Fresh row in Labour as Ed Miliband billed to appear alongside Extinction Rebellion supporter at Glastonbury panel about climate change – days after the party was found to have taken £1.5m from a Just Stop Oil funding businessman
- Mr Miliband is sharing a platform with XR for a climate change debated
- Organisers said he is sharing a panel with XR ‘supporter, not representative’
Labour climate change guru Ed Miliband was at the centre of a new row last night after he was billed to be appearing alongside ‘green fanatics’ Extinction Rebellion at the Glastonbury Festival.
Mr Miliband was listed as sharing a platform with XR for a debate on tackling climate change at the Left Field area of the world-famous festival later this month.
Organisers later clarified that Mr Miliband would be sharing a panel with XR ‘supporter, not representative’ Nick Anim and amended the festival’s website.
But that was not before the controversial movement said it was ‘entirely appropriate’ for the Labour frontbencher to appear with one of its people.
An XR spokesman told the MoS: ‘Considering Labour’s recent flip-flopping on climate promises, there is much to challenge Miliband on and we look forward to having a conversation about it.’
Ed Miliband was listed as sharing a platform with XR for a debate on tackling climate change at the Left Field area of the world-famous festival later this month
Tory MPs seized on Mr Miliband’s appearance in the wake of the row over Labour taking £1.5million from green energy businessman Dale Vince, pictured, who also funded Just Stop Oil campaigners
Labour sources hit back yesterday by insisting that Mr Miliband’s team had ‘told Glastonbury they won’t share a platform with someone representing XR’ and said Mr Anim will speak for the ‘Transition Towns’ organisation, which supports local green projects.
But Tory MPs seized on Mr Miliband’s appearance in the wake of the row over Labour taking £1.5million from green energy businessman Dale Vince, who also funded Just Stop Oil campaigners.
Peterborough MP Paul Bristow said: ‘Not content with taking cash from backers of one part of these mad environmental protests, Labour is now sharing a platform with a supporter of another group of green fanatics. Instead of sharing the same beanbag at Glastonbury, Ed Miliband and Keir Starmer should be pressing the police to arrest the idiots stopping people going about their lawful business.’
The row erupted after Labour was last week forced to scale down the £28billion-a-year green prosperity plan championed by Mr Miliband – amid fears that the massive annual borrowing it required would spook the markets.
Just days before, the Daily Mail published Treasury analysis showing the plan, first unveiled by Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves in 2021, could push up interest rates – costing families with a £200,000 mortgage an extra £1,000 a year.
The climbdown comes after the MoS revealed last week Labour backbench unease over the party’s ‘mad green’ schemes, including the £28 billion plan and one to ban all new North Sea oil and gas projects.
Mr Miliband’s appearance at Glastonbury comes six years after Jeremy Corbyn was given a hero’s welcome at the festival.
Sources admitted last night that Mr Miliband, who will take part in a discussion entitled One Minute To Midnight: Can Politics Deliver On Climate Action?, was unlikely to get ‘Corbyn-level’ adulation.
Also taking part in the discussion will be Greenpeace co-director Areeba Hamid, climate commentator Sepi Golzari-Munro and journalist John Harris.
XR later said that Mr Anim ‘will be appearing at Glastonbury without any connections to XR’.
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