When it comes to Labour’s own plans, though, things fall apart:

“The prime minister this month convened an emergency Cobra meeting, bringing together senior ministers, firefighters, weather forecasters and other experts to make sure we’re doing all we can to keep the country safe from wildfires.”

Sounds great! So what is that ‘all we can’? The next sentence gives us the top highlight:

“That includes a temporary ban on the sale of disposable barbecues.”

Oh dear.

Perhaps this is recoverable, when we look at the investments that the Govt are making in this area? That seems to be what Ms. Eagle thinks, at any rate. See what she says next:

“We are spending almost £100m to strengthen the country’s capacity to respond to wildfires and extreme weather.

And we are backing our farmers during the drought with a £65m funding boost, rule changes to make building on-site reservoirs easier and the largest nature-friendly budget in history to make our farms more resilient to extreme weather and to protect our food security.”

I’m sorry, but these are entirely derisory amounts.

If the Government had a MISSION to protect us from rising climate impacts, which will get much worse this coming year under the cosh of a Goliath El Niño, we would be talking billions rather than millions.

The Burnham Govt is utterly failing to make us #safer from climate impacts. This is what Angela Eagle, the person responsible, is herself telling us…

It’s time for an approach that steps up. What Caroline Lucas and I call ‘climate popularism’, in the report we’ll be launching next month. Watch this space.

And at the heart of that report?: showcasings of the many unsung community etc ventures which are stepping into the space that Govt has shamefully vacated - and getting on with building resilience and making folk that bit safer, in a way that can be sustained, now…

Dare I say it, it’s very timely?!:

My intervention on the great imaginative work we are called to, as the spectre of AI rises…

https://darkmountainproject.substack.com/p/imagination-as-tech-resistance?r=12mt3l&utm_medium=ios

Though you wouldn’t know it from the pathetic evasive coverage here in the Mail:

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15968169/British-woman-describes-terrifying-escape-flames-relatives-Spanish-wildfire-claims-11-lives-four-UK-entire-families-burn-alive-cars.html

Absolutely awful , horrifying, tragic, predictable. This is your climate on drugs.

Pass it on…

My warning, live on BBC’s QuestionTime programme, 7 years ago, about the escalating risk:

https://youtu.be/QK7DKiKh9_Q?is=cHCW_8GrNFdQEzId

(Go five minutes in.)

Recently that I helped lead an effort to encourage the Green Party not to throw everything at the makerfield by election. In return for not doing so we asked that Andy Burnham should reassert his commitment to proportional representation. He did so. The Green Party put only very light resources into this byelection, which was clearly completely unwinnable for it, …and the results are now visible: Burnham soundly defeated Reform, and has returned to Parliament. As I’ve been arguing for some time, the inevitability of Starmer‘s departure from 10 Downing Street is now clear. Later or sooner, Andy Burnham is the next prime minister of Britain.

Burnham will not solve this country’s problems. His politics are very far from being up to that. The case for profound true wholesale change remains as strong as ever. Only the Green Party come anywhere close to offering that kind of change. But Burnham‘s succession soon to the premiership does at least provide a chance of a turn towards greater pluralism and towards electoral and perhaps broader constitutional reform.

And for that reason, this post comes to you with a tiny bit more hopefulness than it is usually possible authentically to muster in our very seriously fucked up world.

But we need unfortunately to mention another byelection that occurred last night. The Aberdeen South Parliamentary by-election saw the conservatives defeat the SNP. Central to their campaign was their pathetic promise to wring the last dregs out of the North Sea. The voters bought it. This is a very bad sign for the future of politics and indeed one might say for the future of the Earth. It clearly signals the need for a just transition, and the need for a switch to a more adaptation- rather than mitigation- focused Climate politics. But on a day of extremely high temperatures, with El Niño cranking up, it does cast a very real pall over any encouragement offered by what has occurred in makerfield. And we need to notice that.

One more thing: Burnham’s victory means that there will now be a by-election for the mayoralty in Greater Manchester. In that election, unlike in makerfield, the Green Party is a real contender, especially given the astonishing result at Gorton and Denton a few months ago. Winning that Mayoralty would be an incredible prize – and stopping reform from doing so is essential.

If Labour win it (unlikely), Starmer gets a lifeline.

If Reform win, their prospects of winning the next General Election get a significant boost.

If the Green Party win, it’s GAME ON.

This could be the first EVER parliamentary byelection win for the Green Party. (We’ve come a long way since we got 10%, with me as the candidate, in the Norwich North byelection back in 2009!). That result, which appears quite likely from the polls, would be wildly game-changing. Crucially, it would cement the Greens’ claim to be the real opposition to Reform. It would throw the two party system of old onto the scrap heap.

As I’ve been saying for years, the future of British politics IS Greens vs. Reform… https://bright-green.org/2024/06/19/the-real-battle-in-this-election-is-greens-vs-reform/