wind and home insulation.
This followed years of lobbying from the CPS on the subject, including a report in December 2013 entitled, “Why every serious environmentalist should favour fracking”.
In an economic bulletin issued by the CPS in March 2022, the think tank also stated that “we need to continue to support offshore exploration and production activity in the North Sea. As part of this, the government should look at accelerating regulatory approval for upcoming oil and gas projects such as Rosebank… Clair South, Glengorm, Cambo and Bentley”.
The International Energy Agency has stated that new oil and gas exploration is incompatible with net zero.
A DeSmog investigation published earlier this year revealed that three CPS board members have donated £610,000 to the Conservative Party since Rishi Sunak became prime minister.
CPS runs the online publication CapX, which has published a number of articles recently attacking net zero policies. One set of “positive” policy prescriptions featured in a piece by Andrew Hunt included pushes, in place of the “obsession” over net zero, to “force developers to build more beautiful buildings” and “replace ugly road bollards and railings with ‘green street furniture’”.
Vocal climate crisis denier Ross Clark also argued on CapX in February that net zero carries a “perverse incentive to destroy UK jobs”, and that Britain was “highly unlikely” to “get anywhere net zero by 2050”. In another CapX piece, Clark said it would be “impossible” for Britain to electrify its power grid by 2030.
The CPS told DeSmog that, in recent years, it has been “one of the most prominent champions of free-market environmentalism, with a dedicated workstream on net zero.
“Our director, Robert Colvile, has been one of the country’s most prominent advocates of onshore wind and solar, as well as co-authoring the 2019 Conservative Party manifesto, which contained a prominent commitment to net zero.
“Our CapX site offers a platform for robust debate on the policy issues of the day. The most cursory glance at our output would show that this includes publishing many pieces that are strongly supportive of net zero”.
A Spectator Sport
The Spectator magazine will be hosting a Conservative conference event in association with Cadent Gas, discussing public consent for net zero. The event will feature two outspoken climate crisis deniers: Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg who is also a GB News host, and Sherelle Jacobs, a columnist at the Telegraph.
Rees-Mogg is well-known for his anti-net zero views, and was a leading proponent of further fossil fuel extraction during Liz Truss’s short tenure as prime minister.
In August, Rees-Mogg argued that the government should “revisit its approach to net zero” and “cancel the ban” on oil-fired boilers from 2026, points which Sunak mirrored in his recent net zero announcement.
Jacobs has previously argued that climate science is “being manipulated into alarmist fake news,” and more recently claimed that net zero was a “damp squib”.
An Spectator editorial published in reaction to Sunak’s climbdown on net zero measures claimed that the plan to phase-out the sale of new fossil-powered engines was a “always was a conspiracy against the public, justified on very thin environmental arguments,” and that Sunak’s announcement was “an important step”.
The editorial argued for further climate inaction on the basis that Britain contributes less than 1 percent of total annual greenhouse gas emissions. (This argument has been identified as a common example of the key climate delay tactic of “Whataboutism”, in an influential academic paper published by Cambridge University Press).
The Spectator is also hosting a drinks reception with newly formed UK gas infrastructure operator National Gas.
National Gas is also set to host an event at the Conservative conference on the UK’s “need” for hydrogen entitled “Gassed up”. The event is being co-hosted with the influential centre-right think tank Onward. Several of Onward’s former staff members are now working in Sunak’s government.
German fossil fuel giant RWE, which owns and operates Europe’s second most polluting power plant, will also host an event in association with the Conservative Environment Network (CEN). The event will ask whether wind and solar energy are “energy saviours or a blight on our communities?”. The event will feature Lee Rowley, a minister at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
RWE also claims to be the world’s second largest offshore wind company and Europe’s third-largest renewable energy company.
Centrica is co-hosting an event with the CEN asking whether Britain is “winning or losing” at the “green industrial revolution”.
Liquefied Natural Gas supplier Liquid Gas will also host an event on decarbonising rural areas.
The Spectator, the CEN, Onward and the Conservative Party have been approached for comment.
Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)
Tony Abbott, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Government keeps the ex-Australian leader on the high profile advisory body despite previous calls to sack him over anti-green ties.
Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, a director of the UK’s principal climate science denial group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), has been reappointed by the government as an adviser to the prestigious Board of Trade.
Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch has today announced the 13 advisers who will provide counsel to the Board of Trade – one of the government’s most high profile economic advisory bodies.
The Board of Trade provides advice to the government on its trade deals with foreign countries, which often encompass environmental and climate standards.
The news of Abbott’s reappointment comes as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is set to make a speech today setting out several delays to the government’s net zero policies. It is thought that he will announce that a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles will be pushed back from 2030 to 2035, while also watering down schemes to phase out gas boilers and scrapping new energy efficiency regulations on homes.
Abbott, who was originally appointed to the Board of Trade in September 2020, is one of only four advisers reappointed by Badenoch, who has relaunched the board to focus on exports following her appointment as business and trade secretary earlier this year.
The former Australian leader has been retained despite opposition parties and campaigners calling in February for the government to remove Abbott after he joined the senior ranks of the GWPF.
Abbott has previously said that “climate change is probably doing good” and is a long-standing advocate for coal power, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel.
Green Party peer Baroness Bennett told DeSmog that, by reappointing Abbott, “Sunak has lined himself up very firmly on the side of Trumpian populism – the direction that the prime minister is clearly increasingly taking as this chaotic Tory government desperately flails its way towards a general election.”
The GWPF was founded by the late Conservative chancellor Nigel Lawson with the purpose of combating what it describes as “extremely damaging and harmful policies” designed to mitigate climate change.
The GWPF has gained a number of high profile directors over the last year. New trustees include Tory peer Lord David Frost, the UK’s former chief Brexit negotiator, Conservative MP Andrea Jenkyns, and Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson.
The GWPF said in 2015 that “policies to ‘stop climate change’ are based on climate models that completely failed to predict the lack of warming for the past two decades”. It has also expressed the view that carbon dioxide has been mis-characterised as pollution, when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet”.
In September 2022, Net Zero Watch – the GWPF’s campaigning arm – published a report which stated that “changing atmospheric carbon dioxide has minimal impact on Earth’s temperature and climate”, and “efforts to decarbonise in the hope of affecting global temperatures will be in vain”.
This year, the world experienced its hottest July on record, with climate change fuelingextreme weather events. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate science body, has warned of the spread of climate misinformation which “undermines climate science and disregards risk and urgency” of cutting emissions.
Tory MP Chris Skidmore, a former energy minister who led a recent review into net zero by the government, said that Sunak risked making “the greatest mistake of his premiership”.
DeSmog has previously revealed that the Conservative Party received £3.5 million in donations from fossil fuel interests and climate science deniers in 2022, while two-thirds of the directors in charge of the party’s multi-million-pound endowment fund have a financial interest in oil, gas, and highly polluting industries.
Businessman David Meller has also been announced as a new adviser to the Board of Trade.
Meller is a Conservative Party donor whose company Meller Designs was given £160 million in personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts during the pandemic via the government’s notorious ‘VIP’ lane.
Meller has donated more than £70,000 to the Conservative Party and its politicians since 2009, including £3,250 to Michael Gove’s short-lived 2016 Conservative leadership bid, with Meller serving as Gove’s finance chair. Meller Designs was referred to the VIP lane by Gove’s office.
Meller has continued to donate to Conservative MPs following the pandemic. Electoral Commission records show that he gave £4,990 to Grant Shapps on 6 July, who was at the time serving as Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary.
There is no suggestion of wrongdoing on the part of David Meller or Meller Designs.
A Department for Business and Trade spokesperson said: “We’ve announced a revamped Board of Trade that brings together a wide range of private sector expertise to help boost British exports, identify barriers to trade and represent the best of Brand Britain to the world.
“All advisers to the board serve in personal capacities, do not speak on behalf of government and do not set government policy.”
Tony Abbott and the GWPF have been approached for comment. David Meller has been approached for comment via Meller Designs.
