GREENPEACE activists have draped Rishi Sunak’s mansion with oil-black fabric in protest of his new fossil fuel drilling “frenzy.”

The protesters scaled the Prime Minister’s grade II listed manor house in North Yorkshire to “drive home the dangerous consequences” of his plans to “max out” Britain’s oil and gas reserves by granting more than 100 new licences for extraction in the North Sea.

Targeting his home while Mr Sunak and his family are away on holiday in California, the four activists held up a banner demanding “No new oil” as they urged him to “Be a climate leader, not a climate arsonist.”

Protester Alex Wilson, from Newcastle, said in a video message from the roof of the house: “We’re all here because Rishi Sunak has opened the door to a new drilling frenzy in the North Sea while large parts of our world are literally on fire.

“This will be a disaster for the climate.”

On the ground, Greenpeace UK climate campaigner Philip Evans said the group engaged in the peaceful protest when they received no answer after knocking on the door.

Asked when it was intrusive to target someone’s house, he said: “This is the Prime Minister.

“He is the one that was standing in Scotland going to drill for every last drop of oil while the world is burning.

“He is personally responsible for that decision and we’re all going to be paying a high price if he goes through with it. It is personal.”

Mr Evans said Mr Sunak is “happy to hold a blowtorch to the planet if he can score a few political points by sowing division around climate in this country.”

The protesters ended the action hours later, scaling back down from the roof of the mansion before being loaded into the back of police vans and driven away.

Peter Walker, who stepped down as the force’s deputy chief constable in 2003, told LBC radio that said he was “absolutely astonished” the protesters gained access to the house and called for an investigation into a “major breach of security.”

Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden, who is standing in for Mr Sunak during his holiday, told the protesters to “stop the stupid stunts” as he defended the government’s environmental policies.

Government minister Alex Burghart called the activists “plonkers.”

Mr Sunak did not immediately comment on the action.