Weather records clearly show the UK’s climate is different now compared with just a few decades ago. Photograph: Geoffrey Swaine/Shutterstock
Increasing frequency of heatwaves and flooding raises fears over health, infrastructure and how society functions
Record-breaking extreme weather is the new norm in the UK, scientists have said, showing that the country is firmly in the grip of the climate crisis.
The hottest days people endure have dramatically increased in frequency and severity, and periods of intense rain have also ramped up, data from hundreds of weather stations shows. Heatwaves and floods leading to deaths and costly damage are of “profound concern” for health, infrastructure and the functioning of society, the scientists said.
The weather records clearly show the UK’s climate is different now compared with just a few decades ago, the scientists said, as a result of the carbon pollution emitted by burning fossil fuels.
The analysis found that the number of days with temperatures 5C above the average for 1961-1990 had doubled in the last 10 years. For days 8C above average, the number has trebled and for 10C above average it has quadrupled. The UK has also become 8% sunnier in the last decade.
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The assessment, called the State of the UK Climate 2024 and published in the International Journal of Climatology, found the last three years were in the UK’s top five hottest years on record. The warmest spring on record was seen in 2024 although this has already been surpassed in 2025.
The UK has particularly long meteorological records and the Central England Temperature series is the longest instrumental record in the world. It shows that recent temperatures have far exceeded any in at least 300 years. However, today’s high temperatures are likely to be average by 2050, and cool by 2100, the scientists said.
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Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem participates in a round table event with President Donald Trump at the Hill Country Youth Event Center to discuss last week’s flash flooding on July 11, 2025 in Kerrville, Texas. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“They are intentionally breaking government—even the parts that help us when we are deep in crisis,” said Sen. Chris Murphy.
Outrage continues to grow against U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem over her response to the deadly floods that ravaged Texas last week.
According to a Friday report from The New York Times, more than two-thirds of phone calls to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from flood victims went unanswered after Noem allowed hundreds of contractors to be laid off on July 5, just a day after the nightmare storm.
According to The Times, this dramatically hampered the ability of the agency to respond to calls from survivors in the following days:
On July 5, as floodwaters were starting to recede, FEMA received 3,027 calls from disaster survivors and answered 3,018, or roughly 99.7 percent, the documents show. Contractors with four call center companies answered the vast majority of the calls.
That evening, however, Noem did not renew the contracts with the four companies, and hundreds of contractors were fired, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter.
The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or roughly 35.8 percent, according to the documents. And on Monday, July 7, the agency fielded 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, or around 15.9 percent, the documents show.
Calling is one of the primary ways that flood victims apply for aid from the disaster relief agency. But Noem would wait until July 10—five days later—to renew the contracts of the people who took those phone calls.
“Responding to less than half of the inquiries is pretty horrific,” Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, told The Times.
“Put yourself in the shoes of a survivor: You’ve lost everything, you’re trying to find out what’s insured and what’s not, and you’re navigating multiple aid programs,” he added. “One of the most important services in disaster recovery is being able to call someone and walk through these processes and paperwork.”
The lapse is a direct result of a policy introduced by Noem last month, which required any payments made by FEMA above $100,000 to be directly approved by her before taking effect. Noem, who has said she wants to eliminate FEMA entirely, described it as a way of limiting “waste, fraud, and abuse.”
Under this policy, Noem allowed other critical parts of the flood response to wait for days as well. Earlier this week, multiple officials within FEMA told CNN that she waited more than 72 hours to authorize the deployment of search and rescue teams and aerial imaging.
Following TheTimes’ piece, DHS put out a statement claiming that “NO ONE was left without assistance, and every call was responded to urgently.”
“When a natural disaster strikes, phone calls surge, and wait times can subsequently increase,” DHS said. “Despite this expected influx, FEMA’s disaster call center responded to every caller swiftly and efficiently, ensuring no one was left without assistance. No call center operators were laid off or fired.”
This is undercut, however, by internal emails also obtained by TheTimes, which showed FEMA officials becoming frustrated and blaming the DHS Secretary for the lack of contracts. One official wrote in a July 8 email to colleagues: “We still do not have a decision, waiver, or signature from the DHS Secretary.”
Democratic lawmakers were already calling for investigations into Noem’s response to the floods before Friday. They also sought to look into how the Trump administration’s mass firings of FEMA employees, as well as employees of the National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) may have hampered the response.
Following The Times’ revelations, outrage has reached a greater fever pitch.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) called it “unforgivable and unforgettable” and an “inexcusable lapse in top leadership.”
“Sec. Noem shows that dismantling FEMA impacts real people in real time,” he said. “It hurts countless survivors & increases recovery costs.”
In response to the news, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) simply wrote that “Kristi Noem must resign now.”
Others pointed out that Noem has often sought to justify abolishing FEMA by characterizing it as slow and ineffectual. They suggested her dithering response was deliberate.
“She broke it on purpose,” said Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) in an interview on MSNBC. “So that when it fails this summer, she can say, ‘Oh, see, we told you—FEMA doesn’t work.'”
Moskowitz: "Kristi Noem doesn't know what she is doing. She has no idea what she is doing when it comes to FEMA … what she did is she broke it, and she broke it on purpose so that when it fails this summer, she can say, 'Oh, see, we told you — FEMA doesn't work.'" pic.twitter.com/nHN8Dhv41z
“It’s not really incompetence because they know what they are doing,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “They are intentionally breaking government—even the parts that help us when we are deep in crisis.”
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu this week announced he has nominated Donald Trump for a Nobel peace prize during a visit to Washington | Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
The US president is desperate for a peace prize. That doesn’t align with Netanyahu’s plans for ethnic cleansing in Gaza
Donald Trump’s claim to be nearing a breakthrough in the Gaza conflict, as he insisted ahead of his meetings with Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu this week, in the end came to nothing.
Netanyahu has returned home from Washington. Mediating sessions continue in Qatar, but prospects are poor, which is hardly surprising given Netanyahu’s war aims of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians in Gaza and much of the occupied West Bank.
Away from Gaza, Netanyahu wants to denuclearise Iran and force a change to its government. While Israel may present the recent war with Iran as a great success, developments since then suggest otherwise.
The key to the nuclear weapon issue is how much of the 60% enriched uranium that Iran has hidden away has survived, not whether it needs to enrich it further for a potential nuclear weapon. The common belief that the 90% enrichment is essential for weapons-grade uranium is wrong; the Hiroshima bomb used 80%.
Even 60% would be enough. Such a device may not be as efficient as one with 95% enrichment; it would be crude and cumbersome and might even be too heavy to deliver, but it could certainly power a test device and detonate.
That would be a huge symbolic moment, and would certainly make it much more important to move to a diplomatic outcome to the crisis, however much Netanyahu would oppose that.
In short, Netanyahu’s war has not ended Iran’s nuclear potential, with its programme damaged but far from destroyed. Similarly, the Iranian regime shows little sign of instability despite being under economic pressure.
Gaza, meanwhile, is turning into a double disaster for Israel as it transitions to fully fledged pariah status. In the past five weeks, another 640 Palestinians have been killed and over 4,500 wounded.
Hungry children are being killed and maimed as they wait for food. One of the few emergency hospitals still functional is a small, 60-bed Red Cross hospital in the south of Gaza. It says it has dealt with 2,200 weapon-related wounds in recent weeks.
To make matters worse, Netanyahu’s defence minister, Israel Katz, insists that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will now be concentrated into a huge detention camp in the south of the strip pending deportation to who knows where.
On top of this, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) are even failing to destroy Hamas. Just ten IDF soldiers have been killed in the last two weeks, and another 14 injured. These figures may be very low compared with the scores of Palestinians killed every week, but they are more than enough to demonstrate that Hamas is still active and even controls parts of Gaza. We can also assume there is little shortage of angry young recruits to Hamas who have seen their families and friends killed and maimed.
The conflict continues in other ways, as well. When Israel fought its air war against Iran last month, the impression given by most of the mainstream media was that while occasional Iranian missiles might have got through the multi-layered Israeli air defences, their impact was minimal – perhaps causing some damage and even a handful of deaths and injuries, but with far greater costs to Iran.
While the extent of the fatalities and injuries may be correct, the 42 Iranian ballistic missiles that reached Israeli territory had a substantially greater impact than was admitted, with at least six hitting heavily protected military targets, including a major airbase and an intelligence-gathering centre.
Iran’s non-military targets included oil and power facilities, while its other missiles exploded in densely populated residential areas and left 15,000 homeless. These attacks cannot be reported within Israel due to strict military censorship rules.
This is relevant because it relates to possible future developments, especially Trump’s pursuit of a Nobel Peace Prize, for which Netanyahu announced he had nominated him this week.
For Israel, US support was crucial in its support during its war with Iran. The IDF’s air defences relied heavily on an advanced X-Band Radar run by the US military, while two US Navy destroyers provided anti-missile cover. The Pentagon also provided two ground-based Terminal High Altitude Area Defence anti-missile systems, which launched at least 36 interceptor missiles, reportedly costing $12m each.
In the immediate post-conflict period, direct US support will expand further. Even before the war on Gaza began in October 2023, the US spent an annual $3.8bn on military assistance for Israel. That has since shot up, reaching $18bn in the first 12 months of the war.
The US is deeply embedded in the defence of Israel, but Netanyahu’s war aims have not been met, and he needs the conflict to continue for his own political survival. When the next phase of war starts, the US will be intimately involved, and Trump will see his vision of a Nobel Peace Prize disappearing over the horizon.
Last week, hundreds of scientists, policymakers and journalists flocked to the University of Exeter to attend an international conference on “tipping points”.
Attendees also explored “positive tipping points” – large-scale, self-propelling social changes that would reduce the impact of humans on the climate.
(For more on the key talking points, new research and ideas that emerged from the four-day event, see Carbon Brief’s full write-up of the event.)
On the sidelines of the conference, Carbon Brief asked a wide range of delegates which tipping point concerns them the most.
These are their responses, first as sample quotes, then, below, in full:
Prof Gabi Hegerl: “I am particularly worried about tipping points that involve the biosphere and humans due to breaching thresholds for heat or drought that then ripple into food availability, livelihood and ecosystems.”
Prof Carlos Nobre: “The Amazon is a very serious tipping point, because [dieback] could release around 250bn tonnes of CO2 by 2100 – which will make it impossible to [limit global warming] at 1.5C.”
Gaia Vince: “I would say that we have already passed the tipping point for coral reef ecosystems…As a scuba diver, I find it a tragedy because I love coral reef ecosystems, but it’s also a tragedy for human systems.”
Dr Andrew Hartley: “The tipping point I’m most concerned about is Amazon forest dieback…because of the significance of the carbon cycle and the feedback to the global climate. Also [due to] the effects that Amazon tipping has on food security, both locally and globally.”
Prof Tim Lenton: “The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, for sure. The consequences of crashing that would be devastating globally – and also for where I live in the UK.”
Prof Peter Cox: “The one that I’ve worked on most and worries me most at the moment is Amazon dieback. And that’s because we’ve got two things, two stressors, going on at once that push it in the wrong direction. Climate change is one, deforestation is another.”
Prof Johan Rockström: “The tipping element that worries me most is coral reef systems, for the simple reason that the scientific uncertainty range is very limited.”
Dr Patricia Pinho: “For me, it is the Amazon…I think it’s going to be a really profound, irreversible change that will affect the global population in the most dramatic way.”
Prof Ricarda Winkelmann: “I’m mostly concerned about the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. This is because we know that, even at lower warming levels, they are already at risk of transgressing tipping points in certain regions.”
Dr Nico Wunderling: “The tipping element that worries me most is the Amazon rainforest. This is because the Amazon rainforest is not only threatened by climate change, but also by deforestation at the same time.”
Dr Rebecca Shaw: “The coral reef tipping point…It signals the end of the most colourful and biodiverse ecosystem which supports the nutrition and livelihoods of over one billion people.”
Dr David Obura: “The ice [tipping elements] – because they are the first ones to go that have cascading impacts on other tipping elements.”
Dr David Armstrong McKay: “The Amazon is actually probably closer to a deforestation-induced tipping point than to a climate change-induced tipping point. So, I actually think that could be potentially in the offing sooner than we would like.”
Kate Raworth: “The tipping point that I fear we will fail to cross is [the social tipping point] around transforming our mindsets.”
Prof Gabi Hegerl Chair in climate system science in the school of geosciences at the University of Edinburgh
I am worried about all of them, but for the immediate future, I am particularly worried about tipping points that involve the biosphere and humans due to breaching thresholds for heat or drought that then ripple into food availability, livelihood and ecosystems. The Earth system tipping points will do that too, but maybe a little bit later. Examples [of this] are the coral diebacks triggered by marine heatwaves, forest change and fires, and droughts threatening livelihoods and putting people on the move.
I did a research project on the US Dust Bowl and the trigger [for that event] was drought causing vegetation and crop dieback, [which led to] extreme heat and dust storms in response – and migration, as memorialised in [the 1939 John Steinbeck novel] The Grapes of Wrath. And, now with warming, all droughts get supercharged.
Prof Carlos Nobre Scientist and meteorologist who spearheaded the multi-disciplinary, multinational large-scale biosphere-atmosphere experiment in Amazonia
The Amazon is a very serious tipping point, because [dieback] could release around 250bn tonnes of CO2 by 2100 – which will make it impossible to [limit global warming] at 1.5C. We could also lose the largest [host to] biodiversity on the planet, which would induce a tremendous, large number of epidemics and several pandemics. Also, of course, the Amazon forest controls aspects of the global climate. In South America, the climate is entirely controlled by the Amazon forest.
I’m most worried about Amazon [dieback] because I have worked on it for 40 years. But the other tipping points deeply concern me. The melting of the permafrost will release more than 200bn tonnes [of greenhouse gases], mostly methane. Ice sheet melt in Greenland is a very serious tipping point because it could raise sea level rise by three metres in 200 years. The melting of Greenland has already started. Species extinction is also very serious.
One thing that was not much talked about [at this conference] is that when the ocean heats up, particularly the Arctic Ocean, then a tremendous amount of methane is released. And if that happens – if the Arctic Ocean warms up by 3-4C – the amount of methane that would be released could see [air] temperatures reach 8-10C [above pre-industrial levels]. At 8-10C, the only inhabitable places for us humans will be the top of the Alps, the Andes and the north and south poles. The rest of the planet would be uninhabitable.
I would say that we have already passed the tipping point for coral reef ecosystems, for example. That really is a tragedy. As a scuba diver, I find it a tragedy because I love coral reef ecosystems, but it’s also a tragedy for human systems. They are the nursery for our fisheries. And, of course, they’re not just fisheries – they are a valid ecosystem and a biodiversity hotspot. This will have untold consequences and cascading impacts for other parts of the ecosystem, for example, the cycling of nutrients and coral reefs are really important to stop coastal erosion. And they actually provide sand, the lovely white sand that people go on holiday for.
Dr Andrew Hartley Climate impacts scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre
The tipping point I’m most concerned about is Amazon forest dieback and reduction in the function of the Amazon forest, because of the significance of the carbon cycle and the feedback to the global climate. Also [due to] the effects that Amazon tipping has on food security, both locally and globally, because of [the Amazon’s] contribution to major commodity markets, such as soybean and maize.
This might interact with climate change in the future to lead to more severe events, particularly in populated areas of Brazil. If an Amazon tipping point were to occur, it might lead to more severe events on the coast of Brazil which would affect a much larger population. There are negative impacts across the forest from the drying of the forest, for example for the Indigenous communities, but also globally.
Prof Tim Lenton Founding director of the Global Systems Institute and chair in climate change and Earth system science at the University of Exeter
The Atlantic Meridional Overtoning Circulation, or AMOC, for sure. The consequences of crashing that would be devastating globally – and also for where I live in the UK. By our own calculation, we could have less than half the viable area for growing a couple of major staple crops, wheat and maize worldwide. We would have a widespread water crisis. We could have collapses of the monsoons in West Africa and India that would displace hundreds of millions of people. It is hard to see that as anything other than a catastrophe.
Prof Peter Cox Professor of climate system dynamics in mathematics and director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter
The one that I have worked on most and worries me most at the moment is Amazon dieback. And that’s because we’ve got two things, two stressors going on at once that push it in the wrong direction. Climate change is one, deforestation is another. You can imagine crossing the boundary in various ways – but, if you push diagonally, you get there quicker.
If I had spoken to you 25 years ago, I would have said I’m really worried about [Amazon dieback]. Then I went through a phase of thinking that the models have overdone it. And now I’m thinking the models that don’t include land-use change are underdoing it. So, I’m more concerned about that one.
There are others as well, but that is the one that is also quite fast. The other [tipping points] we worry about, we’re worried about a long-term commitment. It takes a while for the AMOC to shut down, it really does. It takes a while for the Greenland ice sheet to melt. We’ve done work that suggests you can overshoot even a little bit for these slow systems. The Amazon forest is a decadal dieback, especially if it is fire driven.
Prof Johan Rockström Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and professor in Earth system science at the University of Potsdam
There is not a simple answer to this – there is a two-part answer.
The tipping element that worries me most is coral reef systems, for the simple reason that the scientific uncertainty range is very limited. We have, unfortunately, ample evidence that at 1.5C we’re very likely to knock over, potentially, the entire tropical coral reef system on Earth. [This threatens] the livelihoods of 400 million people and a fundamental nursing ground for the whole ocean food web. So that is one deep concern. It is the canary in the coal mine – the first kid on the block to fall over. We’re so close.
The second one is AMOC – the whole overturning of heat in the Atlantic, which connects the entire ocean system. Not only is the latest science showing that we are going from low likelihood to uncomfortably high likelihood, but we also know – with very little uncertainty – that this would cause a catastrophic impact across the entire world, and it would go fast. So the AMOC, I would argue, is today the most important scientific message to the world. If you want a really hard-hitting reason to act at a level of planetary emergency, it is the AMOC. That is the second one.
From a planetary boundary perspective, it is important to recognise that – on climate science grounds – the Amazon basin is not at risk of tipping until 3-5C of warming. But as soon as you factor in loss of biodiversity, deforestation and changes in hydrology – then the temperature risk goes down to between 1.5-2C. So suddenly – when taking a more integrated [assessment] approach – the conclusion is that it is also very close to a tipping point.
Dr Patricia Pinho Deputy science director at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM)
For me, it is the Amazon. When we think of the planetary crisis, we think about the Amazon and all the regulating climate services it provides. This is not only regionally, but we know it’s a global “climate good”, if you will. But it is highly sensitive to land-use change and increasing temperature. So, if we transition to a point of no return – Amazon dieback – and transforming or transitioning to another ecosystem, the function of the forest will not be doing what it has been doing for the past millennium and so on. And then we cannot revert this loss. I think it is going to be a really profound, irreversible change that will affect the global population in the most dramatic way.
Of course, we have the people on the front line that I’m working with – Indigenous people, traditional population – that are safeguarding this resource, but they are also at the front line of climate risks and the impacts that we already observe. If we miss this opportunity of really reverting from increasing greenhouse emissions and increasing temperature, we’re going to miss the window of opportunity to really protect the region, protect the ecosystem and the forest for the global society.
Prof Ricarda Winkelmann Founding director of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology and professor of climate system analysis at PIK and the University of Potsdam
So I am thinking about this from a risk perspective – so both the likelihood as well as the impacts – and I think the answer depends on that. Because when it comes to the likelihood and the particular threshold – and we know about those – I’m mostly concerned about the Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheets. This is because we know that, even at lower warming levels, they’re already at risk of transgressing tipping points in certain regions.
But when it comes to the impacts and also the timescales over which those play out, there are other tipping elements that worry me most. In particular, regional tipping elements. So if we think of the mountain glaciers, for instance, these impacts are already experienced right now and several mountain glaciers are undergoing these accelerated changes. And so thinking about the timescales when it comes to the impacts is also incredibly important.
Dr Nico Wunderling Junior professor at the Center for Critical Computational Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt and researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
The tipping element that worries me most is the Amazon rainforest. This is because the Amazon rainforest is not only threatened by climate change, but also by deforestation at the same time. So that means that the critical threshold from climate change alone, at around 3-4C of global warming, can come down to 1.5-2C. Climate change and deforestation basically go hand-in-hand to lower the [Amazon’s tipping] threshold because of this double threat.
Dr Rebecca Shaw Chief scientist and senior vice-president at WWF
The coral reef tipping point – it comes first because of warming surface waters, and then the outcome is sealed by ocean acidification. It signals the end of the most colourful and biodiverse ecosystem which supports the nutrition and livelihoods of over one billion people and has captured the imagination of more people than any other through the characters like Nemo the clownfish, SpongeBob SquarePants, and, of course, Frank the coral [a character from an educational YouTube video].
If humanity is not motivated to act in the face of the loss of coral reefs, is there hope that we will act in time to prevent the Amazon and glacier tipping points?
Dr David Obura Chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and founding director of CORDIO East Africa
The ice [tipping elements] – because they are the first ones to go that have cascading impacts on other tipping elements. When [ice masses] reduce, we lose their albedo, waters heat up more [and] the AMOC can collapse. That has the biggest impact across the planetary system, including the Amazon.
My own [research], of course, is coral reefs. So, in a way, the coral reef tipping point does concern me the most. [But] it doesn’t have cascading impacts on other tipping elements. It does on people, in socioeconomic terms – but not on other system elements. So, in a sense, it is the least worrying one.
Dr David Armstrong McKay Lecturer in geography, climate change and society in the school of global studies at the University of Sussex and lead author on an influential tipping points assessment, published in Science in 2022
One of the tipping systems that concerns me the most is Amazon rainforest dieback. Because even though we assessed it a few years ago as having a warming threshold that’s a bit higher than what we might be seeing – we’ve thought it is maybe at a best estimate of 3.5C – there’s also deforestation as well. The Amazon is actually probably closer to a deforestation-induced tipping point than to a climate change-induced tipping point. So I actually think that could be potentially in the offing sooner than we would like. That would have huge impacts for biodiversity, for South America as a whole, by shifting rainfall patterns, which would really affect a lot of people for agriculture or ecosystems. Also, the Amazon as an ecosystem is so incredibly biodiverse and amazing in itself, it would be a tragedy to lose it.
Kate Raworth Senior visiting research associate and lecturer at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute and co-founder and conceptual lead of Doughnut Economics Action Lab
The tipping point that I fear we will fail to cross is [the social tipping point] around transforming our mindsets. We need to move from the extractive, degenerative economy towards a regenerative one. This all starts within our head and it underlies everything.
[A failure to do this] is what is driving us towards all these [Earth system tipping points].
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
The BBC and OBR claim that failing to cut disability benefits could ‘destabilise the economy’ while ignoring the spendthrift approach to tens of billions on military spending that really spirals out of control, argues DIANE ABBOTT MP
THE Labour leadership is adopting a scorched-earth policy to social programmes and public spending, with no section of society safe from their cuts. The consequences will be very grave for some of the poorest in society, for society as a whole and for the Labour Party.
In the first year of a Labour government, we have had cuts to the winter fuel allowance, a refusal to budge on the two-child benefit cap, cuts to sickness and disability benefits, and a tightening of departmental spending overall, which means cuts for some and a squeeze for the NHS.
This list is growing longer all the time. The latest target is the provision of special educational needs (SEN) spending in our schools, which ministers claim is spiralling out of control. There is also the beginning of a concerted PR campaign to abolish the “triple-lock” on the state pension, even though the meagre amount provided is one of the lowest in western Europe and insufficient for a decent retirement.
The main exception to this all-round austerity drive is military spending, which is really spiralling out of control. In fact, the pace of spending cuts elsewhere is designed to fill the real hole in government finances caused by the commitment to raise military spending to 5 per cent of GDP, a promise given to placate Donald Trump by Keir Starmer at the Nato summit.
Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.
