Insulate Britain has broken rule number one: don’t alienate the public

If you’re a driver and have been anywhere near London in the past week, chances are you’ve been witness to a very special form of stupidity.  

At 8am Tuesday morning Surrey police responded to reports of an incident between junctions 9 and 10 on the M25. They arrived to find a bunch of protestors had decided to sit down in the road and form a barrier, completely blocking off one side of the carriageway and bringing traffic to a complete standstill.

Meanwhile, over on the other side of the motorway, chaos ensued. While some protestors were busy pouring blue paint all over the tarmac, the police were wrestling with others as they attempted to walk out into the oncoming traffic. By 9am it was all over. At least 38 arrests were made. 

The group responsible is Insulate Britain – an offshoot of Extinction Rebellion. This is the fifth time in a little over a week that these eco-warriors have blocked the M25. On Monday they targeted the Dartford and Chorleywood area of the same motorway. Some glued themselves to the road. Police from Hertfordshire and Kent were called in to make 29 arrests.

As with most climate demonstrations, the demands are either impractical at best or illogical at worst. So it should come as no surprise that there’s something incongruous about Insulate Britain’s goal. The single-issue group is demanding immediate action on home insulation. 

So far the only thing the group has managed to achieve has been to frustrate and enrage motorists attempting to get on with their day. 

Then, on Sunday, the inevitable happened. In a distressing phone call to LBC, a caller described how an Insulate Britain protest led to a six-hour delay in treating his mother, who was in a vehicle with him when she began to have a stroke. The man sobbed as he told Andrew Pierce how she has now been left paralysed. 

Liam Norton, Insulate Britain’s ringleader, was asked by Good Morning Britain’s Richard Madeley this morning whether he had lost sleep over the incident. Norton said he had, but justified the group continuing to put lives at risk because “the future of the country is at stake”.

The right to protest and peaceful assembly is an essential part of western liberal democracy. So we must be careful not to rush in and clamp down on people freely expressing their beliefs and opinions. The whole point of a protest is to be loud and noisy – after all, what’s a protest if your views can’t be heard? This beautiful piece of people-power helps challenge injustice and hold power to account. 

But there must be a limit to legitimate demonstration. The right to protest must be carefully and sensibly balanced against the rights of citizens to freely go about their daily business. Under section 137 of the 1980 Highways Act it is an offence to intentionally block a highway. The police were initially criticised for being too lenient towards the protestors – footage emerged of an officer treating the event more like a playgroup than a protest. Yet this was promptly corrected and normal nicking service was resumed.

Not that any of this seems to bother these environmental protest groups. There is an arrogance bordering on the grotesque to believe that just because you think your cause is more righteous than someone else’s you can wilfully disrupt the lives of motorists. No doubt many of these activists will cite the Ziegler judgment in court, after a High Court judge ruled in 2017 that blocking a highway was a “reasonable” form of protest.

But there are signs that the public have finally had enough. In a scene reminiscent of the enraged commuters of Canning Town, who dragged two XR protestors down off a train, footage emerged showing frustrated drivers arguing with protestors. Many of them are in agreement with the protestors over climate change, but disagree with the tactics. When it comes to optics, Insulate Britain has failed rule number one – if you want people to support you, don’t alienate them.  

As for their demand to have all homes “decarbonised” by 2030, I have a certain sympathy, but as with XR, economics and logic are lost on Insulate Britain. With Covid having pushed government debt north of £2 trillion, to try and force immediate action on this would be catastrophic. The cost of retrofitting 30 million homes will be extortionate.

Class also plays a part. We have upper-middle class activists lecturing the rest of us on a subject most of us are already on board with. And it won’t be these Waitrose warriors struggling to pay; it’ll hit the working class.  

If they carry on in this way, they’ll have no one left on their side.