Boris Johnson ‘undermined’ Alok Sharma at Cop26 with climate hypocrisy, says Labour

Ed Miliband says global climate target in ‘intensive care’ after Glasgow summit

Boris Johnson has been accused of “undermining” his own climate conference minister Alok Sharma by failing to back him up with ambitious UK commitments at Cop26.

Labour said the target of keeping global warming within 1.5C was in “intensive care” following the agreement reached by world leaders at the end of the Glasgow summit.

The opposition claimed the prime minister had left his Cop26 president in a weak position, because of the government’s overseas aid budget cut and the failure to stop UK fossil fuel projects.

Writing for The Independent, shadow energy secretary Ed Miliband said the government must “learn the lessons of what we didn’t succeed in doing in Glasgow” – pointing out that Britain still holds the Cop presidency over the next year.

“It’s time finally to say no to the proposed new coal mine in Cumbria and end the plan for the new Cambo oil field, which is the equivalent of running 18 new coal-fired power stations for a year,” Mr Miliband wrote.

He added: “We should rewrite our trade deal with Australia, not to dilute the temperature goals as the government has been doing, but to strengthen it to put 1.5 degrees at its heart.”

Deputy leader Angela Rayner also criticised Mr Johnson’s failure to be there in the conference’s final hours to help Mr Sharma push China and India to make a stronger commitment to end dependence on coal.

“Boris Johnson could have done more to be there, and to make sure that in that room at those vital opportunities that [he would] be able sway the opinion,” Ms Rayner told the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show.

She added: “We saw Alok Sharma doing his utmost. But Boris Johnson has undermined some of our efforts by using fossil fuels, the investment in the that, by the cutting of overseas aid. There’s much more we can do to set an example globally.”

In a dramatic last-minute intervention at the Glasgow summit, India and China were able to change the wording of the final deal so coal power generation would be “phased down” rather than “phased out”.

Mr Sharma – who appeared to break down briefly as he apologised to delegates and campaigners for the late change – claimed on Sunday that the weakened deal still represented progress. “We kept 1.5 in reach,” he said.

Labour’s shadow Ed Miliband also accused Mr Johnson’s government of “undermining” Mr Sharma. “I have nothing but praise for Alok Sharma. But I’m afraid the rest of the government didn’t help him and undermined him with decisions like cutting overseas aid,” he told Sky News’s Trevor Phillips on Sunday .

The Labour frontbencher added: “Because we were then saying to other countries, ‘Please step up on climate finance’, when we were stepping back on aid to poorer countries.”

Mr Johnson and Mr Sharma will be grilled over the climate deal agreed in Glasgow at a press conference later on Sunday. The pair will be answering questions about the global pact at Downing Street at 5pm.