BE READY FOR NEW EU VOTE
Farage wants to silence Remoaners
NIGEL Farage last night warned Brexit supporters to get ready for a second EU referendum.
The former Ukip leader tweeted: “It’s the last thing I’ve ever wanted but I fear it may be forced upon us. We have to be prepared.”
He claimed a second vote would see an even bigger majority for the Leave campaign and silence the “whingeing” of Remainers for a generation.
But he said it was vital that Brexiteers began organising to see off the challenge from hardline EU supporters such as Tony Blair, Sir Nick Clegg and former Labour minister Lord Adonis.
“It would be naive to allow Remain organisations to build up war chests, get their campaigns going, get their negative messages out
while we Leavers continue to be fractured, splintered, not campaigning, not pressurising MPs.
“The best way to protect our great victory is to be prepared if they come at us again.”
He said he had tried but failed in recent months to persuade Leave figures to come together.
“I’m hoping now that by saying I fear a second referendum may be coming we might just get some Leavers together. We need to keep fighting for that victory.”
Stressing that pro-Remain groups were already campaigning round the country, Mr Farage added: “What if they’re organised and we’re not? That would be absolute madness.”
Earlier yesterday in a TV interview Mr Farage revealed he was on the verge of a change of heart on a second referendum. “My mind is actually changing on all this,” he said.
“What is for certain is that the Cleggs, the Blairs, the Adonises will never give up. They will go on whingeing and whining and moaning all the way through this process.
“So maybe, just maybe, I’m reaching the point of thinking that we should have a second referendum. I think that if we had a second referendum on EU membership we would kill it off for a generation.
“The percentage that would vote to leave next time would be very much bigger than it was last time round. And we may just finish the whole thing off. And Blair can disappear off into total obscurity.”
Downing Street immediately ruled out a re-run of the referendum. “As I have said many times, we will not be having a second referendum,” the Prime Minister’s spokesman said.
And the former Ukip leader appeared to be at odds with his successor last night.
Henry Bolton, who took over the leadership of Ukip after last year’s general election, said: “Ukip policy on a second referendum remains unchanged. I am convinced that the Leave side would win a second referendum, should one be held, with an even larger majority.
“Many Remain voters can now see that the campaign led by the then Prime Minister and Chancellor was deliberately misleading. We have also seen greater investment and growth in a number of sectors since the summer of 2016. We are already seeing the benefits of leaving the EU.
“None the less, to hold such a referendum would be to call into question the decisive importance of the largest democratic exercise ever held by this country and the unambiguous mandate the people gave the Government on that day.
“Such a second referendum would undermine the fabric of our democratic principles and would weaken the clarity and effectiveness of democratic decision. It would be damaging to the nation.” But Arron Banks, a former Ukip donor and close ally of Mr Farage, last night called for a second referendum to go ahead.
“True Brexiteers have been backed into a corner and the only option now is to go back to the polls and let the people shout from the rooftops their support of a true Brexit,” Mr Banks said. “Leave would win by a landslide.”
Remain campaigners also backed the call for a second referendum, claiming a rerun would have a different result from the 52 per cent to 48 per cent in the 2016 poll. Lord Adonis said: “Bring it on.”
THERESA May vowed yesterday to rid Britain of plastic waste by 2042 as she hailed Brexit for freeing us from damaging EU rules.
Escaping restrictions imposed by Brussels will allow the UK to become a “world leader” in environmental protection, she declared.
Speaking at a nature reserve in south-west London, the Prime Minister told an audience of business people and campaigners: “Let me be very clear – Brexit will not mean a lowering of environmental standards.
“Be in no doubt, our record shows that we have already gone further than EU regulation requires of us to protect our environment.”
The Prime Minister, accompanied by Environment Secretary Michael Gove, spoke after publishing the Government’s long-awaited 25-year environment strategy.
It proposes to eliminate avoidable plastic waste within 25 years with a raft of measures including encouraging supermarkets to introduce “plastic-free” aisles and consulting on taxing disposal cups.
Taxes and charges could be imposed on single-use items such as takeaway containers. And the 5p charge for plastic carrier bags in large shops will be extended to all retailers in England. There will be support for water firms, retailers, coffee shops and transport hubs to offer refill points for people to top-up water bottles free in every major English city and town.
Thriving
More of Britain’s aid budget too will be directed towards helping developing nations reduce plastic use.
The plan aims to manage pressures on the environment by tackling climate change, minimising waste, managing exposure to chemicals and protecting livestock and wildlife from diseases, pests and invasive species.
It sets out long-term goals in six areas: Clean air, clean and plentiful water, thriving plants and wildlife, reduced risk from environmental hazards such as flooding and drought, using resources from nature more sustainably, and enhancing the natural environment.
Planning rules will be strengthened to ensure new developments protect habitats such as ancient woodlands and that new homes reach high environmental standards.
A new Northern Forest stretching from Cheshire to Lancashire and Yorkshire will be created, a million street trees will be planted and a “national tree champion” appointed.
The Government will also develop a new “nature recovery network” to create or restore 1.24 million acres of wildlife-rich habitat outside existing protected areas.
Highlighting how quitting the EU will create an opportunity to make more rapid progress than the snaillike movement in Brussels, Mrs May said: “We will use the opportunity Brexit provides to strengthen and enhance our environmental protections – not to weaken them.
“We will develop a new environmental land management scheme which supports farmers who deliver environmental benefits for the public.”
She called plastic waste “one of the great environmental scourges of our time”, adding: “In the UK alone, the amount of single-use plastic wasted every year would fill 1,000 Royal Albert Halls.” Mrs May promised: “We will set out plans for a new, world leading independent statutory body to hold government to account and give the environment a voice.” Mrs May went out of her way to savage the EU’s common fisheries policy which sees fishermen forced to return dead fish to the sea because of its farcical quota system.
She pledged: “Once we’ve taken back control of our waters, we will implement a more sustainable fishing policy that also supports our vital coastal communities.”
Mrs May also underlined a commitment to animal rights. She said: “We are increasing the maximum sentence for the worst acts of animal cruelty in England and Wales 10-fold. We recognise that animals are sentient beings and we will enshrine that understanding in primary legislation.”
Policies will be introduced aimed at making Britain a world leader in tackling the abuse of animals such as the introduction of mandatory CCTV cameras in slaughter houses.
Emergency
The Government’s plans received a cautious welcome from environmental campaigners.
Friends of the Earth’s chief executive Craig Bennett said: “A long-term vision for protecting our environment is essential, but the Government can’t keep turning a blind eye to the urgent action needed now to protect our health and planet from toxic air and climate-wrecking pollution.”
Greenpeace UK’s executive director John Sauven said the natural environment needed a “25-month emergency plan” more than it needed a 25-year vision, with urgent action from the Government.
“They should start by rolling out more robust and swift measures to stop plastic waste,” he said.
On a personal note Mrs May said she and husband Philip try to help the environment at her Maidenhead constituency home in Berkshire, adding: “We are recycling as much as possible. I’m proud of the fact that we have put a barn owl box, bird boxes and bat boxes up in our garden. So we are trying to do our little bit there as well.”
She added: “We love walking in the countryside.” But she joked that she was not about to return to Wales on a walking holiday – it was while walking in the Welsh hills that Mrs May decided to call a general election last year with near disastrous results as the Tories lost their majority.
Tesco yesterday joined Iceland and the Co-op in backing returnable drink bottles.
‘We will use the opportunity that Brexit provides to strengthen our environmental protections – not to weaken them’
IDON’T know about you but my inclination when I hear about any government plan is to be sceptical. And when that plan is focused on green issues my scepticism radar hits overdrive.
For too long environmental policy has been dominated by so-called “watermelons”: green on the outside but red inside. In other words environmentalism has been a mechanism for increasing the role of government, attacking economic growth and finding ever more things to ban.
And yet although the Left has claimed the mantle of environmentalism – and the Green Party is in effect a Left-wing ginger group – the more you think about it the more ridiculous that is.
For one thing the very name of the Conservative Party gives a clue about where it should stand on the environment. And it was famously Mrs Thatcher who realised in the 1980s that the Tories needed to “get” environmentalism, leading to the publication of the White Paper This Common Inheritance.
There have been any number of speeches and plans put forward by Conservative ministers since. But they’ve all been window dressing: going through the motions for the sake of appearing to do something.
In reality successive Conservative ministers and governments have ceded environmentalism to the Left. It’s no wonder the Tories have done so badly among young people for whom the environment is a major concern.
WHICH is why it is so important that Michael Gove is now Environment Secretary. Mr Gove is incapable of just going through the motions. When he sees an issue that matters he looks to tackle it and isn’t afraid to take on vested interests, as he showed when he was education secretary.
Yesterday’s 25-year plan A Green Future makes no bones about it: “We must tread more lightly on our planet, using resources more wisely and radically reducing the waste we generate.”
The reason is set out by Mr Gove: “Waste is choking our oceans and despoiling our landscapes as well as contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and scarring habitats.” But the point to grasp is that we can do this without resorting to the “watermelon” approach that uses the environment to bring in ever more statism.
The test is getting the balance right between dealing with pressing environmental issues and avoiding what David Cameron infamously called the “green c***”. Which brings us to plastic. You hardly need me to tell you about excessive packaging. If it was simply annoying then it wouldn’t really matter. But it’s not, its impact is devastating.
In the English Channel one in every three fish caught contains plastic. Since the 1950s, 8.3 billion tons of plastic has been produced and that is set to quadruple over the next 30 years. Since much of that is dumped in rivers and oceans it means that on present trends by 2050 there will be more plastic by weight in the sea than there are fish. What a terrible thought.
A million birds and more than 100,000 turtles and other sea mammals have died after eating or getting tangled up in plastic. This will all get worse unless we act. As Mrs May put it yesterday, this plastic waste is causing “immense suffering to individual creatures and degrading vital habitats”.
The damning truth is that none of the waste generated by so-called “single use plastic” – such as cups, bottles, straws, cutlery, plates and packaging – is necessary. It’s all a result of habit and sometimes forced on us by companies even when we’d rather avoid it, such as supermarket fruit and veg.
Which is why a solution is eminently achievable but almost revolutionary at the same time. Because we need to change what have become ingrained habits and that means taking responsibility ourselves as well as sometimes a push from government to nudge behaviour in the right direction.
Pushes such as the 5p charge on plastic bags, which has reduced the use of them by a startling 85 per cent. But it doesn’t always need legislation to have a big impact. Responding to consumer pressure and the Prime Minister’s speech yesterday, for example, Tesco says it is in favour of a deposit scheme for plastic bottles, looking at “how this can operate in practice and at scale” having previously rejected the idea.
We could do worse than adopt Norway’s “reverse vending” scheme in which plastic bottles are exchanged for a voucher to spend in the shop. Norwegians even scour litter bins to find plastic bottles left by tourists.
AND why are we using plastic bottles at all? When I was young drinks came in glass bottles and you got your deposit back when you handed them in.
As Mrs May said yesterday, we throw away enough singleuse plastic in a year to fill the Royal Albert Hall 1,000 times.
Mr Gove’s own ministry, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, has alone used more than 2.5 million plastic cups in the past five years. Now he has pledged to stop Whitehall using plastic cups and cutlery altogether.
It’s a matter of will. Each of us can do our bit. It all helps. I admit that I don’t take my own bag to the supermarket. So here’s my pledge: from today I’ll always try to keep a spare plastic bag wrapped up in my coat. What’s yours?
‘One in every three fish contains plastic’