Dear Mr Sunak, Now you are taking a well-earned holiday in California, I hope you will use the time and space to think about your legacy.  Legacy thoughts normally come at the end of a Prime

Minister’s period in office but, to be realistic, the polls consistently point to your exit next year.  The unfolding débâcle since the Brexit vote is unprecedented – much exacerbated by

the pandemic and Putin’s war — and most voters have suffered. Less than a year after being elected as an MP, you wrote in February 2016 to your Richmond, Yorkshire, constituents: “It has

been by the far [sic] the toughest decision I have had to make since becoming an MP, but on June 23 I will vote to leave the European Union.” In the game of political snakes and ladders over

that preceded and promoted Brexit, abandoning any attempt at truthful communication with the public about what really faced us on leaving, set the trend for politics.  Now, with the greatest

crisis ever facing the world — uncontrolled climate change — threatening human civilisation, neither Conservative nor Labour leader dares describe the gravity of the situation, its

consequences, and tell us what must urgently be done. The nub of the problem is the way our interconnected challenges are presented.  The diverse channels of information, notably the

Right-wing press and social media, and our complex demographic divisions, the unsaid “well, we’ll not be alive to see it” versus “why are you sacrificing our future for electoral gain?” lie

behind today’s gaslighting and irrationality.  What better example than the _Daily Mail _editorial on 28th July, framing our political conflict as_ “_the concerns of ordinary people” versus

“the virtue signalling obsessions and orthodoxies of the woke elite”?  According to Britain’s most-read newspaper, this inglorious binary is the way we should interpret the dilemmas we face.

Are the forty or so backbench Tory extremist MPs, notably the anti-net zero group led by Craig Williams MP who breathe down your neck, “ordinary”?  OK, perhaps more “ordinary” than you, a

multi-millionaire — that of course is a vulnerability for you.  Is worrying aloud by grandparents about the world they and governments are bequeathing to their children and grandchildren a

“virtue signalling obsession”?  Or is it a rational and moral human response to an avoidable global catastrophe, an urgent awareness that the Government must wake up and act urgently? “Woke”

was originally African-American slang to describe waking up to the need to do something about racial prejudice and discrimination. It now extends to virtually any view that discomforts the

comfortable.  Combating climate change is very discomforting.   The changes required to mitigate its consequences are even more discomforting.  So, hey, how about politicising the whole

thing and perhaps saving some Conservative seats? A Labour Mayor of London is doing something effective about improving air quality?  Time to speak out on behalf of polluting vehicle-owners.

  Or should that be “ordinary” polluters?  It worked in Uxbridge.   The Labour Party is committed to a serious level of investment in solar, wind and wave renewable energy.  So let’s sign

off on 100 or so licenses for oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, but not let on that we currently export 80% of our production.  Tell the public it’s about avoiding costly imports in the

future, though keep quiet that wherever the source – and that includes the remaining North Sea oil and gas – the energy companies will be selling on international markets at an

internationally determined price.  And boosting their prodigious profits.  Clear blue water between the parties. As the Tories in Uxbridge kept saying, the least well-off will suffer the

most from measures to protect the environment, not adding that only if such measures are accompanied by effective poverty alleviation will necessary changes in the way we live become

acceptable to the “ordinary” voter.  The truth is that transition to net zero could be made far less painful if an unprecedented priority were given to renewables; we see this beginning to

happen in the USA where significant state spending and focused scientific endeavour to stop global warming are supported by government.   Your modest beginnings in funding carbon capture

have been applauded, but they do not fit into a vision of necessary and beneficial economic change, rather a fantasy vision in which the need for radical change is eliminated. When BBC News

leads on Nigel Farage’s Coutts bank account, with warnings from leading climate scientists and the UN Secretary General coming second, something has gone very wrong with our national

priorities. We had intimations of this with Michael Gove’s dismissing experts who foretold tears before bedtime if voters chose Brexit: “I think the people in this country have had enough of

experts from organisations with acronyms saying they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong.” Then came the Covid anti-vaxxers peddling conspiracy theories about the medical

profession.  Now we have climate scientists dropped into the “woke elite” bag. Is it too difficult for you, Mr Sunak, to tell the public that we face a global and therefore a national

emergency, and then talk to the other party leaders, with the aim of agreeing a joint position on the way forward? Your legacy, as a Prime Minister without a personal electoral mandate,

could be that of a man who read the signs of the times, rose to the occasion, and by acting decisively on climate change defeated the current national helplessness.  Get rid of those

advisors who, given their head, would turn you into Trump-lite. Or history will see you as the man who frittered away the vital, fast-vanishing time left to rescue the planet, leaving you as

a trivial footnote to 13 deplorable years of Tory rule. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to

make, one that’s needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing throughout these hard economic times. So please, make a donation._