Tom Brake has become the latest Lib Dem to dabble in climate hypocrisy, after Guido revealed Jo Swinson’s fracking cash. Last month Tom Brake flew to Russia at the expense of big oil company Total IPG Russia, just weeks before calling on the Prime Minister to tell Trump that there must be “no back-tracking on climate change & no cosying up to Putin”. His big oil funded all-expenses-paid trip came at the expense of a company who are drilling the Arctic for over four billion barrels of oil equivalent and have ties to the Kremlin.

This is just the latest bout of hypocrisy to hit the Lib Dems’ “climate emergency” campaign after they approved a massive new coal mine earlier this year. When it comes to climate it’s one rule for the Lib Dems and another rule for everyone else…

UPDATE: Tom Brake gets in touch to say

“… This is my entry (an error was made in reporting to me who had paid for different elements of the trip which has been corrected in this entry).  Flights etc were paid for by Pluteos AG.  The only thing that was paid for by Total was a lunch at the French Embassy which cost less per head than the reporting threshold.”

Pluteos is one of those consultancies run by ex-spooks that do discreet business for clients with geo-political concerns, clients like oil corporations. So no transparency there…