Mark Drakeford slams Boris Johnson for 'celebrating' Margaret Thatcher's coal mine closures
Wales' First Minister Mark Drakeford has condemned Boris Johnson's comments on Margaret Thatcher having because of the UK a “big early start” within the fight against global warming when she closed coal mines as “crass and offensive”.
Speaking on the trip to an offshore wind farm in the Moray Firth, the prime minister said that Margaret Thatcher helped climate change by closing “so many coal mines”.
“We're now down to less than 2%, I believe it's I% in our energy originates from coal,” the best minister added.
Read more: Almost all of Wales' Covid restrictions to end on Saturday
Mr Johnson had been quizzed about preparations for the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, in November, during a two-day trip to Scotland.
Pushed on whether he would set a deadline for ending the extraction of fossil fuels, he explained the UK had already transitioned from coal in the lifetime – oweing it to Mrs Thatcher.
He said: “Thanks to Margaret Thatcher, who closed a lot of coal mines across the country, we'd a large early start and we're now moving rapidly away from coal altogether.”
He is reported to possess laughed and told reporters: “I believed that would enable you to get going.”
He said there's a “massive opportunity” to increase using more environmentally-friendly technologies.”
Reacting towards the Prime Minister's comments, Wales' First Minister Mark Drakeford told BBC Radio Four's Today programme: “I'm afraid those remarks are generally crass and offensive.
“The damage completed to Welsh coal mining areas 30 years ago was incalculable and here i am 3 decades later the Tories are still celebrating the things they did.”
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon also said said your comments ought to were “crass and deeply insensitive” to mining communities.
She tweeted: “Lives and communities in Scotland were utterly devastated by Thatcher's destruction from the coal industry (which in fact had zero to do with any concern she'd for the planet).”
Labour said he should apologise for that “shameful” comments. Labour is in opposition to the outlet of new coal mines, saying they aren't suitable for the UK attempting to be a world leader in reducing carbon emissions.
But Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, tweeted that Mr Johnson's surveys are “shameful”.
He wrote: “Brushing off the devastating effect on those communities with a laugh, shows just how out of touch he is with working people”.
In reaction to the criticism, Boris Johnson recognises the “huge impact and pain” brought on by the closure of coal mines, his official spokesman said in response to a backlash over the Prime Minister's comments produced in Scotland on Thursday.
In 1984, there were 170 working collieries in great britan, employing a lot more than 190,000 people but by 2021, they'd all closed.
Mrs Thatcher's announcement that she planned to shut 20 of these, led to the year-long miners' dispute. Millions of people protested against pit closures and throughout the summer of 1984 there have been violent clashes between striking miners and police, whose numbers often encountered hundreds of at each confrontation.
Mr Drakeford was talking with BBC Radio Four after the announcement that Wales will move to alert level zero from Saturday August 7.
From August 7 restrictions around the number of individuals meeting indoors in private homes, public facilities, or at events happen to be lifted and all sorts of businesses and premises can open.
Nightclubs can re-open and the two-metre social distancing rule won't be a blanket rule but will instead depend on individual establishments to find out.
It means Wales will have completed the proceed to alert level zero and it is the very first time since the pandemic started that businesses will be able to open and all sorts of legal limits on meeting individuals indoor private spaces is going to be removed. Full details on all of the rule changes can be found here.
