We need to free Greta Thunberg

Greta Thunberg has never been a party animal. In a 2021 podcast, she said she had never been in a bar, spending “all my waking hours when I am not in school constantly working and being an activist”. She also said she had no desire to ever get drunk as this is “not who I am as a person”. So when she turned 21 on Wednesday, it feels safe to say that celebrations won’t have been raucous. And there definitely won’t have been candles — just think of the carbon footprint.

It’s easy for jaundiced old gits like me to laugh at the serious-minded puritanism of today’s youth. But Thunberg seems to arouse far stronger and darker emotions in many than a desire to gently take the mick. On the one hand, there are those who fawn excessively, treating her as a tiny omniscient oracle. And on the other are the people for whom the mere mention of her name leaves them purple with fury, putting them in mind of everything they hate about modern progressivism.