UK Heat Waves Become a Political Challenge for Incoming PM Andy Burnham

Full text

LONDON — Andy Burnham will arrive in Downing Street next week in the middle of a scorching summer. Grumpy voters are demanding he do something to help them cope with the heat.

Recent record-breaking hot weather in the U.K. has made a chunk of voters more worried about climate change and impatient for help from the government, according to polling conducted for POLITICO by London-based public opinion polling company Public First.

After temperatures topped 37 degrees Celsius in some parts of the country last month, more than 40 percent of Brits said the recent conditions have raised their worries about climate change, while just under half said the hot weather hadn’t changed their views on climate.

Thirty-six percent said the heat had made them more supportive of government efforts to build more clean energy projects like wind and solar, while a significant majority — 66 percent — were resigned to the fact that hotter conditions during the summer months will become the new norm.

Experts say that, as temperatures soar, voters are more likely to place responsibility at the government’s door to help citizens.

The consistent finding as the country heats up, said Amy Norman, director of energy, climate and environment at Public First, is that it’s less a “panic about climate” but “more a frustration that Britain is not able to cope particularly well with hot or disruptive weather.”

The political opportunity for Burnham, she said, is about showing “practical competence” and delivering ways to protect people and public services — which Brits believe are not equipped to deal with the heat.

Emma Pinchbeck, chief executive of the Climate Change Committee, which advises ministers, told an event in London this week that people had “no tolerance to the idea that government shouldn’t be moving to protect them” during hot weather spells.

Burnham will, like his predecessor Keir Starmer, face pressure to ramp up efforts to help the U.K. adapt to extreme weather.

Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives have been pressing the government to make it easier for homes to install air conditioning, while the Green Party has been pushing for ministers to consider maximum workplace temperatures.

A recent report from the CCC also urged the government to plan for cooling policies such as AC due to the “intensity and duration of future heatwaves.”

When it’s hot people “expect that similar type of immediate action,” Norman said. “So, right now they are thinking: ‘How do I keep cool? How do we keep services running? How do we stop the country from coming to a standstill?’”

Former Climate Minister Kerry McCarthy told POLITICO that adapting public buildings and other workplaces to higher summer temperatures now needed “urgent” attention from government.

Heat waves pose “a real and present danger; lives are being lost,” she said.

As well as work handling the impact of future heat waves, she said, “we need urgent action at Cabinet Office level to co-ordinate a cross-departmental emergency response, so that our schools stay open, and patients in our hospitals and residents in our care homes are kept safe; so that our food supply chain is protected; so that workers aren’t forced to work in unendurable conditions; and so the country doesn’t grind to a halt as temperatures continue to rise.”

POLITICO has contacted the Cabinet Office for comment.

The policy challenge for the government, said Norman from Public First, is planning for a “duality of needing immediate action” — which means helping the country keep cool and cope with the heat right now, as well as long-term moves to cut the emissions that are warming the Earth in the first place.