Tory MP Uses Conspiracy Theory In U.K. Parliament Against 15-Minute City Concept
A general view of the Houses of Parliament, London, England. (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images)
In parliament earlier today, the Conservative MP Nick Fletcher used a conspiracy theory against the concept of the 15-Minute City. This principle urges it should be easy to walk from home to shops, cafes, schools, and other amenities.
He told MPs that 15-minute cities were an “international socialist concept” and that they will “cost our personal freedom.”
As I reported yesterday, there’s a bizarre but growing backlash against living close to shops.
Fletcher represents the Don Valley, a constituency in South Yorkshire. He demanded a parliamentary debate on the “international socialist concept of so-called 15-minute cities.”
“Sheffield is already on this journey,” he complained, “and I do not want Doncaster to do the same.”
As a look at a map of the city will show, the majority of people in Doncaster live close to shops.
“15-minute cities will cost us our personal freedom,” Fletcher claimed to a backdrop of laughter, “and that cannot be right.”
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Instead of dismissing his complaint about the proximity of people to shops, Penny Mordaunt, the Leader of the House of Commons, replied that it was “right that people raise concerns about this particular kind of policy.”
Ms. Mordaunt added: “I think that the hardworking people of this country, their lives are complicated enough.
“We would want to see that where such policies were being forwarded that local communities were being properly consulted.”
And these policies include the installation of traffic filters to create so-called Low Traffic Neighborhoods, LTNs. Many Conservative councils have installed LTNs and the concept is supported by the Conservative government.
The suburb of Jesmond in Newcastle upon Tyne is an example of a location where people live within 15 … [+]
Late last year, a conspiracy theory website went viral after claiming that “power mad politicians” in Oxfordshire, England, had voted to “lock residents into one of six zones to ‘save the planet’ from global warming … confining residents to their own neighborhoods.” This was “Communism,” stated the climate-change-denying website. (The website—which I won’t link to—also claims that vaccines kill, Brexit is still a great idea, and that Trump and Putin are geniuses worth listening to.)
In reality, there is no lockdown. Instead, Oxford proposed to install six traffic filters as part of a health-promoting plan to encourage people to use their cars less.
The Panthéon-Sorbonne professor Carlos Moreno was the originator of the 15-Minute City concept and he has been on the receiving end of a great deal of hate on social media.
“[The haters] insult me, call me human trash, Neo-fascist or a rotten Latino,” he told me. He has critics from the left and the right, but in an all too typical Venn diagram of tinfoilhattedness they share climate denial, downplay of Covid harms, and anti-vaxxer beliefs.
“Their lies are enormous,” he exclaims.
“You will be locked in your neighborhood; cameras will signal who can go out; if your mother lives in another neighborhood, you will have to ask for permission to see her and so on.”
He adds, in disgust, they “sometimes post pictures of concentration camps.”
On GB News, a relatively new British free-to-air television and radio news channel, the broadcaster and historian Neil Oliver recently complained about 15-Minute Cities saying “we’ll be expected to walk or cycle. Do you see the scam yet? They advertise a world of electric cars but what we’ll end up buying is lives lived on foot within fifteen minutes of our homes.”
On a recent show Oliver discussed what he called a “silent war” by generations of politicians to take “total control of the people” and impose a “one-world government.”
The Guardian reported that Oliver’s echoing of conspiracy theories had caught the attention of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. A statement from the organization said: “It is highly concerning that GB News continues to air a show which embraces all manner of conspiracy theories. Somewhat inevitably, some of those invited on to this show represent organisations that promote antisemitic conspiracy theories. If the channel will not act, we expect that Ofcom will.”
Moreno told me: “The conspiracists see a big global agreement.”
“As the UN-Habitat, the World Economic Forum, the C40 Global Cities Climate Network, and the Federation of United Local Governments, among others, have supported the [15-minute-city] concept, it feeds their fantasies that I am involved in the ‘invisible leadership’ of the world.”
This “invisible leadership of the world” trope is commonly used on conspiracy theory websites and is linked to age-old anti-Semitic accusations of a “global cabal” seeking to rule the world from behind the scenes, often via a supposed grouping of Jewish-owned banks.
Nick Fletcher MP used an image — watermarked “ER” — from the conspiracy theory website … [+]
Following his intervention in parliament today, Nick Fletcher MP wrote a seven-part twitter thread. On the fifth of these tweets he included an image accusing the 15-Minute City—via C40 Cities and the World Economic Forum—of “Taxing, restricting, monitoring your basic freedom to move around.”
The image was created by Europereloaded, a fringe news website that is anti-lockdown, anti-vaccines, pro-Trump, pro gun carry and believes “we’re ruled by a corporate/banking cabal who use our top politicians as their executive arm.”
Europereloaded is an American-based pro-Brexit offshoot of the Liberty Beacon (TLB) news website that promotes chemtrail conspiracy theories and rails against “the workings of [the] Rothschild conglomerate cartel of International bankers, and conspiring international corporate cabals.”
Nick Fletcher has been approached for comment.
Article updated with embedded tweets from Nick Fletcher MP following his question in Parliament.
