Concerned by what they saw as Andy Burnham’s radio silence on the climate crisis, last month, 50 climate groups – including Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, WWF and Green New Deal Rising – felt compelled to write a letter to the prime minister calling on him to “break his silence”. They wanted Burnham to make clear that the cause of the five recent heatwaves, and the droughts and wildfires that followed was the climate crisis. 

They pointed out that as mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham had made “powerful statements” about the climate crisis, including backing the fossil fuel treaty – a proposed international pact on phasing out coal, oil and gas. 

Yet, since becoming prime minister, Burnham’s relative silence on climate change, alongside hints that he is considering approving new oil and gas fields at Rosebank and Jackdaw, have caused major concern among environmentalists. 

Danny Gross, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth, tells Left Foot Forward: “Andy Burnham has not been vocal enough on the climate crisis.”

He said it was good that Burnham had “finally” convened a Cobra (Cabinet Office Briefing Room) meeting on the extreme heat on 13 August, and that he banned disposable barbeques. However, he added “that’s absolutely not enough”. 

“What was disappointing for us and lots of other people was that it took Burnham so long to even talk about the climate crisis or even link the extreme weather we’re having to the climate crisis,” he said. 

Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields

Gross describes speculation that Burnham is considering approving new oil extraction at Rosebank and gas extraction at Jackdaw as “really worrying”.

To tackle the climate crisis, Gross says the government needs to create measures to adapt to the changing weather, alongside “strong action to cut our emissions as much as possible, which means saying no to climate-wrecking projects like Rosebank and Jackdaw”.

He said the decision is “a big test for the government” and if they are approved “it would seem like a white flag in a way”.

“It will send a very negative signal about their commitment to tackling the climate crisis and transitioning away from fossil fuels, which is a root cause of our cost of living crisis,” Gross says.

However, if the government decides to approve Rosebank and Jackdaw, Gross makes clear that “lots of campaign groups will be looking at the legality of the decision” and will continue to campaign against new fossil fuel projects. 

‘Adapting’ to the climate crisis

After a destructive summer of heatwaves, wildfires and droughts, the Met Office has warned that an “unprecedented” El Niño event, which is when eastern Pacific temperatures rise 0.5°C above the long-term average, is likely to bring storms to the UK and North West Europe this autumn.

In response, Friends of the Earth is urging Burnham to enact “much more comprehensive measures” to adapt to the climate crisis, including retrofitting buildings and creating robust plans to combat flooding. 

In fact, the climate charity is taking the government to court over its “dangerously inadequate” national adaptation plan, which it says fails to protect the public from extreme weather such as heatwaves and floods. 

Gross says: “A big part of climate adaptation is about managing flood risk. There has been underinvestment in this area and it’s a big responsibility for the government to really invest in flood defences, including natural climate solutions.”

Media representation of the heatwaves

The media also has a role to play in tackling climate change. When talking about the extreme weather, Gross says that campaign groups, media outlets and politicians all have a responsibility to talk about “the root cause of it – which is climate change”. 

At a time where the Right has fractured the political consensus on net zero, with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch abandoning her party’s net zero by 2050 target and Reform bashing “net stupid zero”, sections of the media are adding to the political backlash. 

When it comes to media outlets, analysis by investigative newspaper Carbon Brief published in January found that for the first time since 2011, there were more editorials in UK newspapers in 2025 against taking action on climate than supporting it. 

In total, almost 100 newspaper editorials opposed climate action in 2025, while 112 editorials – more than two a week – included attacks on then environment secretary Ed Miliband. 

Another research paper by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit found that almost three quarters (72%) of newspaper articles about the heatwaves that took place in June this year did not mention climate change. 

James Painter, a research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, says that to tackle this, “Politicians should be pressing for a more robust Independent Press Standards Organisation, and be calling out the misinformation with more regularity”.

Lobbying

At the heart of anti net-zero narratives is lobbying by fossil fuel interests. The Conservatives have accepted at least seven million in donations from funders and directors of climate denialist organisations – the Global Warming Policy Foundation and its linked pressure group Net Zero Watch. 

Reform UK is advising The Heartland Institute, a US-based organisation that rejects scientific consensus on climate change. The party’s biggest donor, Christopher Harborne, owns AML Global, a company that supplies jet fuel derived from crude oil.

Angharad Hopkinson, political campaigner for Greenpeace UK, told Left Foot Forward: “The main thing stopping climate action is fossil fuel money and lobbying. Oil and gas companies use their considerable resources to ensure that climate disinformation is distributed to the public, online and in broadcast and print media.”

She says: “To combat climate disinformation from the right, we need transparent political funding, robust counter-messaging based on real science, and strong public demand for long-term climate policies.”

Positive stories about climate action

Gross says he thinks “the biggest obstacle to addressing the crisis is no longer denial but defeatism” – the idea that climate change is such a huge problem that there is ‘no point’ in trying to solve it. 

A prime example of this was the Reform deputy leader, Richard Tice, recently saying to the public: “When it’s a bit warm, let’s enjoy it”. 

But in positive news, the public hasn’t bought into climate denial or defeatism. Hopkinson points out that polling has shown that people want more action on climate change, not less.

YouGov polling from November last year revealed that 60% of Brits back net zero targets. In addition, 39% of Britons said the government is currently not spending or doing enough to combat climate change. 

Hopkinson says: “As the climate delayers and deniers get louder, we have to resist and share climate science strongly in return.  Not to persuade the deniers, who frequently don’t believe their own lines, but to let everyone else know that they are in the majority, and should be listened to.”

Gross says that campaign groups, media outlets and politicians also have a responsibility “to tell more hopeful and positive stories about how climate action can improve people’s everyday lives”.

For example, telling stories about how retrofitting homes keeps them warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer, while reducing people’s bills and emissions, or how giving people the ability to install plug-in solar panels, as the government did last week, will help them generate their own electricity and reduce their gas consumption.

To borrow Tice’s words, the response to climate change should not be all “doom and gloom”. Action is being taken to tackle the climate crisis, and most of the public backs it.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

The post Andy Burnham has ‘not been vocal enough’ about climate crisis appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

As Andy Burnham entered 10 Downing Street last week, the future of the UK’s largest water company, Thames Water, hung in the balance (and still does). Burnham was widely reported to be considering immediately putting debt-ridden Thames Water into special administration (SAR).

If you had been playing a game of public ownership-themed bingo, all the buzzwords would have been ticked off. In the run up to the Makerfield by-election, Burnham said “the essentials of life” should be run “primarily for the public interest, not for the private interests”. 

He even directly said the water company should be nationalised. “Public ownership is absolutely an option,” he said, adding “for Thames Water, that is what should be done.”

More broadly, he has said that No 10 North would enable local authorities to “take greater public control of water, housing, energy and transport”.

Thames Water’s lenders seemed to think special administration was imminent too. So much so that they threatened legal action and offered the government a “golden share” to give ministers greater control over how it’s run. 

But the SAR announcement didn’t come. Last Friday, the iPaper reported that Burnham had “no immediate plans” to take Thames Water into special administration, with a No 10 source categorically denying there ever was a plan to make such an announcement.

‘Thames Water needs to go into Special Administration’

Caitlin Prowle, assistant general secretary of the Co-op Party, tells Left Foot Forward Burnham should put Thames Water, which is almost £20 billion in debt, into special administration. “I think it does need to happen,” she said. The Co-op Party is in favour of mutual or co-operative ownership of water, a public ownership model that would make customers the shareholders and overall owners of water.

“I think the government is very aware that this is a big problem they need to solve,” Prowle added.

Asked why she thought the government had not yet put Thames Water into special administration as expected, Prowle said: “I’m not sure what’s behind the delay. I think the government has been in place for 10 days and it’s incredibly early days.”

She said that Burnham had focused on making “a really strong flurry of announcements that are going to tangibly improve people’s lives” in his first two weeks as prime minister.

Prowle said that the upcoming Budget, likely in October, will potentially look at the issue of Thames Water.

“I think there is a growing political consensus that something needs to be done and I happen to think that the people in government agree with that, and it will be a matter of how and when this is dealt with,” she said.

‘They have to look at profit in social care’

An area that Burnham has not shied away from tackling in his first fortnight as PM is social care. For decades, successive governments have tried, and failed, to tackle the social care crisis. 

The 2010 coalition government, for example, proposed capping lifetime care costs, but ultimately abandoned the proposal. In 2023, the Conservative government’s planned £86,000 lifetime cap on personal care costs in England was delayed and then not implemented. 

For Burnham to place social care at the centre of his government’s agenda is bold but necessary.

In his speech about social care on Wednesday, Burnham said that Baroness Louise Casey would bring forward her review of how to reform adult social care by a year to 2027. He also initiated cross-party talks on social care, meeting with Lib Dem leader Ed Davey and shadow health secretary Stuart Andrew on Wednesday. 

However, Burnham’s speech did not address one of the sector’s most contentious issues: the role of private companies. For-profit providers now run around 96% of care homes. 

It wasn’t always this way. Before Thatcher became prime minister in 1979, local authorities provided around 63% of residential care home places, while the private sector ran just 17% of care home places.

“I think if they are going to solve the social care crisis, they are going to have to look at profit,” said Prowle.

She gives the example of how in Wales, as of the 1 April this year, all new children’s homes, fostering services, and secure accommodation must be run by not-for-profit providers. New for-profit providers are also no longer able to register with the Welsh Care Inspectorate. 

At the start of this month, the Co-operative Party published a report calling for a ban on private profit in adult social care and an end to private equity’s domination in the sector. 

“Private equity ownership is almost the exact opposite of community ownership,” Prowle said. “In the private equity model, profit is extracted from pay, staffing and care, it doesn’t care where it comes from.”

She said that under the co-operative model profits are put back into the business. Prowle recently visited Be Caring, the UK’s largest employee-owned co-operative social care provider, which she said had some of the best outcomes for care, staff retention and pay in the region.

“The reason is because every penny is reinvested in the service. For example, they told me they regularly improve staff uniforms and they’re able to do that because they’re reinvesting profit,” she said. 

Recognising co-operative housing in law

Another of Burnham’s cornerstone pledges is to deliver the biggest council housebuilding programme since the second world war. 

The Co-op Party is “hugely supportive of the ambition to drive up social homes”, Prowle said.

As part of this, the party is interested in community-led and co-op housing models, which provide affordable housing that is resident-led. 

Prowle said that one area that the Co-operative Party will be pushing the government on is to recognise co-operative housing in law.

“The idea that housing ownership is shared amongst multiple people doesn’t exist in law, so it doesn’t exist as a housing tenure,” she said.

Prowle described the UK’s tenure law as “still quite feudal” in that “it recognises landlords and tenants but doesn’t really recognise anything else”.

The Co-operative Party Assistant General Secretary said the organisation has been campaigning on this for some time, and that “it’s really straightforward” to do, “and all it does it makes it easier for housing lawyers, banks, financial advisors, whoever else to have a legal underpinning for this.”

Prowle says the party will also be pushing the Labour government to introduce business support for organisations that either want to transition to being a co-operative or people who want to set up co-operatives.

Risk or opportunity?

With the first Labour and Co-operative Prime Minister in history now in 10 Downing Street, there is a question hanging over the movement: if Burnham fails to deliver on public ownership and his promise to redistribute power to local communities, could it reflect badly on the co-operative cause itself?

Prowle thinks “there’s always risk” but that it’s “a huge opportunity”. She highlights that the UK now not only has a Labour and Co-op prime minister, but co-operative voices across key government roles, including Miatta Fahnbulleh and Alex Norris as Energy and Justice Secretary. In total, there are now 19 Labour and Co-op MPs on the frontbench. 

Prowle says the Co-operative Party was set up in 1917 to represent and be a political advocate for co-operative businesses at a time when the political system was dominated by private business interests.

“It’s going to be up to us and our political representatives in all parts of the country and across all levels of government to seize the opportunity,” she said. 

Prowle thinks “there are lots of reasons to be optimistic”. She argues that Burnham has shown he is committed to co-operative politics not just since he became prime minister, but over his almost 30 years in political life. 

“There have been a lot of signs from Andy Burnham that this is something he believes in and values and sees as part of his political identity,” she says. 

“It’s up to us now to turn that into something real.”

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

The post Andy Burnham should put Thames Water into special administration says Co-operative Party assistant general secretary appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.