Keir Starmer has been accused of “pathetic bullying” by a Norfolk environmental campaigner who was singled out and ridiculed by the prime minister in an article in the Daily Mail.
Sir Keir heaped scorn on Andrew Boswell across the first five paragraphs of an article in the tabloid, headlined “We’ll stop the time-wasting NIMBYs and zealots from holding the country to ransom”.
Dr Boswell, a computer scientist, now brands himself an environmental consultant and challenges road and other projects in the courts which he argues break environment, nature and habitat laws.
Speaking to Sky News this afternoon, Dr Boswell said: “I think it’s disgraceful that he called out an individual in this way. And someone who is not able to protect themselves easily.
“I think it’s a very dangerous thing for the prime minister to do, and he shouldn’t have approached it this way.”
Asked why he thought it was dangerous, Dr Boswell replied: “Well, he has named me. I’m just an ordinary person, a member of the public. I go about my life on that basis. I don’t have a vast media team to protect me. I don’t have other protections. It’s a very dangerous thing to do to an individual.”
Dr Boswell said, following the attack, that Keir Starmer should understand the government is failing to uphold its climate ambitions and that he wants to discuss this with the PM.
“Keir Starmer ought to actually meet me, and I’d like to talk to him about the climate emergency and the fact that you can’t just dismiss carbon emissions as Rachel Reeves did yesterday at Davos. We can’t do that.
“And the simple fact of the matter is that the planning system in this country does not secure the climate ambitions that the government has.
“So the reason I went into the planning system and the legal system was to try to shore that up. Until that is shored up, people are going to continue taking legal actions against the government and government decisions which do not protect our climate ambitions.”
…
