The PM claimed Margaret Thatcher took greenhouse gases seriously long before 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg was born.
London is bracing for a second day of traffic disruptions as Extinction Rebellion’s planned two weeks of global climate change protests continue in 60 cities across the world.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who presides over one of the most climate sceptic governments the country has had in recent times, said the protesters should stop blocking London’s streets.
Dubbing Extinction Rebellion activists as “uncooperative crusties”, the PM called on them to abandon their “hemp-smelling bivouacs” to allow the capital to function smoothly again.
Johnson was speaking at the launch in London of the third volume of Margaret Thatcher’s biography by the former editor of The Daily Telegraph, Charles Moore.
He said the former prime minister had taken the issue of greenhouse gases seriously long before 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg was born.
Margaret Thatcher “true feminist, green and revolutionary”
“The best thing possible for the education of the denizens of the heaving hemp-smelling bivouacs that now litter Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park would be for them to stop blocking the traffic and buy a copy of Charles’s magnificent book so that they can learn about a true feminist, green and revolutionary who changed the world for the better,” Mr Johnson said.
He added: “I hope that when we go out from this place tonight and we are waylaid by importunate nose-ringed climate change protesters, we remind them that she (Mrs Thatcher) was also right about greenhouse gases.”
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Mr Johnson said he had been advised by his security staff not to attend last night’s book launch “because they said the road was full of uncooperative crusties and protesters of all kinds littering the road.
“They said there was some risk that I would be egged. And so I immediately asked the faint hearts in my private office, ‘What would Margaret Thatcher do?’
“If she could take the extraordinary risk of sending a task force halfway around the world through tumultuous seas to recapture the Falklands, I think she would have crossed the road to speak at the Banqueting Hall.”
More road closures are expected today as a predicted 30,000 protesters descend on the capital.
Parliament Street, Great Smith Street, and Westminster and Lambeth bridges are expected to be heavily affected.