Activists taken away by security after holding up banner reading ‘Who voted for this?’
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Environmental activists disrupted Liz Truss’s Conservative party conference speech, denouncing the prime minister’s “shredding” of her party’s election manifesto promises on protection for nature.
As Truss outlined her reasons for the controversial economic policies implemented within days of becoming prime minister, Greenpeace UK’s head of public affairs, Rebecca Newsom, and its policy officer, Ami McCarthy, stood up close to the front of the conference hall in Birmingham on Wednesday with a banner asking: “Who voted for this?”
Conference delegates responded with boos and snatched the banner from their hands, only for the two women to pull out another, identical banner.
“Let’s get them removed,” Truss said, as badged security guards intervened and tried to rip the banner out of the women’s hands and take lanyards away.
In a statement sent moments after the intervention, Greenpeace UK said it had identified at least seven areas across environmental protection, climate action, workers’ rights and tackling inequality where policies considered by Truss’s cabinet contradicted the 2019 Conservative election manifesto
It quoted Newsom as saying: “Who voted for this? In a healthy democracy, people should get the government programme they voted for, but Liz Truss is putting most of it through the shredder.
