MORE : From trains to doctors, strikes will grip London in July 2023. But who is staging industrial action? The JSO protesters said they were happy the group had come to disrupt their demonstration because it gave them a chance to debate. Footage shows the environmental protesters sitting on the floor, encircled by a group of 15 to 20 people standing around them while they try to explain why they are slow marching in the capital. They will argue that they never directly killed the millions who are already dying and will continue to die of starvation, floods, drought, wildfires and deadly heat." I’m a working-class woman who really cares about the environment for my child and their future. It’s losing people like me — mums who care because we’ve got kids.”

There was speculation that the counter-protest may have been a stunt carried out by JSO to allow it to explain to the public why it is carrying out the slow marches, but the organisation insisted they were “nothing to do with us”.All it took was a fleet of orange helium balloons and a few panic alarms tactically placed at a Just Stop Oil banquet to disrupt it. In a matter of minutes, the group that has blighted our summer had been given a taste of its own medicine. Or as one commenter underneath the video of the stunt online put it: “Great idea, I did this at Eton in 1997.” Yeah but rush hour will be over”, a counter-protester replies. Another says: “There’s an election this time next year. If you don’t like this government, why don’t you stand for election?”

The giant hypocrisy is that the new oil and gas projects that the government has in the pipeline will cause migration like we’ve never seen before. I’m taking action with Just Stop Oil today to call on the UK government to listen to the United Nations, the International Energy Agency and thousands of scientists over an opaque think-tank funded by fossil fuel money. We must do better.”

Yesterday, climate campaigner Daniel Knorr, 21, was punched to the ground by one furious motorist who blamed one of the slow protests for crashing his car with his pregnant partner inside. A JSO protester then asks the counter-demonstrator if they think standing for election is the best way to get their views across. “Democracy? It’s served Western civilisation pretty well.”, the anti-JSO protester says.

It comes after Just Stop Oil compared oil and gas giants to the Nazis as they announced legal action against executives who are ‘facilitating genocide’. And earlier this week another car user got out to remonstrate with JSO activists holding up traffic in Westminster. Standing on Parliament Square, six activists made the announcement that they would begin to collect evidence against them to put in front of a court of law. Daniel was assaulted while marching this morning, and remained nonviolent throughout. Disruption is difficult, but it's necessary.In a YouGov poll in April, just 4 per cent of the people surveyed said they looked “very favourably” upon the group. In a statement, mum-of-two Chloe Naldrett said: “Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi, at his trial sought to defend himself by saying that he didn’t kill Jews because he was only in charge of transporting them to the death camps. The people that they’re targeting are not responsible for their cause,” says Manners. “A single mother trying to get to work to feed her kids during a cost of living crisis, who might be on a zero hours contract, who might be late for work and therefore earn less money. That achieves precisely nothing when it comes to solving the climate crisis.” Prowse, who worked with Extinction Rebellion when it was first established, says there are now “big divisions” between the two groups. “A lot of people in XR are frustrated by Just Stop Oil, because they just think these have been bad tactics. The funniest thing about that sketch was the fact that they ‘raised the alarm’,” says Heydon Prowse, the satirist best known for handing George Osborne a maths GCSE textbook at a dinner at Mansion House, and convincing Jeremy Corbyn, in a prank call in 2017, that he was Stormzy and they should make a grime video together.

The JSO protesters then ask the group how long they are going to keep them there for, adding: “What’s your plan, because when you leave we’re going to go on the road again.”JSO has protested at major summer events including the Proms, Wimbledon, the Ashes and the Chelsea Flower Show. It all points to the idea that JSO may finally be running out of steam. “Just Stop Oil isn’t the climate movement,” says Suzanne Dhaliwal, a veteran climate change activist who has never been a member of XR or JSO. “It’s one tactic, one demographic and maybe it has had its moment and now it’s time to move on.”