People joined a noisy protest outside the Broadstairs office of South Thanet MP Craig Mackinlay yesterday (May 21) to highlight climate change and the cost of living crisis..
The action was organised by the ‘Thanet Left’ group.
A spokesperson said: “Climate change catastrophe and the rising cost of living pose a terrible threat to us here, yet we have an MP who seems utterly blind to both of them.”
They added: “Thanet is one of the most deprived areas in the country. The people here are suffering as it is, but the cost of living crisis, with rocketing food prices and energy prices, is going to push many of them over the edge. Yet Mackinlay is totally silent on the issue.
“The global climate emergency poses a huge threat, too. Rising sea levels could turn Thanet back into an island within twenty years and devastate many parts of Kent. But incredibly Mackinlay has gone on the record against green taxes and has links to climate change deniers.”
The protestors said this is only the first of a series of similar events.
Mr Mackinlay is a member of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG), made up of backbench Conservative MPs, which opposes many of the government’s net zero policies.
The NZSG says it accepts climate science but the policies for net zero are ‘uncosted fairytales.’
The group has institutional links with the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which says “predictions of unacceptable warming caused by more carbon dioxide are wrong”.
The NZSG say people will be hit with huge costs for some of the net zero measures, such as heat pumps replacing gas boilers and the switch to electric vehicles.
In terms of energy price rises Mr Mackinlay says the UK needs to use its own natural resources. In a piece for The Critic, he said: “Consumers will need urgent relief from spiralling prices. Relief from VAT and from the cost of environmental levies, which now make up close to 25 per cent of electricity bills, will cushion the blow, but we have to deal with the market fundamentals to get bills down for good else face impoverished families and the final closure of remaining high energy intensive industries as production, jobs and the positive tax-take simply relocates abroad.”
