22 October 2018updated 23 Jul 2021 12:35pm

Why are climate change activists always accused of “extremism”?

TOPSHOT - Climate change activists listen to speeches at their encampment blocking the road junction at Oxford Circus in the busy shopping district in central London on April 18, 2019 during the fourth day of an environmental protest by the Extinction Rebellion group. - London commuters faced further disruption on Thursday as climate change protests continued to bring parts of the British capital to a standstill, leading to over 300 arrests. Demonstrators began blocking off a bridge and major central road junctions on April 15 at the start of a civil disobedience campaign calling for governments to declare an ecological emergency over climate change, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2025, halt biodiversity loss and be led by new "citizens' assemblies on climate and ecological justice". (Photo by Tolga AKMEN / AFP) (Photo credit should read TOLGA AKMEN/AFP/Getty Images)

The climate change activist movement Extinction Rebellion has been accused of “extremism” by a former counter-terrorism chief.

Richard Walton, who was head of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command between 2011-2016, has delivered his verdict not to a newspaper but in a report he co-authored for the right-wing think tank, Policy Exchange — an organisation with a political agenda that scored a transparency rating of zero from the Who Funds You? think tank, and which enjoys often slavish coverage by the British media any time it publishes a Big Thought. (A recent example being the Daily Mail front page reporting on its stop and search report as if it were a government proposal.)