Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse – Extinction Rebellion are back! Well, if you thought an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis, fuelled by a global scramble for gas, would have led the eco-irritants to sit things out for a bit, you don’t know XR. For them, the ‘climate emergency’ trumps all. Plus, reading a room has never really been their strong suit – as we saw when they tried to win the hearts and minds of commuters by climbing on top of Tube trains, or when an animal-rights XR offshoot went after that most universally disliked of figures in Britain, the Queen.

This time their target is the Houses of Parliament. Earlier today, Extinction Rebellion activists bike-locked themselves to the gates outside parliament. A handful got inside the Commons chamber and glued themselves to the Speaker’s chair. Their message? ‘Let the people decide’, a nod to one of Extinction Rebellion’s core demands – namely, a ‘Citizens’ Assembly on Climate and Ecological Justice to break the deadlock’, as described on their website.

While police in Westminster fetch the solvents, it’s worth examining XR’s message here more closely. For, as with their other demands, this call for the people to have their say isn’t all it seems. Just as XR demands we all ‘Tell the truth’ about climate, despite spewing alarmist guff about the number of climate deaths, its proposed citizens’ assemblies aren’t democratic in the slightest. If XR ever got their way, these assemblies would be exercises in creating the pretence of public support for their own mad aims.

For one thing, establishing a ‘Citizens’ Assembly on Climate and Ecological Justice’ would suggest that the destination is settled and all we need to decide on is the route. We got a flavour for what this might look like with the 2020 Climate Assembly UK, commissioned by six select committees of the House of Commons. This brought together 108 British citizens to address the question, ‘How should the UK meet its target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050?’, with the help of handpicked experts. Whether or not we should be pursuing ‘net zero’ or ‘climate and ecological justice’ seemingly isn’t up for debate. Then there is the question of who selects the experts and materials to be put before the assembly members, and on what basis the members are selected.

Now, parliament has hardly covered itself in glory on the climate issue. But contrary to Extinction Rebellion’s warped view, of a House of Commons stuffed with fossil-fuel lobbyists dragging their feet on the ‘climate emergency’, MPs have embraced alarmist and costly climate policies with very little debate or scrutiny. The net zero by 2050 pledge sailed into law via an amendment to the Climate Change Act in the final days of Theresa May’s government. This unprecedented commitment, entailing the total overhaul of our energy system at enormous expense, was nodded through with no formal vote after 90 minutes of backslapping ‘debate’.

If Extinction Rebellion want to let ordinary people have their say on climate policy, why not push for a referendum on net zero? Or why not kickstart a proper democratic debate about energy policy beyond the narrow terms set by some expert-led ‘citizens’ assembly’? The reason, I dare say, is that they fear what the answers would be. Even more so now that the cost-of-living crisis has reminded us all of the crucial importance of cheap and reliable energy, after years of climate policy that focused myopically on expensive and unreliable ‘green’ energy.

None of this should surprise us. Whenever Extinction Rebellion activists glue themselves to something or start doing interpretative dance in the middle of a busy road, interviewers ask them the same questions. Won’t this hurt your campaign? Is this really how you win people over? The truth is, XR don’t care what you or I or most people think. Their aim has always been to egg on the government to implement eco-austerity on a slightly swifter timetable than it is already committed to. Let the people decide? As if. Theirs is a campaign against the people, and it always has been.