Tory clambers over bins and scales fence to escape climate change hustings humiliation

‘It was only because there wasn’t any other way and I didn’t want to disrupt everybody’

“Thank you very much for having me and for not pelting me with eggs,” Nancy Bikson began.

What transpired was arguably not much more pleasant.

The Tory councillor found herself onstage at a climate debate in Lewes on Monday – organised in part by Extinction Rebellion – after Conservative candidate Maria Caulfield declared herself too “busy”.

Ms Bikson explained that her last-minute appointment had left her ill-prepared, and that she would deliver a short introductory speech and leave before the questions started.

“Why don’t you go now?” one audience member heckled.

But the councillor stayed to deliver a speech in which she appeared to lay the blame for the climate emergency at the feet of everyone “of a certain age” and play down the role of government.

“I’m old enough that I remember in the sixties and seventies we were worried about population growth … and atomic bombs,” Ms Bikson said. “And 40 years on, look what’s happened, and what have we each got to say for it? For those of us of a certain age, what have we done on a daily basis?”

Just 20 companies are responsible for a third of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Climate Accountability Institute, with 100 firms thought to be responsible for more than 70 per cent.

Emphasising that she cared deeply about the environment, the Conservative councillor drew a chorus of groans and laughter, and a shout of “rubbish”, as she said: “It’s all about us – there is no such thing as government, government’s just people.”

But the crowd applauded as she concluded: “It’s all about people … It’s every single person, everything that they do every day that makes a difference. I’m sorry you feel so badly about me and this party.”

As the host offered her a chance to leave once all other candidates had made their speeches, Ms Bikson exited the room to polite applause, but her time on the premises of Priory School was far from over.

The Sussex councillor was spotted around 30 minutes later “still trying to find her way off the premises without having to go back through the hall”.

She eventually resorted to clambering onto the school bins and climbing a fence to escape.

The teenager who spotted her explained to The Guardian how she encountered Ms Bikson after also leaving the debate early.

“I came outside and I was about to cycle off and she was behind the gate next to our school canteen which was locked and said, ‘excuse me, can you help me?’ She sounded quite desperate,” explained the girl, who wished to remain anonymous.

“I said the only way back out is through the auditorium and she said she didn’t want to go back through the auditorium because of everyone. She said ‘they all despise me … and they don’t want me to go back in there’.”

Empathising with Ms Bikson’s predicament, the teenager went to fetch a caretaker to unlock a door blocking another exit.

“I said a caretaker is coming but she said, ‘don’t worry, I’ll just climb over the gate’,” the teenager told the paper. “And she got up on the school bins and climbed over the gate. She’d been out there for a while.”

Ms Bikson later told the Evening Standard: “It was only because there wasn’t any other way and I didn’t want to disrupt everybody. It was either that or sit outside for a couple of hours.”

It comes after Boris Johnson failed to turn up to Channel 4's climate debate, sending Michael Gove and his father to take his place. The prime minister was replaced instead by a slowly melting ice sculpture.

Mr Johnson filed a complaint to the broadcasting regulator Ofcom, which rejected the claim on Tuesday, saying the coverage was balanced and "adequately reflected" the Conservative Party's viewpoint.

The prime minister appears to have set a pattern in motion.

Conservative candidates have failed to show up at debates across Bristol, in Horsham, Hastings, Dulwich and Colchester, according to the New European.