Boris Goes Greenwash

While his challengers for the Tory leadership are falling over themselves to admit their past usage of Class A drugs, front runner Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is, as befits someone with a track record of lying for personal gain, trying to get anyone looking in his general direction to Look Over There at his burgeoning green credentials.

Bozza going Green? Well, no he isn’t, and in pretending thus he is just demonstrating how full of crap he is, but he’s got an environmentally conscious partner to appease, and a niche to carve in the policy stakes. So the clown whose track record on the environment includes presiding over an appalling deterioration in London’s air quality, and a dismissal of criticism by saying the capital’s air was “Alpine”, is pretending to be green. Sort of.

So it was that earlier this week he Tweeted “Today is #WorldEnvironmentDay and a pivotal moment for our planet, our climate, our wildlife. A government I lead would win our bid to host COP 2020, legislate for net zero emissions by 2050 & embrace the opportunity of green growth for the UK as a global decarbonisation leader”. Like heck. He won’t be doing any of that once he’s run it past Steve Bannon and Rupert Murdoch.

But he was still at it earlier today. Except this time “Our oceans are in real trouble. 90% of big fish have gone. As PM I will take on the lawlessness of the high seas, end the scourge of plastic pollution & honour in full our commitment to protect 4m KM2 of oceans in our beautiful overseas territories. #GlobalBritain #worldoceanday”. Wow! Zap! Dull!

So what’s driving this sudden eco-drive? Simples. Bozza is, as I type, still seeing former CCHQ spinner Carrie Symonds, who is that ultimate contradiction in terms: ecologically sensitive, but a tribal right-winger. One of those Tories who pretends that conservatism can equal conservation, which it can’t. Tories don’t care about the environment.

Carrie Symonds - the reason Bozza pretends to be green

The reality for Bozza is that this is mere show, but serves two purposes. One, it diverts questions about his past drug use, and my information is that there is a Past Drug Use, with capital letters. And Two, it diverts from the reality of Bozza’s real record on anything environmental, which is, as so often, to talk well, but lie badly.

Heathrow - where Bozza's pretence was exposed as a sham

Take, for instance, his stance on Heathrow’s third runway when put alongside policy delivery. He told Labour MP John McDonnell “I will join you. I will lie down in front of those bulldozers and stop the construction of that third runway". He spoke, as so often, with forked tongue: when the Parliamentary vote came on the scheme, he chickened out and flew off to Afghanistan just so he could be out of the way.

Hmmm, wonder what this is doing here?

Or this snippet from the Guardian: “The author of a report on how London’s illegal air pollution disproportionately affects deprived schools has said City Hall under Boris Johnson held back the study’s negative findings, while publicising the positive ones”.

The reality is that Bozza is going greenwash. He’s no more environmentally conscious than he is honest, which means he isn’t. He’s just pretending. To impress his girlfriend.

He should come clean about his drug use, too. Or would he prefer others do it for him?

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