HE SAYS he is not a politician, but Ed Gemmell is standing in the General Election as an independent candidate for the Wycombe constituency, fighting against climate change.

Mr Gemmell, 52, is a single father of two sons, an ex-city lawyer and army officer, who now runs his own marketing business.

He has been a trustee of Wycombe Museum for around five years.

He says he is standing in the national elections in order to reverse climate change.

“We need to stop deforestation, limit population growth and stop the growth in farming meat and animals,” Mr Gemmell said.

For Wycombe specifically, he wants to propose an “ambitious climate change reversal policy”, by treating the issue as “a real emergency”.

However, his work is not to be confused with the Green Party.

Mr Gemmell says he supports the party but believes its target of Net Zero 2030 is not ambitious enough.

“The IPCC and the UN have given us globally only eleven years to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

“If we have to do that globally to limit it, it means that we need to have immediate very ambitious action,” he said.

He accepts that, as an independent, it is unlikely that he will win the Wycombe seat.

“The aim is always to win,” he said.

“But the chances of winning when you are an independent is unknown.

“On a single issue, I think it would be unusual.”

However, Mr Gemmell is determined to pursue his fight.

Even after the elections he will continue to talk to MPs in every constituency about climate change, as well as hold conferences at schools and continue with his organisation, Believers Against Climate Change, which is “an opportunity for everyone to come together in something we all believe in”.

Finally, Mr Gemmell, who lives in Hazlemere, also plans to organise the next Wycombe climate strike.

He said: “For me, what would be a huge success is to get a thousand of votes in the election and then for another election, in one, two years’ time, whoever represents the main political parties will then know that they are unlikely to win the seats in Wycombe, unless they are ambitious in reversing climate change.”