Daily Mail

Eco-zealots call off their ‘insane’ M25 blockade

- By Izzy Lyons

JUST Stop Oil’s activists are ‘misguided’ zealots whose ‘insane’ ideas have inflicted misery on thousands, Business Secretary Grant Shapps says today.

He spoke out after the eco-zealots called off their M25 blockade following four days of misery for thousands of drivers – including a man who missed his father’s funeral and a police motorcycli­st who was involved in a collision.

Essex Police revealed the officer, a married father of two, is still recovering from his injuries after he was thrown from his bike while responding to Just Stop Oil’s ‘criminal actions’.

The group’s climbdown came after an embarrassi­ng interview on Sky News where veteran presenter Mark Austin had to ask a Just Stop Oil campaigner to ‘please stop shouting at me’.

Activist Indigo Rumbelow laid into the experience­d news anchor in a bizarre exchange, shouting at him: ‘ Do you love your children more than you love fossil fuels?’ Hours later, 28-year-old Miss Rumbelow was revealed to have travelled all over the world by plane in recent years, including to Nepal, Sweden, Lithuania and Croatia.

‘ I assume she walked there? I really hope she didn’t fly! Unless on a magic carpet, of course,’ one critic quipped.In a surprising U- turn yesterday, Just Stop Oil said it was stopping its ‘ campaign of civil resistance’ on the M25 to give the Government ‘another chance to sit down and discuss with us and meet our demand’.

Ministers are likely to ignore the group’s ultimatum after Rishi Sunak revealed he was bringing in tougher powers for the police to stop the eco- activists and their ‘extremist protesting’. Yesterday, 11 protesters involved in this week’s disruption were charged by the Metropolit­an Police with conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. Mr Shapps criticised their ‘moronic’ demands for no new oil and gas licences in the UK, which he said would force the elderly to go cold this winter. Writing in The Daily Mail, below, Mr Shapps said their actions delayed essential deliveries, prevented health workers from getting to hospitals, and made children late for school. He added: ‘Of course, thousands of gallons of fuel were burned off needlessly in tailbacks. What a mad way to save the environmen­t.

‘Just Stop Oil is not a mass movement. It is a small band of fanatics who believe democracy is for the other guy. They know best – even if “best” is the insane idea that you can simply ditch fossil fuel-powered energy generation overnight in a country of 67 million people, without any plan or explanatio­n on how the elderly are supposed to keep warm in winter.’

Emma Brown, from Just Stop Oil, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday: ‘We are giving the Government another chance to sit down and discuss with us and meet our demand, which is the obvious no-brainer that we all want to see, which is no new oil in the UK.’ When asked whether campaigner­s could return to the M25 if their demands were not met, she said: ‘ How can we stop? This is a risk to our lives and to the lives of you and all of your listeners, so we can’t stop.’

Asked about the man who missed his father’s funeral due to a protest, she said she felt ‘really terrible’ but insisted the group’s action was ‘proportion­ate’.

A spokesman for the group said: ‘From today, Just Stop Oil will halt its campaign of civil resistance on the M25. We are giving time to those in Government who are in touch with reality to consider their responsibi­lities to this country at this time.

‘We ask that the Prime Minister consider his statement at Cop27, where he spoke of the catastroph­ic threat posed by the ravages of global heating, the 33 million people displaced by floods in Pakistan, and the moral and economic imperative to honour our pledges.

‘You don’t get to recycle words and promises – you owe it to the British people to act.’

‘A mad way to save the environmen­t’

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