ENVIRONMENTAL activists and the £20 cut in Universal Credit were debated by columnists and contributors in the newspapers.

The Daily Mail

Janet Street-Porter said motorway driving was bad enough at the best of times and now we face a fresh danger - ‘Insulate Britain - a small group who have broken away from climate change activists Extinction Rebellion - have decided to get their environmental message across to the world by glueing themselves to motorways in the rush hour.’

“One driver’s mother allegedly suffered a stroke and struggled to survive as her son fought to get her to a hospital after being delayed six hours,” she said. “The long-suffering Great British Public sit marooned in their vehicles for hours on end, utterly impotent, spewing out countless tons of C02 as engines idle.”

She said she supported the right for free speech but not in the middle of the M25 when people are going to work.

“The Insulate Britain mob are going about their mission in a completely wrong-headed selfish way. They are infuriating and alienate the very people- working class voters - the green lobby should be wooing.”

The Daily Express

Ann Widdecombe said the protesters who are currently blocking the M25 know that their actions are not going to change any ministerial minds or persuade any members of the public to back their cause,

“The latest incident involves an elderly stroke victim, left paralysed after it took her son six hours to get her to hospital,” she said. “What do the protesters care? Nothing. They have their normal mobility so to Hades with everyone else.”

She said the police should clear the roads of all demonstrators, charge them and keep them in custody.

“The right to demonstrate is essential to democracy but there is no right to do so in a way which causes pain, suffering or even death. Perhaps that poor paralysed lady should sue both the leaders of the demonstration and the police. Chief constables hate the prospect of paying damages.”

The Guardian

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the UK’s poorest people are about to be cast aside by the government’s universal credit cut.

“There is, of course, never a right moment to cut social security benefits. But with the world dangling at the edge of an economic precipice, the price of basics – food and energy – threatening to rocket upwards and 30,000 Covid-19 cases a day, lives and livelihoods still hang in the balance,” he said. “At this point, the government’s planned £20 a week cut to universal credit in October seems more economically illogical, socially divisive and morally indefensible than anything I have witnessed in this country’s politics.

After the cuts go into effect on 6 October, the last line of support for families will not be the welfare state, but food banks. Their lifeline is now charity.”