Starmer’s “anti-extremism” adviser, Lord Walney, has been booted unceremoniously from his post – just a day after the anniversary of the Hamas bombings. Bizarrely, the news broke through the hard left propaganda site Byline Times, with a Home Office spokesman confirming to the highly marginal site that Walney was no longer the Government’s ‘Independent Adviser on Political Violence and Disruption.’ Guido hears Walney himself did not find out with much notice, having been under the impression that he’d stay on as Labour conducted a review of their extremism policies…
Lord Walney’s been a thorn in the side of Extinction Rebellion and other extremists groups for a while, having written a report recommending the police be given more powers to curb disruptive, extreme protests. Extinction Rebellion held a protest at the end of last month demanding the government sacked him – which would have been a very good reason to keep him on. And now Labour has bent the knee to their green mob, casting aside a well-respected expert adviser in the (lack of) process…
UPDATE: Walney “remains in post,” Byline has corrected their false article, The Times says he could be on the way out. A mess…
Labour-led Bolton Council has landed itself in hot water after splashing over £1,100 of taxpayers’ cash to fund an Extinction Rebellion “climate café.” In July, the council handed a £1,134 grant to the local XR tree-huggers, ostensibly to host monthly get-togethers to “chat about all matters climate-related”. Sounds riveting…
Billed as a “relaxed and informal” safe space, the café sessions have fuelled outrage among Conservatives who’ve blasted the fact that taxpayers’ hard-earned cash is being recycled into the hands of the eco-warriors. Labour’s habit of burning a hole in the public purse on green causes is raising more than just temperatures…
Despite ‘control freak‘ Sue Gray’s not-so-svengali wrangling causing chaos with government appointments, Labour SpAd teams are coming together and beginning normal operation. Over at DESNZ Ed Miliband’s squad brings some unorthodox ideology to the table…
Miliband is retaining his long-term advisers. Guiding the UK’s energy policy operation will be climate activist Tobias Garnett, the former coordinator of Extinction Rebellion’s legal strategy team who represented the road-gluing activists in court. Garnett believes our trajectory is currently “descending swiftly into a politics of ecofascism forged in the crucible of scarce resources, droughts, floods, climate wars and forced migration.” Doesn’t quite sound like politics that will “tread lightly on people’s lives”…
Also on the team is Jonty Leibowitz, whose passion is arguing for socialist reforms to football that include:
When it comes to his energy brief Leibowitz’ contribution is a policy paper which argues that “regional banking” should be forcibly re-oriented to “financing the energy transition“. Ideas shared by radical Corbynite and “green” bank devotee Miatta Fahnbulleh – recently appointed energy minister…
SpAd Eleanor Salter’s focus is “integrating nature into the climate offer“. Salter thinks a “fundamental shift” is required to deal with the “climate breakdown“, which includes “taking many cars off the roads altogether.” Her other “nature” proposals include allowing anyone to traipse across private property to make “the countryside open to all” but especially to gypsies, whose “access rights are already under threat from the authoritarian Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which seeks to criminalise trespass.” And who would have guessed that Salter once said our “best sources of hope” come from Jeremy Corbyn, and that Extinction Rebellion has been “hugely successful… a great accelerator for activism”…
SpAds are often relied on to temper the barmy ideas of their Cabinet Minister. No chance of that in Ed’s team…
In April 2019 Keir Starmer gave his support to Camden Council’s Clean Air Action Plan, which included proposals to limit construction and to force residents into a “modal shift away from private vehicles towards walking, cycling and public transport.” He went further and gave his endorsement to Extinction Rebellion’s tactics:
“Climate change is the issue of our time and, as the Extinction Rebellion protest showed us this week, the next generation are not going to forgive us if we don’t take action. It’s been lots of talk, now we need action and the plan today is about what action we’re going to take here uh in Camden.“
Camden Council has since gone on to propose its own expansive ULEZ which would be charged on top of Khan’s one, as well as limiting families to one car only. Does Starmer support that too?
Extinction Rebellion tactics have racked up Metropolitan Police bills of almost £100 million. The Met is clear that eco-terrorist tactics lead to “hundreds of officers being taken away from local teams” to deal with them. Meanwhile, Starmer’s Shadow Transport Secretary said that Extinction Rebellion has a duty to protest. The loons will have more than one ally in a Labour Cabinet…
Shadow Secretary of State for Transport Louise Haigh has some history of calling for “urgent action” on the “climate crisis”, though she’s kept quiet on her long-held activism for a little while. Co-conspirators might wonder whose side will she take when the eco-loons clamber on top of commuter trains…
In 2019 Haigh joined an Extinction Rebellion protest and exclaimed to listening eco-terrorists:
“It is your right if not your duty to stand up and wake up the world to this existential threat facing our humanity, so I am here alongside you tonight because over the world, scientists, teachers, doctors, police officers, parents, and teachers, have joined this movement. Not troublemakers, not uncooperative crusties, but people people make waking us up to the fact that we have failed.”
In a Starmer government Haigh will be responsible for the entirety of England’s transport system and no few elements of devolved ones. Extinction Rebellion will be glad to have such a devoted ally of theirs round the cabinet table…
The Court of Appeal has concluded its judgement today after the Attorney General asked for clarification on whether climate protestors can claim that businesses subject to criminal damage would think it was fine if only they knew the true results of climate change. Guido has considered applying the same argument for socialists…
The court’s judges are decisive in slapping down that legal defence:
“Circumstances” in the phrase “the destruction or damage and its circumstances” do not include the merits, urgency or importance of the matter about which the defendant is protesting, nor the perceived need to draw attention to a cause or situation.“
That means that the 2023 ruling in which Extinction Rebellion founder Roger Hallam and others were cleared of £36,000 worth of damage using that same argument, was wrong. You can’t claim that because you believe that the business owner would have consented to damage had they known its purpose, that counts as reasonable “circumstance“. A major blow dealt to rampant eco-vandalism…
