Boris Johnson has refused to apologise after he joked about one of his Tory predecessors having given Britain a head start in the fight against climate change.
During a visit to a windfarm in Scotland on Thursday, 5 August, Mr Johnson said: "Thanks to Margaret Thatcher, who closed so many coal mines across the country, we had a big early start and we're now moving rapidly away from coal altogether.”
The closure of coal mines in Scottish regions like Lanarkshire and Fife was devastating for the local economy and the remark also went down badly in many of the former “red wall” constituencies in the north of England which the Tories won from Labour in the December 2019 election.
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said mining communities across Scotland had been "utterly devastated by Thatcher's destruction of the coal industry."
The First Minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford, of Labour, told the BBC Mr Johnson’s remarks had been "crass and offensive" and the closures had done “incalculable” damage to the valley communities of South Wales.
The leader of the opposition Labour Party, Keir Starmer, said: "Boris Johnson's shameful praising of Margaret Thatcher's closure of the coal mines, brushing off the devastating impact on those communities with a laugh, shows just how out of touch he is with working people."
In the spring of 1984 Arthur Scargill, the leader of the miners’ union, called a strike in protest at plans by the government-owned National Coal Board to close dozens of pits were not deemed “economically viable.”
The strike lasted a year but ultimately failed and Margaret Thatcher claimed it as a major political victory over the previously all-powerful National Union of Mineworkers.
Mr Johnson’s remarks have been greeted with a deluge of criticism on social media.
On Friday the Prime Minister's spokesman said he recognised the "huge impact and pain" of pit closures but did not apologise for his remarks.