Blow for Boris as China’s Xi Jinping ‘is set to snub’ COP26 summit

Boris Johnson suffered a blow today amid mounting certainty that China‘s Xi Jinping will not come to the COP26 summit.

The PM is bracing for bad news from Beijing over attendance at the gathering in Glasgow, which begins in a fortnight.

Organisers fear his snub could lead to China refusing to set new climate change goals amid the ongoing global energy crisis.

Meanwhile, there are doubts about whether other leaders will make the journey to try to thrash out a new global approach. 

Others still not confirmed to be attending the UN conference include Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro have also not committed to being in Glasgow for the event. 

US President Joe Biden confirmed only yesterday that he will attend. America’s charge d’affaires to the UK, Philip Reeker, said the summit in Glasgow will be ‘a pivotal moment on the road towards a more secure, prosperous and sustainable future for our planet’.

Australian prime minister Scott Morrison has also announced he will be coming. 

However, if China does not commit to new action, the prospect of keeping global warming to 1.5C could well be scuppered. The country is responsible for 27 per cent of global carbon emissions.  

The Queen is believed to share concerns in government about who will attending the summit.

In a rare public intervention on the climate change crisis yesterday, her Majesty she is ‘irritated’ by people who ‘talk but don’t do’.

She made the pointed comment while attending the opening of the Welsh parliament in Cardiff.

The 95-year-old monarch was speaking to the Duchess of Cornwall and Elin Jones, the parliament’s presiding officer, when her remarks were picked up on the event’s live stream.

The Queen referred to the upcoming Cop26 climate change conference in Glasgow, which she and other senior royals are due to attend. She said: ‘Extraordinary isn’t it… I’ve been hearing all about Cop… still don’t know who is coming… no idea.

‘We only know about people who are not coming… It’s really irritating when they talk, but they don’t do.’

Mr Shapps said everyone wanted ‘progress’ on stabilising the climate.

‘I think comments made in private should stay private, but we all share the desire to see progress made and we know there will be hundreds of leaders coming to Glasgow for Cop,’ he told Sky News.

‘We will wait to see whether it lives up to – whether they all live up to – expectation, it’s very important we get this job done.

‘I don’t think her comments were for broadcast.’

Mr Shapps denied that the summit would be a ‘waste of time’ without China, but did say ‘of course we want them to come’.

‘There’s already been a huge number of commitments, including the president of the United States coming, and huge numbers of people who will be coming,’ he told Sky News.

‘A lot of time and energy has gone into reducing carbon and people making pledges.

‘Even with China we’ve seen, for example, recently a pledge not to support more money going into building coal overseas. Not in China, but the money they put into coal stations being built elsewhere. That is a big move.

‘Of course we need them to do that domestically, of course they need to decarbonise. They’ve set their own targets to decarbonise nationally as well.

‘Of course we want them there, we want everybody there. But let’s see who comes and the success the world can make of this, it’s clearly important that we do.’

He added: ‘If countries don’t come they’ll be the outliers rather than central to this and most countries want to be relevant to this.’ 

President Xi has not left China since the start of the pandemic last year.