Five of the most extreme reactions to Sunak’s speech

So there we have it. Rishi Sunak’s big announcement this afternoon was, er, a not entirely unreasonable five-year delay in the ban on petrol cars and gas boilers. Snap polling suggests it has gone down well with the public, who back the measure by 50 to 34 per cent. But judging from some of the more extreme reactions on Twitter/X, you would think the Prime Minister’s decision to bring the UK into line with the EU on a 2035 ban for internal combustion engines amounted to a massacre of the firstborn. Below are five of the more excitable responses to Sunak’s announcement today…

‘Totally evil’

For calm and reasoned moderation, we can always depend on that bastion of common sense, Jolyon Maugham KC. His reaction to the PM’s shift in policy? ‘Totally evil’ was his pithy verdict on ‘#OilSoakedSunak’, whom he called ‘fundamentally dishonest’, ‘utterly contemptible’ and ‘deliberately undermining the efforts we all make to save the planet.’