Labour MPs tell Burnham to ignore ‘deluded’ calls for more North Sea drilling
Critics debunk economic claims as research finds Rosebank development would produce estimated 250m tonnes of CO2
Scores of Labour MPs have urged the prospective prime minister Andy Burnham to rule out the “tin-eared” and “deluded” development of the Rosebank oilfield in the North Sea, which new research indicates would produce as much carbon dioxide as the UK does in 10 months.
Estimates seen by the Guardian show that Rosebank, which mainly contains oil, would produce about 250m tonnes of CO2 over its lifetime. That is the equivalent of about 70% of the UK’s annual emissions.
Last week’s record-breaking heatwave, which may return next week as the weather turns hotter again, showed the folly of exploiting the field, according to many MPs, who argue it would not bring down the price of fuel and would do little for the UK’s economy.
Mike Reader, the Labour MP for Northampton South, said: “Opening up the North Sea would be tin-eared while we’re dealing with record-breaking heat, and the second energy spike in four years caused by our over-reliance on oil and gas. Anyone who thinks this is a good time to take our focus off clean, secure power is frankly deluded.”
…
Article continues at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/30/labour-mps-tell-burnham-ignore-deluded-calls-more-north-sea-drilling
Burnham aide’s lobby firm met government 38 times – but who did it work for?
Article by Ethan Shone republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
UK’s weak lobbying laws leave public in the dark about Flint Global’s vast access to government under James Purnell
Flint Global, the lobbying firm run by Andy Burnham’s incoming chief of staff, James Purnell, held extensive meetings with ministers, senior officials and special advisers with minimal disclosure, openDemocracy can reveal.
Our analysis of public transparency releases revealed Flint’s staff members met with officials from at least nine government departments on 38 occasions – for meetings, breakfasts, lunches, dinners and roundtables – since Labour took office. Attendees included cabinet ministers Jonathan Reynolds, Douglas Alexander and Nick Thomas-Symonds. This figure is likely an undercount as records of such meetings are published months in arrears.
While Flint Global opts not to reveal its client list in the UK, EU transparency disclosures reveal it has lobbied politicians in Brussels on behalf of Microsoft, Apple, BP and Uber. In the UK, the firm is known to have advised Thames Water – the utility Burnham has said “should be” nationalised.
Our findings raise fresh questions about the interests of Purnell, a former Blair-era cabinet minister who is poised to become one of the UK’s most powerful unelected officials when Burnham enters No 10, and have sparked fresh calls for the UK’s weak lobbying laws to be reformed.
One government log appears to confirm just how routine its engagements with Flint were.
A September 2024 meeting between the lobbying firm and the Department for Business and Trade’s then top-ranking civil servant, Gareth Davies, is described as a “regular meeting to discuss latest business updates”. Purnell is also recorded as having hosted “evening drinks to discuss latest business updates” with Davies in March this year.
Yet despite this regular access to government officials, Flint’s quarterly entries to the Office of the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists have only ever declared lobbying for two clients. The firm said it lobbied on behalf of the British Standards Institution, which produces technical standards on a range of products and services, in late 2024, and Hellen Systems, a tech firm working on long-range navigation, between July and September 2025.
Across the remaining six quarters that Labour has been in office – covering a total of 18 months – Flint declared having made “no communications which meet the definition of consultant lobbying”.
There is no suggestion that Flint has broken any rules. Rather, its near-empty register reflects major flaws in Westminster’s lobbying transparency rules. While few companies enjoy such extensive access to such wide-ranging government departments, much of Flint’s lobbying activity does not meet the threshold for statutory registration.
The 2014 Lobbying Act requires consultant lobbyists to register only direct communications with ministers or permanent secretaries made on a client’s behalf. They do not have to declare meetings with government special advisers, director generals and senior officials, nor roundtables and briefings that they attend or organise, nor strategic advice they give clients about who to speak to in government, what to say, and when to say it.
The result is that a firm such as Flint Global can maintain a regular presence across Whitehall – breakfasting with officials, dining with ministers, pre-briefing advisers – while lawfully declaring that it does no consultant lobbying at all. Many similar lobbying firms sign up to the industry body’s voluntary code of conduct, which requires them to publish a client list, but Flint has not opted to do so.
This means the public has no way of knowing whether decisions that cross Purnell’s desk in No 10 could benefit his former clients.
Duncan Hames, senior director of policy at Transparency International UK, told openDemocracy: “That a lobbying company can have dozens of meetings across government with so little public information about the purpose of these engagements shows how opaque Westminster remains.
“If the next prime minister wants change from the broken politics-as-usual, they should recognise that keeping things behind closed doors and poorly managing conflicts of interest are recipes for disaster.
“Government should create a firewall between any new appointments and their past interests in the private sector, as well legislating to bring lobbying out of the shadows.”
Vast access to Whitehall
Purnell, who resigned from Flint Global last week, joined the company as chief executive in June 2024 – weeks before Labour’s election win. Although the lobby firm had previously secured meetings with Conservative government officials, its engagement with the government appears to have ramped up that summer.
In July 2024, the firm hosted a roundtable with then-business secretary Jonathan Reynolds alongside Barclays, Google and Virgin Atlantic to discuss “opportunities and challenges relating to business growth”. It is not known whether Flint counts these firms among its UK clients, though EU transparency records reveal it has lobbied for Google in Brussels.
Over the following 20 months, Flint met ministers or officials from the Department for Business and Trade at least 13 times, including three meetings with trade minister Douglas Alexander and repeated meetings, breakfasts, dinners and drinks with civil servant Gareth Davies.
Over at the Treasury, Flint discussed the contents of the chancellor’s January 2025 growth speech with a senior official the day it was delivered, attended a roundtable on financial services policy with then City minister Emma Reynolds, and met a senior official to “discuss policy for Autumn Budget” in October 2025.
Department for Transport special adviser Stef Lehmann, who previously worked in Flint’s transport team, accepted lunch or dinner from Flint on three separate occasions, while the department’s permanent secretary, Bernadette Kelly, recorded a “speaking commitment” with the firm.
Flint also hosted or briefed senior officials at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology on digital policy; met officials from the Department for Energy, Security and Net Zero to discuss new publicly owned energy investment firm Great British Energy; and discussed planning “blockers” with Chris Stark, the head of the government’s clean power mission.
The firm also had contact with the Cabinet Office, the Department for Education, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Department for Health and Social Care, whose special adviser, Heather Iqbal – another ex-Flint employee – was taken to breakfast by Purnell in August 2025.
Several of the engagements were roundtables organised around Flint’s corporate network. A March 2025 meeting with Douglas Alexander to discuss “the current trading environment” brought together more than 20 companies, including Amazon, Uber, Diageo, Unilever, GSK and Quadrature – the hedge fund that donated £4m to Labour before the 2024 election. The British Standards Institution, one of the only two clients Flint has ever been required to declare, was also present, although Flint did not declare any consultant lobbying for the company in this quarter.
Speaking to openDemocracy last week, Green Party leader Zack Polanski called for the publication of Flint’s clients if Purnell takes up the key role in No 10.
Following Purnell’s resignation, Flint Global said Purnell “has recused himself from all client activity and has no ongoing financial interest in the company of any kind.”
Flint Global and Andy Burnham’s team were approached for comment.
Article by Ethan Shone republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
Government must defend free speech consistently or risk deepening division
Article by Akiko Hart republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
As free speech becomes a culture war battleground, Labour must defend principles, not pick sides
Editor’s note: The following piece was commissioned in the wake of last month’s local election results, before the conviction of the young man who killed student Henry Nowak. The subsequent protests over Nowak’s death, sparked by accusations of “two-tier policing”, have made more urgent the issues of government responsibility and free speech that are explored in this article by Liberty.
As the Labour Party sought to gather its resolve after bruising local election results in May, prime minister Keir Starmer wrote of a need to take a “unifying rather than dividing” approach. Now, his government must move quickly to keep that promise – particularly in the wake of recent events.
We have seen deep fault lines emerge across a range of issues. How people express their views – whether on social media, at protests or in everyday interactions – and how these views are heard or censored has become the new battleground of the culture wars.
Free speech is in the news every day, from the recent travel bans to the chants at protests.
Depending on who you speak to, you might hear that you “can’t say anything anymore”, or that protest has been restricted through successive pieces of legislation, or that counter-terror powers were used to proscribe Palestine Action.
Some have rallied to the cause of people arrested for communication offences on social media. Others have defended speakers who have been denied entry into the UK. Accusations abound of silencing and two-tier policing, like those made by senior politicians this week.
Throughout, three things are clear.
The first is that most people and organisations are selective about defending speech, only doing so when the speech or the speaker in question aligns with their political views and affiliations. This typically plays out very publicly, meaning they open themselves up to the charge of hypocrisy.
This weakens our tolerance of speech that we find challenging or offensive, because not enough people are defending the principle of free speech itself. The net result is that it becomes easier to argue that there is a fundamental problem with free speech in the UK.
Secondly, the laws governing free speech in the UK are very poorly understood.
Free speech is not unfettered – it is a qualified right that needs to be balanced alongside others.
Our freedom of expression is protected under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, even if our views are deeply unpopular or could upset or offend others. It’s not a privilege, it’s a right – one that is critical to our democracy, and needs to be as wide as possible. But it is not an absolute right; dozens of criminal offences separate lawful from unlawful speech in the UK.
One of the tests to determine whether or not speech is unlawful is context. That’s why a cursory analysis of one recent high-profile legal case may come across as unfair when compared to another – because with speech, context is everything. But again, if this is not well understood, then the charge that there is a problem with free speech in the UK is able to gain traction.
Thirdly, the government’s response has been unhelpful at best, paving the way for more troubles.
The suite of cluttered and restrictive protest laws and the expansion of counter-terror powers have changed the legislative landscape. Freedom of expression, as articulated through protests, has been curtailed. But the government has also found itself trying to get ahead of politically unhelpful headlines through inconsistent policy positions, instead of standing up for the principle of free speech.
The government has a critical role to play in safeguarding freedom of expression. Its duty is to protect our right to express differences of opinion and share them with others without state intervention, while balancing that with our collective right to live free from fear and violence.
In the UK, we have an imperfect but relatively coherent legislative framework around free speech, which reflects the political settlement of a plural, liberal democracy.
Some of it does need to change. Our protest laws need an immediate overhaul, public interest speech must be protected through the repeal of SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation), and the application of our free speech laws must be adapted to a digital age. But broadly speaking, we don’t need ‘new’ free speech laws. We need existing ones to be applied consistently, and the government to take a lead on finding a better balance between navigating public order concerns and upholding freedom of expression.
Why does this matter? In the run-up to the 2029 general election, we can expect to hear that the UK is in a ‘free speech crisis’. This narrative has long been peddled by those who want to lay the groundwork for repealing human rights laws and removing legal restrictions in a way that would effectively decriminalise hate speech.
Setting out a clear and robust defence of free speech – backed up by a clear and consistent approach – is an imperative for the government if it wants to hold the political terrain.
In the coming months, this Labour government has to show urgent leadership on this issue by taking a non-partisan approach to freedom of expression. If it continues down the path of heavier policing and greater restrictions on lawful speech, it will not unite our divided country, but may create a more fragmented, alienated and polarised society – setting a dangerous political precedent for future governments that may want to go much further.
Article by Akiko Hart republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
Corporate Pundits Panic Over Democratic Voters’ Socialist Preferences
New Yorkers elected progressives and democratic socialists up and down the ballot in June’s Democratic primary, in what even critics acknowledged was “an historic near-sweep” (New York Daily News, 6/27/26). Alarmed by voters’ rejection of corporate media’s preference for moderates (FAIR.org, 8/21/19), establishment media outlets reacted with panicked op-eds and articles downplaying the significance of the results.
New York City “isn’t reflective of the country,” declared a Washington Post editorial (6/24/26) published the day after the election. The paper, which billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought in 2013, added that “the base detests anyone perceived as part of the establishment, no matter how progressive their voting record.”
In the Post’s view, voters’ irrational hatred of the establishment “puts pressure on leadership to lurch leftward”—in other words, respond to voters’ demonstrated needs and preferences. It’s voters’ desires, not politicians who repeatedly defy the will of voters, that “will make it harder for Democrats to win in 2028.”
Even US Rep. Dan Goldman’s “liberal voting record” wasn’t “enough to save him,” the Post lamented. Missing from this editorial was any attempt to define its terms (e.g., what makes a voting record progressive or liberal?) or understand what drove these results (why are voters so angry at the establishment?). Instead, it dismissed Democratic voters as clueless members of the “far left,” fueled by inexplicable anger at their sober-minded betters.
Organizing the ‘reasonable’
The New York Times (6/26/26) quoted a co-founder of the corporate-backed Third Way think tank as saying that DSA victories would allow Republicans to “weaponize the craziest ideas of the activist left.”
Others in corporate media grasped one key to these wins: the months of organizing and door-knocking that made them possible, some of which I participated in as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). But they failed to understand, or pretended not to see, that it’s just as essential to have a policy agenda that excites voters.
CNN political commentator Van Jones tweeted at his fellow moderates that “reasonable” Democrats were going to have to
get off their couches, roll up their sleeves and start organizing…. We can no longer rely only on TV ads, digital spend and endorsements…. If you are a Democrat who believes in opportunity, dignity and democracy for all—but you don’t hate rich people, cops, free enterprise, the West, Israel and the United States of America—I’m talking to you!
Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York, a self-styled moderate, made similar remarks to the New York Times (6/26/26):
The bottom line is that you have to give the DSA and you have to give MAGA credit, because they’re organized…. And the people that don’t agree with their philosophies wring their hands at cocktail parties, but they’re not organized. So we have to get organized.
Can moderates catch up to progressives simply by attending more meetings and fewer cocktail parties? It’s a start, but the election results suggest that their ideas simply do not hold much appeal to rank-and-file Democratic voters. Jones, Suozzi and their fellow “reasonable” Democrats are welcome to go door-to-door to try to interest Democratic voters in policies they see as both pro-rich people, pro-cop, pro-Israel and middle-of-the-road, but recent polls indicate that a majority won’t be interested.
According to a 2026 Siena poll, 54% of all New York voters support a tax increase on New York City residents making over $1 million per year. Support was even higher among New York City voters, 62% of whom favor such a tax hike, and state Democrats, 72% of whom support it.
An exit poll released shortly after New York City’s 2025 mayoral primary revealed that two in three voters listed crime and public safety, along with homelessness, as some of the biggest issues facing the city. But when asked to choose which idea more closely aligned with their views, 75% of respondents said they’d rather address crime and safety by increasing “treatment for mental health and drug addiction and getting illegal guns off the street” versus giving more resources to police, increasing sentences for people convicted of violent crimes and strengthening bail laws.
A 2025 poll conducted by YouGov on behalf of the ACLU also found that 69% of voters think having mental health and addiction specialists rather than cops respond to calls related to mental health, homelessness and substance use would improve community safety.
And according to a 2026 Pew Research Center poll, eight in 10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents have an unfavorable view of Israel.
‘Threatening to unleash a debate’
CNN (6/25/26): “Democrats last year had a significantly more favorable view of socialism (66%) than capitalism (42%).”
Despite the fact that solid majorities of Democrats now favor tax hikes on the rich and public safety solutions that reduce the need for cops, prefer socialism to capitalism and hold a negative view of Israel, corporate media outlets are committed to portraying these voters as deeply divided. New York Times contributor Tim Balk (6/26/26) wrote:
With four months until the midterm elections, the [electoral] outcomes in New York have deepened divisions in the Democratic Party, threatening to unleash a renewed internal debate about electability and how Democrats speak about capitalism.
Speaking of electability, democratic socialists have won races throughout New York City and across the state: in the Hudson Valley, where Sarahana Shrestha has held a state assembly seat since 2023; in Central New York, where Onondaga County legislator Maurice “Mo” Brown just beat one of the area’s longest-serving incumbents in a race for a state assembly seat; and in Western New York, where DSA-backed Buffalo attorney Adam Bojak just won a state assembly seat by a massive margin, and where democratic socialist Brian Nowak has been Cheektowaga town supervisor since 2023.
They are also winning outside of New York: Democratic socialist Melat Kiros just toppled 15-term US House Rep. Diana DeGette in the primary election in a district that encompasses Denver, Colorado; democratic socialist Janeese Lewis George (FAIR.org, 6/5/26) is poised to become the mayor of Washington, DC; and Georgia voters sent democratic socialist Gabriel Sanchez to the Georgia General Assembly in 2024.
‘Differed little on policy’
Politico (6/26/26) claimed that DSA’s candidates “differed little on policy”—which fails to explain the “staggering” results that ” charted the far left’s broadening appeal and a potential reorientation of the electorate that will influence races for years to come.”
Whether these election results have “deepened” divisions within the Democratic Party or merely exposed them, centrists and their media allies are desperate to neutralize them. According to the Daily News’ Evan Thies (6/27/26):
The issues that the vast majority of those [DSA-aligned] candidates ran on—higher taxes for the wealthy, immigrant rights, a stronger social safety net—are also the issues that ‘establishment’ candidates ran on…. In the congressional races in particular, other than differences on Israel, you would be hard-pressed to find a major part of any insurgent’s platform that was not also a plank of their opponent’s.
Politico (6/26/26) had a similar take:
A series of hotly contested congressional and state elections pit a slate of Mamdani-backed democratic socialists and progressives against establishment candidates who, in several cases, differed little on policy aside from US/Israel relations.
But the “differences on Israel” that pundits are so eager to gloss over were essential, not incidental, to many of these victories. It turns out Democratic voters are really angry at many longtime incumbents for supporting and funding an ongoing genocide, and eager to vote for candidates who have actively worked to stop it.
There were other key differences in policy and governing philosophy between these candidates as well. A New York Times story (6/1/26) about the primary battle between the DSA-backed Claire Valdez and the Working Families Party–backed Antonio Reynoso first stated that “the policy distinctions in the race can be difficult to discern”—before going on to discern:
Where [Reynoso] has advocated reforms within existing systems, [Valdez] wants to shrink the private sector and drastically ramp up the federal government’s role in building housing…. The assemblywoman and her allies have also knocked Mr. Reynoso for accepting tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from people connected to the real estate industry.
In a profile headlined “Like AOC, But to the Left,” City & State (6/15/26) wrote that DSA-backed challenger Darializa Avila Chevalier had “a totally different worldview, with a totally different relationship to the district,” compared with longtime incumbent Adriano Espaillat.
Progressive flukes, centrist acumen
Whether or not these differences mattered to pundits, voters appeared to take note: Valdez won her race by over 20 points, and Chevalier won hers—which many considered a long shot—by a clear but smaller margin.
As usual, corporate media outlets covered these progressive victories as if they were flukes, while treating less significant centrist victories as evidence of political acumen. In his Times story (6/26/26) on centrist Democrats who reject “false choices between extremes on right and left,” Balk described Suozzi as “a New York Democrat who flipped a swing district” on Long Island in 2024.
In 2024, Suozzi beat his Republican opponent by just 3.6 points in the general election; the seat he “flipped” was formerly occupied by Republican George Santos, who was exposed as a serial liar within months of being elected and expelled from Congress about a year later. Santos only won the seat after Suozzi gave it up to challenge Gov. Kathy Hochul from the right in New York’s 2022 gubernatorial primary.
In 2024, Suozzi narrowly regained his old seat by espousing policies that voters in one of the wealthiest congressional districts in the state and country slightly preferred. But when he ran statewide, he won just 13% of the vote—or 6 points less than Jumaane Williams, who also lost to then-Governor Hochul by a wide margin, but earned 56,900 more votes than Suozzi by challenging her from the left.
‘An elite of well-educated professionals’
According to the New York Times‘ Thomas Edsall (6/30/26), if you have a college degree, you “are in no way working class.”
Another popular strategy for undermining progressive wins is suggesting that only rich white college kids support them (New York Post, 6/25/26). As the New York Times’ Thomas Edsall (6/30/26) wrote, “Candidates aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America are surging to victory on the claim that they are proponents of ‘a government by, for and of the working class.’” He countered:
Most of the leadership of the DSA and a majority of voters who back its candidates are in no way working class. Instead, an elite made up of well-educated professionals dominates this insurgency.
Furthermore, he added, DSA’s agenda is
packed with policies supported by left-wing liberals, white progressives in particular, but strongly opposed by both white and minority working-class (defined, in pollster shorthand, as non-college-educated) voters.
Putting aside the larger question of who belongs to “the working class” in the US today, which Edsall addressed only obliquely—when he described DSA’s “key constituency” as “the universe of young people with college degrees struggling to find rewarding work, the so-called precariat,” it sure doesn’t sound like he’s talking about the haute bourgeoisie—it is flatly untrue that voters of color oppose DSA policies and candidates.
As data analyst Michael Lange explained on his blog (Narrative Wars, 6/29/26), DSA candidate “Darializa Avila Chevalier won Black voters…against a 10-year Democratic incumbent in the historic capital of Black America,” while DSA’s
Claire Valdez won every age bracket and racial group…. This is not the electoral footprint of a gentrifier candidate, squeaking past on margins from Millennial and Gen-Z (white) transplants; it is the signature of a multiracial, cross-generational coalition.
Even Politico (6/26/26) acknowledged that
Congressional candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America were able to replicate [Mamdani’s] success by winning younger Latino voters in Brooklyn and a majority of Black voters in Harlem…. The result charted the far left’s broadening appeal and a potential reorientation of the electorate that will influence races for years to come.
The case for cowardice
Edsall declared that DSA’s support for trans rights “would be met with some skepticism if not hostility by working-class voters disdainful” of ideas like “bodily autonomy” and “moving past…conservative norms around gender.” Like many of his colleagues at the Times, Edsall parses voter attitudes toward trans rights at length, without bothering to note that they—like attitudes toward interracial marriage, gay marriage, policing, abortion and immigrants’ rights—have changed quite a bit in the last five to 50 years, in response to movement pressure and shifting social, political and economic conditions.
Should DSA abandon its trans members and siblings because, as Edsall (6/30/26) writes, “surveys consistently show that non-college voters are significantly more opposed to more progressive transgender policies than college-educated voters”? Or should it continue to organize and lead on these and other issues in hopes of building support for human rights across the board?
Even in 2021, when public safety was a top concern of NYC voters, many of whom wanted more cops on the streets, polling showed that the largest share of voters favored reducing crime by “shifting police funding to mental health” (NBC, 6/14/21). New York elected former cop Eric Adams mayor that year. Four years later, Adams’ support had cratered and, according to Siena College Research Institute’s director, Don Levy, “Crime remain[ed] a concern…but over 90% [of NYC voters surveyed] say just affording life is a problem.”
In 2025, New Yorkers elected democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic mayoral primary by a much larger margin than Adams’. One thing we can learn from the recent wave of progressive wins is that public opinion doesn’t shift in a vacuum; movements and leaders shift it.
FAIR’s work is sustained by our generous contributors, who allow us to remain independent. Donate today to be a part of this important mission.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.