Diseased chicken entered UK after post-Brexit delays to border checks

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Original article by Andrew Wasley republished from TBIJ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

British consumers were exposed to drug-resistant salmonella because border checks took years to come into force

UK health chiefs privately admitted that a lack of border inspections in the wake of Brexit left British consumers exposed to diseased meat, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) can reveal.

Delays in implementing checks on imported food meant hundreds of people, including children, were poisoned by imported meat during a series of major salmonella outbreaks.

Previous TBIJ investigations uncovered a host of failings in the government’s handling of outbreaks of drug-resistant salmonella spread by supermarket chicken from Poland. Illnesses connected to the outbreaks – which also affected eggs – peaked at different points between 2020 and 2024, and Poland has since continued to export contaminated meat to the UK.

Documents now reveal that in a series of high-level meetings in late 2023, food safety and health bosses admitted that the UK’s borders could have been allowing infected meat to enter the country unchecked.

Minutes from the meetings attended by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and its devolved partners acknowledge there were “no current border controls in place”, and that paperwork and physical checks on imported goods were not due to start until the following year.

“This could change,” officials noted. “However, [the] FSA have decided that they can’t wait for border controls to come in as a control measure.”

Following the UK’s departure from the EU, Boris Johnson’s government announced that hygiene inspections on meat imports from Europe would begin in 2021. However the checks were repeatedly delayed and weren’t implemented until 2024.

“We didn’t do any checks on EU imports at our border control posts for three years,” said Helen Buckingham, a trade policy expert. She pointed to a recent report published by the National Audit Office that was highly critical of the UK’s post-Brexit border controls. She added: “Delays on introducing a new regime of incoming checks for EU goods [were seen as being] risky for the UK in public and animal health terms, because our borders were weak.”

Although checks on some UK meat and poultry imports – typically between 1% and 30% – are now being carried out, concerns have been raised that funding cuts to inspection staff at some ports could see large volumes of substandard meat coming into the UK, as reported in the Grocer.

Tim Lang, professor emeritus of food policy at City St George’s, University of London, said: “Food flows depend on trust. And that depends on believing that systems are in place to protect us from known harm. Five years from Brexit, we see not fewer, but persistence of problems. We’ve put up borders but haven’t invested in the inspection.”

Following the publication of details of the government’s planned border controls in 2023, the FSA chair Susan Jebb said that border controls were “critical to maintaining the UK’s high food and feed safety standards” and that they “must be a priority”. The FSA had previously raised concerns that food products imported from the EU were not being subjected to inspections.

According to Buckingham, the post-Brexit inspections phased in last year do represent a more stringent system than was previously in place. “Pre-Brexit, we didn’t check EU products of animal origin because […] the principle of ‘free circulation of goods’ applied between member states.”

TBIJ’s revelations come as Parliament’s environment, food and rural affairs select committee prepares to launch an inquiry into animal and plant health next Tuesday. Imported animal products will be a central focus of an initial evidence gathering session that will assess the effectiveness of import controls on biosecurity, food hygiene and public health.

The internal UKHSA records obtained by TBIJ also reveal that while a ban on Polish poultry products was among the measures being considered by the FSA, concerns remained about its potential effects on the meat industry. They included the possibility that the UK could import chicken from other countries with food safety “hazards”. No ban was subsequently implemented.

Although earlier FSA interventions brought about a reduction in reported cases, rates were still “outside of the tolerance that the FSA Board can accept of salmonella entering the UK from the EU”.

Officials were also worried that the salmonella contamination had become more widespread, involving multiple producers from Poland and a greater number of food products, the documents show. While attention had initially focussed on breaded chicken and other highly processed products, testing had revealed that fresh chicken and raw pet food was also implicated.

Richard Griffiths, chief executive of the British Poultry Council, said: “We expect our trading partners to meet their responsibilities with regard to safe food. If they cannot, and their own authorities cannot enforce the appropriate controls, then we want our own regulators to have the powers and resources to stop unsafe meat entering the country.”

The BPC previously called for every consignment of Polish poultry to be checked at UK borders.

Tests revealed that in 2024, at least 138 consignments of exported poultry from Poland contained salmonella, including variants that can be highly harmful to human health, according to EU data. The UK was among the affected countries. The figures were only slightly down from 2023, when there had been 149 recorded cases of contaminated products.

In June 2023, TBIJ reported that some of the salmonella linked to Polish poultry that poisoned UK consumers was resistant to multiple antibiotics, limiting treatment options for those falling seriously ill. The UK government was found to have allowed food companies linked to the outbreak to continue supplying supermarkets even after contaminated meat had been linked to the deaths of four people, and the poisoning of hundreds more.

Investigations also found that even though some of the salmonella was known to be antibiotic resistant, food safety and health officials did not disclose this to frontline health workers, including those treating victims. Nor did they inform the Polish authorities, impeding possible investigations into practices on the farms involved.

Bacteria such as salmonella can easily spread on poultry farms, particularly where there are unhygienic or overcrowded conditions, and go on to infect the wider supply chain.

The use of antibiotics on farms can enable potentially lethal bacteria to develop resistance, meaning the drugs will no longer work to treat infections. Antibiotic use in Polish livestock production has been a cause for concern in recent years, with increases in usage of some types of drugs important for humans.

Anjali Juneja, director of UK and international affairs at the FSA, said it has been working with the Polish authorities on measures to enhance the safety and compliance of imported poultry meat and eggs. These include increased testing and other interventions at the farm and manufacturer level.

“We continue to actively monitor the situation, including through in-country audits of Polish food safety controls and of poultry producers exporting to the UK. If we see any information of concern, we will take the necessary action,” Juneja said.

She added that the FSA welcomed the enhanced border checks implemented last year, which have become “a crucial part of our food safety system” that she said helps uphold the UK’s high standards.

A Defra spokesperson said: “This government will never waver in its duty to support the UK’s biosecurity and preserve our food supply.”

The Polish Veterinary Inspectorate told TBIJ that food safety alerts relating to poultry from Poland decreased from 2020-2024, demonstrating that it had been taking appropriate and effective action.

It said that a thorough investigation is undertaken whenever a salmonella case is detected and, in the event, will withdraw the food in question, as well as taking measures to minimise recurrence. And it said antibiotics are only used on farm animals when prescribed by a vet.

Kath Dalmeny, chief executive of the Sustain food and farming alliance said the latest findings expose “just how vital it is for the government to uphold high food standards in international trade deals, especially for high-risk foods such as Polish chicken”.

“They must also ensure there are enough vets and food hygiene inspectors to check that British and imported meat is fit to eat – health protection roles that have been in worrying decline for several years,” she added.

Ron Spellman, a veteran meat inspector, said the issue ultimately needed to be tackled at source. “The European Commission, as well as the Polish authorities and poultry industry, carry responsibility to protect all consumers who buy Polish poultry products, they must resolve this problem.”

Explainer What is antimicrobial resistance?

Original article by Andrew Wasley republished from TBIJ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Continue ReadingDiseased chicken entered UK after post-Brexit delays to border checks

Lynx in Scotland: why illegal attempts to reintroduce lost species are surprisingly common

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Four lynx were recently released in the Scottish countryside. Ondrej Prosicky / shutterstock

George Holmes, University of Leeds; Darragh Hare, University of Oxford, and Hanna Pettersson, University of York

For more than 500 years, no lynx had roamed the British countryside. That changed with the recent release of four of these large cats in the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland.

This was an action that is widely assumed to be linked to attempts to reintroduce species that had been wiped out in Britain, as part of a wider rewilding movement. Supporters of these reintroductions typically want to atone for past extinctions, and want to create richer, more dynamic ecosystems.

The lynx were soon recaptured, with one dying shortly after. For now, foxes and badgers remain Britain’s largest predatory mammals.

While many conservation organisations are working with the authorities to bring back species, from microscopic fungi to half-tonne bison, some people are reintroducing them without seeking guidance or approval. In fact, such illicit and unregulated reintroductions are surprisingly common.

Illicit beaver populations have sprung up across Europe, from southern Italy and Spain to Wales, Scotland and England. The phenomenon is so widespread it is referred to as “beaver bombing”, now matched by “boar bombing” in Scotland and across southern England.

In Britain, there have also been illicit reintroductions of smaller mammals, as well as insects and wildflowers that are much easier and cheaper to obtain, transport and release. Wildflower seeds and butterfly pupae or eggs can be easily bought online and delivered to your door, then let loose during a nice country walk.

Transforming political debates

Illicit and unregulated reintroductions matter. They can lead to new populations of previously missing species – there are over a thousand beavers living in the Tayside region of Scotland, for instance, widely thought to descend from beavers deliberately, and illegally, released in the early 2000s. In England, the New Forest population of pine martens are similarly thought to originate from illegal releases in the early 1990s.

Beaver in river
Beavers were reintroduced in Scotland deliberately and illegally. Digital Wildlife Scotland / shutterstock

This can transform political debates. While there were proposals to reintroduce beavers as an experiment before the illicit Tayside reintroduction, self-sustaining populations increased political and public support for more widespread, approved releases. The presence of wild beavers in Scotland changed what was a theoretical notion of having beavers into something more tangible that the public could relate to, and it forced decision makers to address the issue rather than avoid it.

Illicit and unregulated reintroductions can be controversial. Farmers and other land managers do not always take kindly to new species popping up on their land without warning or consultation. In Tayside, beavers have been killed by farmers who were angry at the damage caused to their properties by dams and burrows.

All this sheds light on important differences among conservationists. As these reintroductions are illicit, it is difficult to have clear understanding of who is behind them, and why. We are aware of only one case – of beavers in Belgium – where an illicit reintroducer has been publicly identified and prosecuted. But they reflect a frustration with official reintroduction processes and regulations, seen by some as too slow, bureaucratic and risk averse.

Lynx in snow
Lynx have been successfully (and officially) reintroduced in many of their original habitats across Europe. Ondrej Prosicky / shutterstock

Opinions within conservation range from seeing illicit reintroductions as reckless and harmful to lauding them as heroic, game-changing acts. This reflects real disagreements on what species belong in a given country, and how reintroductions should be done. Releasing animals and plant material is considered a major biosecurity risk by some, whereas others see this as overstated.

There are also concerns about genetic contamination. While regulations and recommendations say that animals and plants for release should be a close genetic match for those which existed in a place previously, to ensure that they are best suited to the conditions, other conservationists say this is a pedantic irrelevance given climate and other environmental changes.

Many conservationists also worry about whether released animals are able to cope with the shift from life in captivity. Given that lynx in the wild are extremely shy, the ease by which the Cairngorms foursome were captured shows they were too tame to survive in Scottish woods.

Likewise, the black-veined white butterflies that have appeared in the past few years in south-east England, the first UK sightings in a century, probably came from unlicensed releases, but are thought unlikely to breed and survive. Yet, the thriving beaver and pine marten populations show this is not always an issue.

Coexistence is difficult

Predators like lynx are the most contentious reintroductions, because they are big enough to target livestock and scare humans. Coexistence between people and predators is difficult, involving careful strategies to minimise harm and create trusting relationships. Of all the different ways a predator might come back to an area – natural colonisation, a planned reintroduction or an illicit release – the last is most contentious because such relationships and strategies are missing.

Lynx warning road sign
In remote hills and forests across Europe, people have learned to live with lynx. Jens Otte / shutterstock

That’s why existing campaigns to reintroduce lynx to Scotland are strongly condemning the Cairngorms release. They see it as undermining their work to carefully build bridges with farmers. Judging by reactions of land managers to illicit beaver releases in Scotland, it may also generate opposition to any kind of reintroduction. By feeding into narratives of “arrogant” conservationists, it might undermine support, especially in rural communities that may one day have to live with reintroduced lynx.

If conservationists want to see a free-living, healthy and self-sustaining population of lynx, they’ll need to build careful relationships with local people and other interest groups. They’ll need to put forward a clear idea of how to live successfully alongside lynx, and what to do when either people or lynx overstep the mark. Illicit reintroductions are unlikely to get us there.


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George Holmes, Professor of Conservation and Society, University of Leeds; Darragh Hare, Research Fellow, Department of Biology, Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, University of Oxford, and Hanna Pettersson, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity, University of York

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

No 10 blocks beaver release plan as officials view it as ’Tory legacy’

Continue ReadingLynx in Scotland: why illegal attempts to reintroduce lost species are surprisingly common

Our under-resourced legal aid system is dangerous. It needn’t be this way

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Original article by Frances Timberlake republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Having an under-funded legal aid system can ruin lives | Oli Scarff/Getty Images

Extra £20m of spending should be celebrated, but it pales in comparison to funding for hostile environment policies

Navigating the UK’s Kafkaesque immigration system is incredibly challenging. One ‘wrong’ turn – a delay in an application, an incorrect form – can quite literally risk a person’s life.

This is deliberate; the system is designed to be hostile. If you’re someone with an immigration or asylum problem, you’ll probably need a lawyer for specialist advice. But what happens if you can’t afford one?

In theory, everyone claiming asylum in this country has the right to access legal aid if they can’t afford it themselves – which is the case for most people seeking asylum, who are not allowed to work. In practice, though, decades of chronic underfunding have left the system in crisis and many people without the necessary legal support. This year only 43% of people claiming asylum had access to a legal aid lawyer, down from an estimated 73% in 2020.

Last month, after years of concerted organising by communities and legal workers, we received a glimmer of hope. Justice secretary Shabana Mahmood announced an extra £20m of funding for the civil legal aid system – the first increase since 1996.

While this is to be celebrated, it’s nowhere near enough. To put the figure into perspective, the last government spent £22m on using the Bibby Stockholm barge as asylum accommodation, £318m on the failed Rwanda removals plan and £996m on asylum housing contracts with Clearsprings, a private firm that has been accused of “poor accommodation and lack of care for residents”.

We’ve seen almost 30 years of stagnating salaries for legal workers, legal aid providers shutting down, and more people being forced to face injustices without support. Now, we need to see much bolder action from the new Labour government if we are to get out of the downward spiral that legal aid is in.

How did we get here?

The UK’s legal aid system was created in 1949, on the post-war principle that wherever you are, whatever problems you face and however much money you have, you should be able to have legal advice and representation if you need it.

But while it has never actually been that easy for migrants to access legal aid, the last few years have made it particularly punishing.

In the 2010s, as successive governments’ austerity regimes violently stripped away safety nets for working-class people – migrants and UK citizens alike – legal aid was cut drastically. The appropriately named ‘hostile environment’ policies also meant people whose immigration claims fell through faced losing access to healthcare, housing and jobs.

All of this paved the way for Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak’s governments to house migrants in disused military barracks for years on end and threaten to send them more than 4,000 miles away to Rwanda. At the same time, successive justice secretaries have refused to fund legal aid provision, making it almost impossible for a person to challenge a legal decision that could change their life.

In real terms, at least £950m of legal aid funding has been lost every year since 2012 and many people have lost their right to legal aid altogether as the scope for eligibility has been reduced.

Legal aid workers, meanwhile, have not just had their salaries slashed, but their public value degraded. Immigration lawyers in particular have been demonised, denigrated by ministers and in the press as ‘lefty lawyers’ – leading to them becoming targets of violent hate crimes.

We are now seeing the predictable and painful impacts of this on the people whom we at Migrants Organise, a charity supporting refugees and migrants, work with every day.

A person seeking asylum who doesn’t have access to legal advice is far less likely to be able to put together the evidence and testimony needed to ‘meet’ the Home Office’s stringent burden of proof.

If their case is refused, they’ll face an even more byzantine appeal system and be expected to represent themselves in front of a judge – still without getting any advice on the regulations that they’re expected to meet. But several large immigration firms have also stopped taking on asylum appeal cases because they don’t get paid enough to do so, forcing many people to tackle gruelling and complex immigration procedures without ever speaking to an adviser.

Then if a person is refused again by the court, because they had a poorly prepared application and no one to advise them, they could be detained and deported to a country where their life is in danger.

Mohammed*, an aspiring barrister and a young migrant advocate at the We Belong charity, has experienced this first-hand. “I waited over five years for a decision on my asylum claim, and then my case got refused and my legal representative dropped me because they’d stopped taking appeals,” he explained. “This was a month into my Masters. It took me almost a year to find another legal aid lawyer, and it was only through the support of community organisations who knew good lawyers and could refer me.

“For people who don’t speak English or have the confidence to seek out support, it’s impossible. Now, after having thought I wouldn’t make it to study anything, I’m able to study law and go into the work that I know will help to fix the problems I myself experienced.”

Pushing back

Having an unsupported legal aid system ruins lives – but it does not need to be this way. Experts, lawyers and the communities who need them have increasingly been speaking out and coming together to document and challenge the impacts of not having access to legal aid.

Organisations and legal aid providers from across the country have been working to have their voices heard. Many contributed to a review of civil legal aid that Sunak’s government launched last year to better understand how well the current system works (or, more to the point, doesn’t). And this year, Young Legal Aid Lawyers and Migrants Organise have run a joint campaign to help those most impacted by the legal aid crisis to educate their MPs on it and demand change.

Researchers such as Jo Wilding, the author of The Legal Aid Market, have also shed light on the extent of the crisis and drawn attention to the expanding ‘legal aid deserts’ where no legal aid is available at all. And legal cases have been brought against the government. Most recently, in June this year, Duncan Lewis Solicitors challenged the government’s violation of its duty to ensure legal aid is available as a result of not increasing fees. The case was settled in September on the basis that the new lord chancellor would decide whether to increase rates in November.

This organised pressure has been impossible for the government to ignore. Finally, the new Labour government has taken heed of the decades of evidence shared, and taken a first step towards positive change by committing new funding.

The additional £20m announced last month, which will be spent over the next four years, is intended to “mark the next step in government plans to rebuild the legal aid sector”. The money will be used to increase legal aid fees for those working in the housing and immigration sectors, with the government saying it is aiming for a 10% uplift in hourly rates, to £65 outside London and £69 in the capital.

Though the final figures have yet to be announced, we at Migrants Organise calculate that the proposed payment fees could increase immigration legal aid work by just over 30%. This, we hope, will open up some capacity amongst legal aid providers to take on cases of people who have been waiting without support.

But in the grand scheme of things, this remains a small injection of cash into two severely neglected areas of legal aid, which will struggle to make any significant indent.

A small uplift in fees isn’t enough to make working in legal aid any more attractive, meaning it won’t address the current crisis in the recruitment and retention of legal aid workers. There is also no sign of a commitment to regularly review funding for legal aid, in order to avoid us ending up in the same position we are now after four more years of inflation.

As successive governments have built a profitable industry out of cruelty, money has been syphoned off to private companies at the expense of public services – housing, transport, legal advice – needed to create better futures for our communities. The hostile environment for migrants remains very much alive, with Labour promising more money for immigration detention centresincreased deportations, and terrorism charges brought against those forced to cross the Channel by boat. Many people still face barriers to accessing justice even with the latest announcement – whether due to language issues, misinformation, or delays.

“Yes, we’re fighting to have more legal aid lawyers. But when will the next increase happen?” asked Mohammed. “We need lawyers now that care, especially when the immigration system is so damaging. Quality work, care and compassion should be the core of legal aid. It’s not just about funding, it’s about the ideology and principle.”

So, whilst we’re celebrating the work that went into this change, we’re under no illusion that for people caught up in the hostile environment – or indeed anyone in the UK in need of a lawyer – life is going to get much easier.

In the short term, we need a legal aid system that is better resourced than the government’s current proposal, for funding to be sustained and raised with inflation (like in many other publicly funded services), and for it to be available to all groups of people who need it.

And ultimately, it is only an end to the hostile environment that will prevent people from being forced into precarious situations in the first place and bring about the dignity and justice that we all deserve.

With renewed hope for change, we need to continue organising with all those impacted by the crisis in legal aid to speak out and call for what’s needed.

*Names have been changed

Original article by Frances Timberlake republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Continue ReadingOur under-resourced legal aid system is dangerous. It needn’t be this way

Climate Obstructionism Runs Deep in the UK — Watch Out for It at the Election

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Original article by Freddie Daley and Peter Newell republished from DeSmog.

Credit: Lindsay Grime.

Regardless of who wins next month, fossil fuel interests have multiple levers for influencing policy.

The UK is heading to the polls on July 4. Although it doesn’t get enough attention, the two major parties — the Conservatives and Labour — have chosen climate change and, in particular, fossil fuel production in the North Sea as a clear political dividing line for the electorate. 

As polling day draws closer, and election fervour takes hold, we will see the forces of British climate obstruction in full effect. Influential individuals, organisations and media outlets that seek to block, dilute, delay, or even reverse climate policies will attempt to widen that political dividing line with a mixture of claims to be defending individual freedoms, putting growth first, being ‘climate realists’, or by displacing concerns about the UK’s responsibility to act on climate change through ‘whataboutism’.

The Conservative government, under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, has pushed ahead with issuing hundreds of new oil and gas licences in the North Sea. The government was due to further reform the licensing regime so permits are handed out on an annual basis, all under the auspices of ‘energy security’, but the election has halted the bill’s progress through Parliament. Future licences are expected to yield just three weeks’ worth of gas per year

Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, however, announced that it will end new licensing for oil and gas in the North Sea, with the very large caveat of honouring those already approved. But even this announcement ignited fierce resistance from the media, trade unions, Labour’s political opponents and some figures it deemed allies. The plan was labelled as “Thatcher on steroids”“naive”, and risked “creating a cliff-edge” for industry and investment in and around the North Sea. In response to the vitriol, Starmer conceded that fossil fuels will continue to be used in the UK “for many, many years”.  

This episode provides a useful insight into how climate obstructionism operates in the UK. In a new publication for the Climate Social Science Network (CSSN) based at Brown University, alongside Dr Ruth McKie and Dr James Painter, we identified three major channels through which obstructionism operates in Britain and the network of organisations that sustain it. 

Financial Power

The first is the material. This speaks to the financial and structural power of the fossil fuel industry that allows it to use threats of capital flight and job losses to curry favourable policy conditions and fend off tax hikes that would dent profitability. It also speaks to party donations, where fossil fuel firms, or those that benefit from their expansion, provide funds to individual politicians or the wider party for access and a say over policy. 

Since 2019, the Conservatives have received £8.4 million in donations from big polluters and those with direct links to fossil fuel production. The current Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary, Claire Coutinho, accepted a £2,000 donation in January 2024 from Lord Michael Hintze, a funder of the UK’s leading climate science denial group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Labour too have taken money from big polluters, most notably Drax, whose North Yorkshire power plant is the UK’s single largest source of emissions.

Alongside the material sits the institutional. The policy making process in the UK provides a multitude of opportunities for actors to shape policy, all within the bounds of proper procedure and due process. All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs), informal groups of politicians organised around key themes or policy issues, have provided an effective fora for obstructionist actors to garner access and shape policy. The rules governing APPGs often inhibit public scrutiny. Trade associations, and the companies they represent, can be omitted from official parliamentary transparency logs as only benefits in kind above £1,500 a year must be declared — a threshold many industry bodies claim not to meet. 

Revolving doors between industry and government are another institutional means through which fossil fuel interests can determine policy. An investigation by The Ferret found that since 2011, 127 former oil and gas employees have gone into top government roles and been appointed to ministerial advisory boards. At least a dozen of these individuals were given roles in the North Sea Transition Authority, the organisation tasked with governing oil and gas production, as well as within departments responsible for writing energy and climate policy. Shutting this revolving door, or even just slowing it down through ‘cool-off’ periods, would go some way in curtailing obstructionism. 

Climate Delay

The final, and perhaps most pronounced, thread of climate obstructionism in the UK is discursive, primarily promoted through the media. The right-leaning media in the UK, such as the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail, have persistently opposed climate policy and action. This opposition used to be grounded in outright denial, where the integrity of climate science was disputed and denigrated. Now, though, a more pernicious form of discursive obstructionism is prevalent; that of climate delay. 

Countless op-eds and articles have been published that acknowledge climate change but dispute the necessity of addressing it, the cost of implementing climate policy (both economically and in terms of national security), and the efficacy of green technologies such as wind turbines, electric vehicles (EVs) and heat pumps. These interventions, which are sometimes made by individuals with direct links to sceptic organisations or else use their framing, often push blatant untruths to the public, such as renewable energy pushing up household energy bills or solar panels  jeopardising British farming. The media continues to both demonise climate activists and undermine public support for key climate policies. 

In this election, watch out for climate obstructionism. While institutional channels may be curtailed due to purdah, others will pick up the slack. With all parties now firmly on an election footing, donations will become a crucial resource for knocking doors and getting out the vote in marginal seats. The sources of these donations, and the interests behind them, will bear the thumbprint of the fossil fuel industry. The media will increase its scrutiny of manifesto pledges and publish a litany of analyses. It is highly likely that Labour’s climate policy will be painted as a threat to national security, an insurmountable cost to the public purse, and reflecting the demands of both Vladimir Putin and Just Stop Oil simultaneously. The foundation of this framing has already been set. 

What is less clear, though, is what comes after July 4. With a change of government comes a reconfiguration of interests and, for the winners, concessions will be made to those actors and constituencies that helped get them past the post. For the losing party, most likely to be the Conservatives, there may be an ideological reorientation that ends the cross-party consensus on tackling climate breakdown, making them the party of climate obstructionism that challenges the necessity of net zero and fights for more oil and gas. 

This election might be the one that ends 14 years of Conservative rule, but it’s not likely to be the one to end climate obstructionism in the UK.  

Freddie Daley is a Research Associate at the Centre for Global Political Economy at the University of Sussex.

Peter Newell is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex.

They are the authors of a chapter in Climate Obstructionism across Europe, a new collection of essays analysing the organisations, politicians, think tanks and media outlets seeking to delay, derail and denigrate climate policy, produced by the Climate Social Science Network.

Original article by Freddie Daley and Peter Newell republished from DeSmog.

dizzy: I don’t agree that there is “cross-party consensus on tackling climate breakdown.” I suggest that instead the Conservative and Labour parties are indistinguishable in their support of plutocracy, sucking up to the rich and powerful. The Conservatives under Sunak have made no pretence of their intention to forge ahead with exploiting North Sea fossil fuels all they can and Labour do not intend to stop the Rosebank North Sea oil and gas field. Starmer has abandoned so many pledges that he should be recognised as as much a liar as Tony Blair or Boris Johnson.

The title of “… the party of climate obstructionism that challenges the necessity of net zero and fights for more oil and gas. ” is currently shared by the Conservatives and climate denier Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

Rishi Sunak on stopping Rosebank says that any chancellor can stop his huge 91% subsidy to build Rosebank, that Keir Starmer is as bad as him for sucking up to Murdoch and other plutocrats and that we (the plebs) need to get organised to elect MPs that will stop Rosebank.
Rishi Sunak on stopping Rosebank says that any chancellor can stop his huge 91% subsidy to build Rosebank, that Keir Starmer is as bad as him for sucking up to Murdoch and other plutocrats and that we (the plebs) need to get organised to elect MPs that will stop Rosebank.

Continue ReadingClimate Obstructionism Runs Deep in the UK — Watch Out for It at the Election

Priti Patel slammed over ‘law and order’ campaign video next to photo of Boris Johnson

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https://leftfootforward.org/2024/06/priti-patel-slammed-over-law-and-order-campaign-video-next-to-photo-of-boris-johnson/

‘Hmm, but that bloke in the picture behind you broke the law, didn’t he?’

Priti Patel has been ridiculed after posting a general election campaign video on social media in which she talks of law and order, whilst standing next to a framed photo of Boris Johnson who was fined for breaking lockdown rules. 

The former Home Secretary was attempting to appeal to voters in the constituency of Witham in a video posted on her X account, in which she declared she is a “passionate believer of law and order”. 

In the video Patel said: “I have also been responsible for changing our laws to ensure that those who do the most terrible things, the most heinous crimes, serve longer prison sentences and I’m unapologetic about that because I believe in law and order and making the right punishment and deterrent to fit the crime.”

Hanging on the wall next to Patel, along with a Vote Conservative banner and a Union Jack flag, is a framed photograph of Boris Johnson. Patel was a key ally to Johnson and was rewarded in Johnson’s honours list. 

Not only was the former Prime Minister fined in 2022 for breaching lockdown rules but he was also found to have deliberately misled Parliament over Partygate and was part of a campaign to abuse and intimidate MPs investigating them, an official inquiry found. 

https://leftfootforward.org/2024/06/priti-patel-slammed-over-law-and-order-campaign-video-next-to-photo-of-boris-johnson/

Continue ReadingPriti Patel slammed over ‘law and order’ campaign video next to photo of Boris Johnson