Are Burnham’s climate credentials up to scratch?

Andy Burnham has promised a “new era of British leadership” on climate policy. He told the Cop31 conference in Turkey today that climate crisis was no longer a “distant threat”, and Britain “would live up to” its clean-energy commitment. He also acknowledged the security risks posed by climate change, announcing a new special UK representative on climate security.

But, away from the foreign stage, he remains under fire from all sides on domestic climate issues. Left-leaning critics, some on his own backbenches, have panned the decision to prioritise affordability over clean energy by permitting drilling at the Jackdaw gas field; critics on the right lambast his continued commitment to net zero by 2050. How far Burnham steps down the green path from now on could well decide which colour of political party prevails at the next general election.

What did the commentators say?

Green policy experts would say that Burnham has often “paid lip service to the climate” but there is “little evidence” to suggest it has “ever been a political priority”, said the Financial Times. In fact, John Healey “took the scalpel to various green capital spending programmes in the Budget”, including the Warm Homes insulation programme and carbon capture schemes.

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His recent decisions “may worry climate-conscious onlookers”, said The New Statesman’s political editor, Ailbhe Rea. There has been a “radical move away” from the clean-power drive of Ed Miliband’s tenure as energy secretary towards an “unrelenting focus on affordability” – to the discomfort of many of his MPs. If, as seems likely, he approves drilling at the Rosebank oil field in the next few months, it could be “one of the the trickiest questions of parliamentary management Burnham has faced”.

While Burnham has been keen to “put clear water” between himself and Keir Starmer on most policy issues, his climate agenda “remains unknown”, said political economist James Jackson on The Conversation. Of course, he will argue that any position is “entwined (and somewhat undermined)” by the “so-called fossilflationary pressures caused by” the Iran war. But, at best, a greener climate policy has been “lost”; at worst, he’s decided it’s a “price worth paying to achieve his other objectives”.

“Burnham will be looking nervously at the opinion polls,” said former government energy adviser Michael Jacobs in Prospect Magazine. His party is under attack from both flanks and caught in an “uncomfortable paradox”. Fewer than “a fifth of all British voters now regard the environment and climate change as among their top three political issues” but foregoing focus on climate change is likely to bleed Labour support to the Greens or “greenish” Lib Dems. Such a split in the Left vote could “lose the next general election to one or both of the parties on the right”.

What next?

Labour needs to find a way out of a political and economic “bind”, said Jackson on The Conversation. The party manifesto didn’t have an “ambitious climate policy” and the government has been boxed in by its tax commitments and by having to navigate the UK’s “tight fiscal position”. It’s hard to know whether the limited climate promise of the manifesto represents a “constraint on Burnham’s political vision” or not.