THE First Minister of Wales has joined Nicola Sturgeon in condemning a “crass and offensive” Boris Johnson for claiming that Margaret Thatcher’s closure of coal mines across the UK was actually environmentalism.
The Prime Minister has been widely criticised for the comments made while visiting a wind farm in Moray on Thursday.
He was told that Thatcher's policies had "zero" to do with concern for the climate and that the damage they caused was immeasurable.
Johnson had hailed existing action to move to greener forms of power, stating when he was a child 70% to 80% of all electricity had been coal-generated.
“Since then, it’s gone right down to 1%, or sometimes less,” Johnson said, adding: “Look at what we’ve done already.
“We’ve transitioned away from coal in my lifetime.
“Thanks to Margaret Thatcher, who closed so many coal mines across the country, we had a big early start and we’re now moving rapidly away from coal altogether.”
The Thatcher administration saw the bitter 1984-85 miners’ strike which affected pit communities across the country.
The Welsh First Minister said the damage done to coal mining areas in his nation had been “incalculable”.
Drakeford told BBC Radio 4’s Today: “I’m afraid that those remarks are both crass and offensive.
“The damage done to Welsh coal mining areas 30 years ago was incalculable and here we are 30 years later the Tories are still celebrating what they did.”
READ MORE: Boris Johnson slammed for 'crass jokes' about Margaret Thatcher closing coal mines
Scotland’s First Minister also responded furiously to Johnson’s comments, telling him: “Lives and communities in Scotland were utterly devastated by Thatcher’s destruction of the coal industry (which had zero to do with any concern she had for the planet).
“To treat that as something to laugh about is crass and deeply insensitive to that reality.”
Labour leader Keir Starmer is among the other politicians to attack the Prime Minister over the “joke”.
He said: “Boris Johnson’s shameful praising of Margaret Thatcher’s closure of the coal mines, brushing off the devastating impact on those communities with a laugh, shows just how out of touch he is with working people.”
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