Nobody likes protesters... but they don’t care

It was 6am on a drizzly Monday and I was busy ignoring my alarm clock for the first time. Up the road in rural Maidstone, four Romanian men were patiently waiting in the pouring rain for their boss to give them the go ahead to begin another week of apple and pear picking.

Some 35 miles in the other direction, several orange-bibbed hippies were preparing to pile out of their vehicles and across the northern entrance of the Blackwall Tunnel. Dozens of their co-protesters were awaiting instructions in the remaining three corners of London.

By 8am they’d sprung into action, gluing themselves to the Tarmac in front of hordes of furious motorists.

It’s difficult to contemplate a more hostile setting for environmentalists than soggy Greenwich.

Add in the fact it was morning rush-hour on a Monday and you’ve got a scenario almost perfectly engineered to enrage an east London van driver as much as possible.

Having the motivation to put yourself in the firing line like that must be worth something?

Back in rural

Maidstone the apple farmer phoned up the radio to moan that

British fruit pickers were lazy when compared to their

European counterparts

- the two local men who worked for him had called in sick.

Down the road I pressed snooze on my alarm for a second time.

Yet Insulate Britain are almost universally disliked and pre-brexit a large number of people were incredibly angry about eastern Europeans “stealing their jobs”.

Why do we take aim at the most proactive members of our society? Whether you agree with their methods or not, Insulate Britain have shown more commitment to a seemingly lost cause in the past two weeks than any of the leave campaign have to making Brexit a success since 2016.

And they don’t care if you hate them for it, because they’re not appealing to Joe Public, they’re urging the government to take action.

‘Add in the fact it was morning rush hour and you’ve got a scenario almost perfectly engineered to enrage an east London van driver’