Video footage of Kwasi Kwarteng at disrupted business lunch
(Picture: @GNDRising / Twitter)Protestors disrupted a business lunch Kwasi Kwarteng was having on Friday just a week after invading a Tory dinner during Priti Patel’s speech.
Members of Green New Deal Rising shared a video to social media, where they could be seen confronting the business secretary over rising energy costs.
Shout and scream all you like, but I’m not going to put Britain’s energy security at risk by shutting off domestic oil and gas production.
— Kwasi Kwarteng (@KwasiKwarteng) May 13, 2022
We will need oil and gas for decades to come. Either we source more of what we need from the North Sea, or import more from abroad. https://t.co/LvnnaBybny
In the footage, a protester can be heard saying: “Millions of people are choosing between heating and eating. People cannot feed their children.
“We want to live in a planet that people care about,’ as a man replies ‘Will you go out?”
Another person adds: “And whilst millions are struggling to survive due to rising energy bills, Shell has just announced a record seven billion pounds in profit.
“By blocking the windfall tax, Kwasi...”
Others can be heard accusing the minister of “lying to the UK public”.
A woman in the video said: Kwasi, you are lying to the UK public. You are trying to make us believe that by drilling new oil and gas we will be safe.
“But in reality you are trapping us into an unaffordable energy system and you are destroying our future. The climate crisis will destroy our future.”
BP posted its highest annual profit in eight years in February and announced more returns for shareholders, while Shell has reported “momentous” £12 billion profits.
In response to the ambush, Mr Kwarteng admonished the protestors by tweeting: “Shout and scream all you like, but I’m not going to put Britain’s energy security at risk by shutting off domestic oil and gas production.
“We will need oil and gas for decades to come. Either we source more of what we need from the North Sea, or import more from abroad.”
Last week, a group of protestors posed as young Tories in order to attend an event the Home Secretary was speaking at.
The group of six filmed themselves interrupting Priti Patel’s speech and demanding she halted her controversial Rwanda deportation policy.
