Global warning: politics is about to get truly ugly as Sunak pollutes climate change debate

It’s the unlovely Australian political tactic devised to bludgeon voters into submission on immigration, crime and climate, writes Alan Rusbridger. Here’s why ‘wedge issues’ are what the PM’s North Sea oil strategy is really about

Sunak had the chance to show genuine leadership on this issue. He could have tried for consensus, and sought to take people with him. But he fluffed it (Getty/PA)

It was one of the oddest – and most hopeful – meetings of my life. In one chair sat a very big cheese in an international petrochemical company – let’s call him Oil Man. A few feet away sat two hardcore Extinction Rebellion (XR) protesters. No one threw orange powder, or glued themselves to the floor. Something much more interesting happened: they talked.

I’d run into Oil Man a few weeks earlier at his London HQ, which at the time was under raucously noisy siege by XR activists. Oil Man (we’d agreed the meeting was off the record, hence my coyness) surprised me. “Thing is, I agree with most of what they’re saying. But how on earth can we ever talk?”