SO-CALLED “eco-warrior” Boris Johnson reportedly flew straight from COP26 in his private jet to have dinner with a self-confessed climate change sceptic.
The Prime Minister is said to jetted off from the UN summit in Glasgow – dubbed the “last best chance” to save the world from catastrophe – to attend a dinner with former Daily Telegraph editor Lord Charles Moore.
The Daily Mirror reports that the Tory leader left the conference in Glasgow at 6.20pm and arrived at London Stansted at 7.16pm, before heading to the private men-only Garrick Club for a dinner for former Telegraph journalists.
The fashion of Johnson’s exit was criticised as “staggering hypocrisy” by Labour chair Anneliese Dodds, after the Prime Minister opened the summit by imploring delegates to stop “quilting the Earth in an invisible and suffocating blanket of CO2”.
Dodds said: “This is staggering hypocrisy from the Prime Minister. After warning world leaders it’s one minute to midnight to prevent climate catastrophe, Boris Johnson clocked off from Cop26, jumped in his private jet and flew down to London for dinner at a gentleman’s club with a self-confessed climate change sceptic.
“It seems that when it comes to taking action to tackle the climate crisis, there’s one rule for the Conservatives and another rule for the rest of the world.”
A Downing St source insisted Johnson had always been due to leave Glasgow on Tuesday evening, as the element of the summit involving world leaders drew to a close.
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Johnson’s flight out of Glasgow was confirmed by the Prime Minister’s official spokesman on Monday.
Pressed on why the Prime Minister could not go by train for a journey within the UK, the spokesman said it was important he was able to travel round the country while facing “significant time constraints”.
Lord Moore, Johnson’s former boss at the Telegraph, was appointed as a peer by the PM last year.
Asked to comment on the dinner, he told the Mirror: "I can't say anything about it."
The lord has admitted to being a climate change "sceptic" but rejects the term "climate change denial" as a "deliberately libellous term".
Earlier this week, he claimed there was no evidence which proves the world is facing a “climate emergency”.
Johnson was dubbed an “eco-warrior” by ITV journalist Robert Peston earlier this week after opening the COP26 summit.
The Prime Minister told world leaders in Glasgow: “Humanity has long since run down the clock on climate change. It’s one minute to midnight on that doomsday clock and we need to act now.”
The Business Secretary defended Johnson’s decision to fly back to London from the COP26 summit.
He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain programme: “So he’s travelled back like many world leaders did, they came here for world leaders day, I think we had 120 heads of governments on Monday, and many of them flew back to their countries and went back."
The minister added: “What is completely without question is the fact that in the UK, the Prime Minister is leading a government that’s totally focused on net-zero, and as I’ve said, we’ve had huge successes, we had 40% of our electricity was generated by coal 10 years ago, and today that’s 1%.”
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