The dinner table conversation in one of the UK’s most famous households just got a whole lot more interesting, after Stanley Johnson, father of avid Brexiteer and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, declared in favour of the grassroot movement for climate action.
“More than 500 people have been arrested in London since protesters began blocking roads and bridges on Monday, part of a global wave of protests that have also hit New York, Paris, Berlin, and Madrid,” the Associated Press reports. That prompted the younger, more famous Johnson to declare Extinction Rebellion protesters a collection of “uncooperative crusties” who should abandon their “hemp-smelling bivouacs”.
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But that didn’t sit too well with Johnson’s dad. “I wear that badge with pride,” Stanley Johnson declared this week.
Johnson the elder told the campaigners they had “exactly the right things in mind” with their demand that countries rapidly bring their greenhouse gas emissions to zero. The environmental movement is “tremendously important,” he added, and “it is absolutely clear to me that we have been moving far too slowly on the climate change issue.”
