Oli Spleen
At the end of June, as he transitioned from Mayor of Greater Manchester back into Westminster where he would be appointed Prime Minister of the UK, Andy Burnham stood at the People’s History Museum in Manchester by a permanent installation of Hastings poet Salena Godden’s “Pessimism is For Lightweights”.
As the BBC cameras panned from Salena’s words to the figure of the man who would attempt to lead the country, the newscaster summarised his report with the words “Andy Burnham […] he’s a heavyweight with hope”. Salena was quick to point out the nuances of her poem on an Instagram post highlighting the words, “It’s silence that is complicit / It’s apathy that hurts us all”.
On 20 July 2026 Burnham became Prime Minister in the midst of a third heatwave and the cusp of a fourth, with temperatures peaking at 35.5 °C (95.9 °F). This marked the first year when temperatures have reached 35 °C (95 °F) in three separate months.
The seventh Prime Minister since 2016, Andy ended his inauguration speech with the words, “Let us make this the moment when Britain starts to believe again. / The moment we bring back hope.” Yet within ten days of these words Burnham said he will take a “pragmatic” approach to oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, saying the government could not ignore the potential energy resources it holds.
To drill for more oil will not only facilitate greater climate change, it would also go against Labour’s 2024 election manifesto pledge not to issue any new oil and gas licences. We don’t even have the facilities to process the crude oil we’d be drilling for – we can’t use it domestically, so we have to sell most of it, or pay for it to be refined.
Spreading like wildfire
In June the MET Office confirmed that Hastings had set a new UK-wide highest daily minimum temperature record for the month, with 23.2°C recorded on Friday the 26th of June.
According to the MET Office, this climate crisis has been responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1,134 people in the UK in just the months of May and June. On top of this there have been the wildfires – as of 10 August over ninety square miles of British countryside have been consumed by these flames.
So then on Friday 14 August came the government’s “Severe Alert”. As sirens rang out from people’s phones across Hastings beach where I sat, I felt a sense of dread to the pit of my stomach. The message read, “There is a very high risk of wildfires nationally. Residents, landowners and visitors should not undertake any activity that could start a fire, including disposable barbecues, firepits, garden incinerators or fireworks. Even a small flame can rapidly develop into a major wildfire placing lives, homes, businesses and emergency responders at risk.”
Many people took to social media to observe that this warning was not addressing any of the root causes of this global crisis and as usual, blame and responsibility seemed to be put on the average person, not the billionaires flying their private jets, those building data centres, watering golf courses (while the rest of us are subjected to a hosepipe ban) or those who seek to profit from drilling for oil to the detriment of us all.
For those of us regular folk, who have been in a perpetual state of anxiety this summer in the knowledge that these heatwaves, the droughts and the wildfires will only increase if no action continues to be taken, Burnham is certainly not “bringing back hope” as his campaign suggested. Surely expanding and investing in renewable energy would do more to address the crisis at hand and set an example for other nations, that we can no longer rely on fossil fuels for a sustainable future.
Can you have too much sun?
With all these hot sunny days, you’d think the answer would be obvious: to harness solar energy.
Frustratingly there seem to be obstacles in tapping this surplus of solar power. On Sunday 12 July Jillian Ambrose wrote in The Guardian that Britain’s biggest community solar farm in Devon was forced to shut over grid overload fears, as members face an estimated £2m in lost revenue.
Her article highlighted that, “The National Energy System Operator (Neso) is understood to have ordered the National Grid to shut a vital ‘super grid transformer’ over the summer to prevent the rooftop solar in the area from driving the transmission network’s voltage beyond its safety limits. The surge in rooftop solar power is particularly difficult to manage during the summer when long, sunny days lead to more generation than a local grid might need. [Or rather, more than the current infrastructure can cope with.] Specialist equipment can help to manage potential voltage issues, but these upgrades have not yet taken place.”
“The problems with the Devon network have been known since 2023, and new equipment was due to be installed by the end of 2025. However, these measures were delayed and are now due to be completed in September this year.”
If we are to maintain these energy alternatives, we absolutely have to expand and adapt the infrastructure so that all this power can be fully harnessed. The burning of more fossil fuels is simply no longer an option.
An article by Hastings Online Times posted on Wednesday 29 July read, “The most important decision on North Sea licences will be the future status of Rosebank, the UK’s largest undeveloped oil and gas field, whose original approval was ruled unlawful by Scottish courts in January 2025.”
In the article Kate Meakin, director of Energise Sussex Coast, was quoted as saying, “The impacts of approving Rosebank would reverberate far beyond our shores, worsening the floods, droughts, heatwaves and food insecurity already affecting communities here and around the world. We know from our work that people in the UK want an affordable energy supply that doesn’t put our climate at risk, not more of the same rip-off energy system where oil giants like Adura walk off with massive profits while we’re left with higher bills and declining jobs.”
Drill Local, Flood Global
Tragically these impacts are already manifesting for all the world to see. In Nepal on 26 August the catastrophic flood (that killed over 675 people with over 2,400 still missing) began with falling ice and rock crashing into the river below. Days later, a new lake pooled behind the debris and then burst, sending more water streaming through the valley.
Geologist Umesh Haritashya explains, “The destruction represents two of the ways rising temperatures, thawing permafrost and melting ice are increasing the risk of destructive floods in the Himalayas and other high mountain regions around the world.”
Thankfully as I write this Andy Burnham seems to have delayed his pledge to tap the North Sea. This has been described by The Guardian as a “litmus test” for the new Prime Minister. Only time will tell if he can deliver on actual hope for our future existence on this planet.