It is August, and it is not true to say there is no news, but there is certainly less of it bering rwported.
Donald Trump claims that his war is on hold at present, although no one should be taken in.
Andy Burnham has established the pattern for his premiership, and it is neoliberal. The likelihood that anything will change over the summer is low.
Minor events are being blown out of all proportion. That is why so much attention has been paid to the ridiculous rows over the World Cup, and the chaotic invasion of the Ceuta province of Spain, located in what should be Moroccan territory, by Moroccan residents.
These things will pass, even if questions about the destructive neoliberal influence on football and the right of European countries to still claim provinces should remain, because of their relevance in a world where the residues of empires should have become inappropriate long ago.
Some things are real, though.
The consequences of climate change are. They are also unavoidable, and even reluctant news media such as the Daily Telegraph are now admitting the evidence of it, which is hard to miss all around us. With parts of south-east England receiving no rain at all in July, the consequences are devastating.
In East Anglia, where I live, it is apparent that the harvest is over. As someone who has lived in rural areas most of my life, I've never seen anything like this before. When out over the weekend, I saw no field with a crop still standing, and I cannot recall that ever happening by the first week of August before now. Sometimes there are still crops waiting for harvest at the end of August, but this year whatever there is to collect is already in barns, and they will be nowhere near full.
I hear farmers' conversations about yields being massively down, losses being incurred, and doubts being expressed about when or what to sow for next year, given the prospect of making another loss. To contextualise this, having heard such conversations for more than 50 years, I am aware that farmers are usually a pretty pessimistic lot, who are all too willing to present their position as desperate in the hope of picking up another subsidy. But this time, I have a feeling that their concerns are real and their stress is appropriate.
They do not know what to do in an incredibly difficult situation.
They are not sure they have the capacity to face the risks of planting at a loss again.
They are genuinely gripped by doubt, and the UK's already existing dependence on imported food will only increase as a result, in a world market where prices are bound to rise because we are far from alone in facing poor harvests this summer; they are widespread across Europe.
At the same time, we have drought, which only highlights the failure of our so-called water industry, whose contribution to the problem has been its failure to build reservoirs and the massive water leaks that characterise its activity, but everywhere increased water usage is planned without there being any apparent awareness of the impossibility of meeting that demand.
When it comes to energy, things are little better. A nuclear power station is threatened by wildfires, and this time we can sigh with relief that disaster was avoided and that the Minsmere bird reserve, which I have visited for 60 years, absorbed the shock. But can we rely on that forever? The folly of relying on nuclear power, threatened on one side by rising sea levels and on the other by wildfire, is plain to see, but those who rely on market solutions assume such problems away in a fashion that no wise person would.
And let's make this personal. For many, the risk of their houses becoming uninsurable is rising. Floods and fires pose threats that markets will refuse to insure against at some point, and then governments must act.
Are we hearing anything about government reaction to all this, though? I am not, beyond appropriate praise for emergency services. And that is the real news. In the face of crisis, the noise coming out of Whitehall is so low that it is not reaching the airwaves.
If evidence is needed that this government will be dominated by neoliberal thinking, then that silence makes the point. The assumption is that the markets will solve the problems. They won't. They can't. This is macroeconomic risk, and markets do not deal in that. That is the terrain of government, and government must act, but it seems to be absent right now.
That should be the news. It isn't. That itself is the problem. As the world burns and the risk of damage to many lives grows, there is no news from a government that would appear to have got into office only to go on holiday. People will not put up with that for long.
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I am shortly going to work in a large Cambridge garden which at the best of times is at the drier end of well drained – I am seeing shrubs and trees slowly dying – to be honest I feel unable to “garden”. It would be irresponsible to attempt to water most of these things so I keep a small oasis of pots alive for the 91 year old owner. Clearly for farmers it is far more catastrophic but even here there now are fewer resouces for the wildlife – especially all the pollinators. In nearly 30 years I have never known it as bad nor had take time off work because of the heat. Like you, I find the silence of government both deafening and terrifying……and all around this area huge developments going up requiring, no doubt, ever more water…… hard not to despair!
Given the number of drought years we have had what I fail to see is any sort of preparation for subsequent years.
Thats not only reservoirs and fixing leaks, its building regulations, legislation – for example on ‘disposable ‘ barbeques, lighting fires, ‘fire hazards’ etc. Also tackling fire risks eg the build up of vegetation alongside railway lines.
A consequence of the relentless austerity programme is that fire services are being cut. In my area, which has a lot heathland, the number of engines, small stations, retained staff are being cut.
With the very hot weather and evidence that UK summers are getting hotter you would think that there would be a programme of training more fire fighters and so on ? Not cutting them.
‘Could not agree more – I too live in a rural area and already the hay bales are in at the end of July! I think that we can say – and taking into consideration the rest of Europe – that the shit is beginning to well and truly hit the fan.
Agreed
Yes, it is pretty pathetic. The Energy minister was on BBC Radio 4 this morning refusing to say whether they would allow more North Sea oil and gas drilling such as Rosebank. Obviously not taking the climate crisis seriously.
At least one pundit has observed that whereas Starmer was tightlipped, giving nothng away (usually because he had nothing to say), Burnham is loose-lipped, throwing out hints and comments all over the place, leaving Downing St. to clear up afterwards (and avoid any firm commitments to anything). I suspect we will know nothing about his plans until the Budget and a King’s Speech. Then we will see Healey play games with tweaking fiscal rules and debt, to finance more killing machines, and any other expenditure that he feels is POLITICALLY unavoidable, while fiddling the accounts to placate the bond markets and pretend nothing has changed fiscally.
(Unless he has an epiphany.)
Perhaps it is time to establish a citizen body, to ensure the state works for the people of this country, with real powers of sanction including criminal sanctions. To avoid this body being bribed and generally corrupted it should be assembled by sortition with each individual working only for a non-repeatable 12 month period, subject to satisfying certain criteria of education, knowledge and IQ.
Meanwhile our local council is generously watering the numerous hanging baskets around the town daily whilst leaving the shrubs in the local park to die
Thank you, Richard.
I live a few miles from Chequers and often hike around there.
Burnham has yet to visit, but when he does, he will notice fields harvested by mid-July, other fields abandoned, woods dying, roads and pavements that feel like runways bombed, chalk streams polluted with human waste, a landscape scarred by HS2, green, not brown, field building sites, secluded and private wealth and public squalor. If he fraternises with the locals, he will notice an ageing English population and a younger immigrant one often working in health and social care.
As I e-mailed Richard and Mike this morning, I will ask our priest to invite Burnham as Chequers is in our parish and, if he does visit, try to relay some of this blog’s key messages. I will keep this community posted.
Good luck!
[…] There is no news from a government that’s in office but on holiday during a crisis Richard Murphy […]
Burnham will have grasped many months ago his PM prospects. He’s had ample time to walk in as PM with a real Vision. The glaring absence of expression of a strategic vision is an indictment of him and Government’s own portfolio of strategic planning. That is further compounded by a pathetic response to heatwaves & landscape fires and later year impacts from the US criminal belligerency.
2026 sees the UK landscape affected by combination of antecedent protracted and ‘flash’ heatwave droughts. The RAF’s substantial assets in its helicopter fleet (50+ Chinooks) are not set up to address these urgent needs. Note what specialist RAF Chinook firefighting crews we have are based in Cyprus! In July, with a rack of moorland fires in North Wales, it was revealed NRW’s helicopter was on loan to Derbyshire. This summer shows up gross inadequacies in UK’s emergency planning response to CC effects and Burnham should have triggered an urgent review.
Richard, you rightly point to the early harvests and shortfall prospects, the effects of which will coincide with impacts stemming from the US/Israeli ~ Iran conflict towards year end; just as you’ve also raised before. The Government’s mouthpiece, the BBC, should be aiding a public preparedness and conversation about how we make this country more resilient, both to the short-term challenges and those of the long term.
On water usage: privatised water companies have back pedalled on addressing their extravagant leakage rates while in the last 40 years per capita water usage has increased by about 70%. Neoliberal governments don’t rush to pedal the ethics of conservation and public good. Meanwhile, the EA has failed to rein in abstraction licences, impacting ecological resilience overall; not least, desperately so for our world’s Chalk streams.
Thanks