The King of the North became Prime Minister on July 20, over three weeks ago, on July 20. His silence on climate change, in the midst of rolling heatwaves, drought and fears about food supplies, is beginning to gain attention.
We learn from a good piece by journalist Chloe Farand that it’s not, generally, a priority for them.
This morning there ia a terrible Guardian “analysis” that doesn’t even answer the question the headline – ‘why is Burnham so reluctant to talk about the climate crisis’ – puts. It is mere description and not worth your time, and I have deliberately not linked to it.
Anyway, Burnham’s silence is now trending on Bsky.
This is presumably because Greens leader Zack Polanski is continuing to punch the bruise and Guardian columnist George Monbiot is at work.
If @andyburnham.bsky.social were Prime Minister during the Blitz:
“There is an urgent problem of bombs falling on London. They appear to be coming out of the sky. We convened a COBRA meeting to discuss it. The root causes of this problem are not something I am prepared to discuss.”
Why the silence?
So let’s dig deeper on this question of why Burnham has been silent. In my original piece I posited either a) keeping powder dry ahead of Major Announcement at Labour Party conference or b) having to be silent because of ongoing battles within the party (administration, MPs – not the members though, fuck the members) about what stance to take.
There are (as I said) other possibilities.
One, Burnham and his advisors just don’t think “green issues” are a vote winner – those lost to the Greens aren’t coming back and chasing them will lose the “red wall” voters who switched to Reform. (To be clear, I think this is an absurd misreading of the electorate, as several people with a better grasp on the electorate have pointed out repeatedly, but you can see where it is coming from). For one thing, only very rarely have climate issues been particularly prominent (1988-1991, 2006 to 2009 and 2019). Most voters don’t really care, or at least that’s how Westminster sees it. But there’s always the Lucretian problem, isn’t there?
I know I already said this, and used this screengrab from an unpublished letter to the Financial Times
, but it bears repeating – Burnham as mayor gave no REAL evidence that he gives a shit. He’s there for the photo ops, for the tame audiences he knows he can tickle, but I saw no evidence that he was willing to expend significant political capital on actually making either mitigation (cutting emissions) or adaptation (like we can!) happen. It’s kayfabe, ‘kay?
Two – the fiscal crisis of the party. (aka Follow the money)
As “Cobie Cipher Triangulation Agency” wrote on Bsky.
We know why Burnham won’t talk about it: Labour are in a dire financial state as members quit for actual left-wing and centrist parties and donors flee to the right, so they can’t be picky when it comes to donations. And they are putting party first, as they have since Starmer won the leadership.
More broadly than Burnham’s personal history and following the money “Follow the ideology.”
Here I like to use an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, where they’ve captured a Borg and plan to plant an ‘impossible’ object in its visual cortex.
PICARD
How can a geometric form disable a computer system?
DATA
The shape is a paradox. It cannot exist in real space or time.
GEORDI
When Hugh’s imaging apparatus imprints it on his bio-chips, he’ll try to analyze it.
DATA
He will be unsuccessful, and will store the shape in his memory banks. It will be shunted to a subroutine for further analysis.
GEORDI
When the Borg download his memory, they’ll incorporate it into their network. Then they’ll try to analyze it.
DATA
It is designed so that each approach they take will spawn an anomalous solution. The anomalies are designed to interact with each other, linking together to form an endless and unsolvable puzzle.
PICARD
Quite original. How long before total systems failure?
GEORDI
Not until the shape has gone through several hundred computational cycles.
For me, climate change is the ultimate geometric form. Other people have called it a wicked problem, or a superwicked problem, or part of the polycrisis. For me, the Borg thing will do.
But especially for the shiny faced technocrats with their SPAD-dy CVs, and their PPEs from Oxford or Cambridge, the idea of a problem that doesn’t have a clever presentational/policy fix is basically unseeable and “therefore” (sic) ignorable.
What needs to happen?
Burnham needs to be shamed into showing his true colours. For my money, this idea, which I put on Bluesky yesterday, would be worth pursuing.
Any coders, ppl handy with animations/graphics: can we not have a “Burnit all, Burnham” clock?
It would have days/hours/minutes since Burnham last said ANYthing about climate change/carbon dioxide build-up and – say – amnt of CO2 added to atmosphere, acres of land burnt in UK, lives lost to heat
Burnham became PM on 20 July, at (let’s say, 3pm). That’s 22 days & 18 hrs = 1,965,600 seconds. Given there’s 12 Hiroshima bombs of heat added per second (!) that’s 23,587,200 atom bombs.
But acres of land lost would be better, albeit somewhat trickier. I don’t have the skills.
What is Burnham going to do?
Well, presumably his minions and munchkins are out there briefing the Westminster lobby hacks who aren’t on holiday about how he Does Care, he Does Get It etc. There will be a few more hit pieces against Polanski and the Greens. Farage will get (even more) deserved jibes about his stance. Badenoch too (though Burnham’s mob should be careful – the “we’re not the Tories” line only worked briefly for Starmer.
Beyond that, there are broadly three options
- Do nothing and just wait for the Bluesky crowd to rant themselves hoarse. Risky, but it may be perceived as the least risky option. Only act if the Daily Mail starts editorialising that he should say something.
- A joint press conference with Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband and Miatta Fahnbulleh, the Sec of State for Energy and Net Zero, with a nice round number announceable (old money repackaged) and perhaps some mini-conference with UK and European “stakeholders” pencilled in for mid-September, with unions, NHS and – obvs – big business. And the French.
This might provide enough of a sandpit for wonks to play in, but does look anemic. But my guess is it will be something like this. It will not persuade those who have made up their minds, but it will buy him some time.
- Some sort of Prime Ministerial address to the nation, speech with Andy’s mix of seriousness and bonhomie, with an extra sprinkling of gravitas. I think this is unlikely in the short-term.
In the meantime, I think we should all be learning how to look after ourselves and each other as best we can. You can’t really stockpile water, but you can have food, medical supplies etc etc. It’s gonna get quite grim, I fear.