Tennis star Andy Murray summed up this sentiment ahead of Wimbledon this week: ‘I agree with the cause – just not always how they go about expressing it.’

So let’s talk about that cause for a moment. Because for all the hippyish, faux-left trappings – for all the placards, singsongs and craft-table kitsch – this is the most reactionary movement to hit Britain’s streets for some time. This demand that we ditch oil and gas, in the midst of a crushing cost-of-living crisis, the pain of which is being borne disproportionately by the most hard-up, is a demand that we push people into poverty so as to appease Mother Earth. That we put the quasi-spiritual beliefs of well-to-do greens ahead of the living standards of working-class people. It is a policy that is both barmy and unbelievably cruel.

This is not really an environmental movement, it’s a doomsday cult. Just Stop Oil’s well-worn lines about today’s young people ‘having no future’, its prognostications of imminent mass death, are not borne out by any credible reading of the evidence.

[It’s yet another watermelon enviro front — green on the outside, deep red on the inside. Their goal isn’t to save the planet, it’s to seize power and resources, and to eliminate as much of humanity as they can. To put this in pop-culture terms, they’re Thanos without the charm. And thankfully for now, without the power. — Ed]