Dominic Raab mistakenly said Boris Johnson launched a climate change summit alongside Richard Attenborough, who died in 2014

On Tuesday, Boris Johnson launched the UN COP26 summit at the Science Museum in London, alongside famed environmentalist and beloved broadcaster, Sir David Attenborough.

The UN's 26th annual climate change conference will happen in Glasgow in November but marketing for the event has already started with the combined forces of Johnson and Attenborough lending their voices to the cause.

Despite the prime minister coming under scrutiny from his climate change summit boss Claire O'Neill, who claimed the PM didn't care about the climate. Johnson did stress that the UK should "lead the way" on the issue and set a goal of achieving net-zero emissions.

Attenborough, with his iconic voice, was more forthright in the action that the UK and the rest of the world needs to take.

Now although we have agreed on the problem we have to do something about it. We don’t need to emphasise that the longer we leave it... the worse it is going to get.

So now is the moment. It is up to us to organise the nations of the world to do something about it.

Now, we've all got people with very similar names confused in the past but mistaking one of Britain's most cherished TV icons with his deceased brother, is certainly one that we haven't come across before.

Amazingly that's exactly what foreign secretary Dominic Raab did on Tuesday. Speaking in the House of Commons, Raab was asked a question about COP26 by the SNP's Deidre Brock. He replied by saying:

Well, she won't need to wait long because today with Sir Richard Attenborough, is launching and setting out the detail of our approach to COP26 where it will lead in bringing the world together and to tackle one of the global challenges of our age.

The problem here is that Richard Attenborough died in 2014...

Many might not have noticed this glaring error as it was only a passing comment. Labour's Kevin Brennan didn't miss a beat though and pulled Raab up on his mistake.

I think the foreign secretary may have inadvertently said the prime minister was launching the COP26 plans with Richard Attenborough today, of course who is no longer with us, and he might want to take the opportunity to correct that.

This prompted Raab to correct his mistake.

I'm happy to correct the record on which Attenborough. We're lucky to have so many fantastic Attenboroughs in this country and we're ambitious about COP26.

Unless he's aware of any other prominent Attenborough's in the UK, we still only have one so he might want to rethink that statement.

HT New European

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