Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s climate change spokeswoman and former press secretary has caused her boss some embarrassment by suggesting people “join the Green Party”.
“When people say to me, ‘What can they do?’, they can do many things,” she told left-wing ex-newspaper the Independent.
“They can join Greenpeace, they can join the Green Party,” she said, before adding quickly that they could also “join the Tory party”.
The co-leader of the left-wing, pro-mass migration Greens, Jonathan Bartley, was quick to pounce on the seeming slip-up, crowing: “After decades of inaction from both the Conservatives and Labour, we would absolutely agree with the government that joining the Green Party is the best thing people can do to help tackle climate change.”
Stratton, a friend of Boris Johnson’s liberal wife, Carrie, was brought into Downing Street to fill the newly-created post of White House-style press secretary in 2020, was considered a strange pick for the role, as a veteran of the leftist Guardian newspaper and the BBC, and regarded by many conservatives as harbouring strong left-establishment biases.
She was soon claimed to be a key player in the struggle between Carrie’s alleged faction in Downing Street, pushing Johnson to the left on issues such as climate change social justice, and Dominic Cummings, the now-ousted Chief Adviser to the Prime Minister who had worked with him at the Vote Leave campaign during the Brexit referendum.
Stratton did not last long after Cummings at the heart of the Downing Street machine herself, however, having been moved to her current positon as spokeswoman for the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) conference in Glasgow in April.
Speaking to The Times, a source described as a “friend of Stratton” insisted that “Allegra believes no government has done more for the environment and to deal with climate change in the UK than this one, and no PM has given the issue such prominence and profile [as Boris Johnson].”
The “friend” added that Stratton was “proud to be working for the PM to make COP26 a success, encouraging other countries to come to Glasgow with real movement on coal, cars, and trees and to stand a chance to limit temperature increase to 1.5 degrees.”
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