Oil rigs moored in Cromarty Firth, Scotland (Alamy)

4 min read6 min

Deadly heatwaves, droughts, and the threat of food shortages are just the start. We need a government that will be upfront with the public, and a prime minister who will confidently defend decisions that protect our national security and long-term prosperity.

Why then is Andy Burnham doing the opposite when it comes to drilling in the North Sea? Parroting fossil-fuel talking points to make the case for an approach that risks homes, livelihoods, and lives? The latest argument from Labour politicians over the airwaves is that the government should approve more drilling to help us reach net zero faster. Primarily, they claim, because of the potential for tax receipts and the employment opportunities.

Apart from pointing out the obvious – that deliberately releasing over 200m tonnes of planet-warming gases into the atmosphere could never reduce our output of planet-warming gases – even their technical arguments simply do not stand up to scrutiny. 

For starters, Adura, a joint venture between Shell and Equinor, would operate both Rosebank and Jackdaw. Its corporate structuring has been criticised for potentially allowing Shell to write off £1.3bn in UK tax. Shell has also faced criticism from campaigners who argue that it paid little or no tax in this country over several years while reporting substantial global profits.

If the government really wants to get its hands on the tax from oil and gas production to invest in the transition, it doesn’t need new fields. Instead, it needs to ensure that the existing tax instruments, like the windfall tax, actually bring in the revenue that was promised and end the near-infinite subsidies that multinational oil and gas companies have received at UK taxpayers’ expense. 

When it comes to job opportunities, it is doubtless true that oil and gas workers will be important in the energy transition. But as they themselves have outlined, what they actually need is proper support to help them make the move away from an industry in terminal decline, into high-skilled, high-paid jobs in the industries of the future. Jobs that will exist for decades to come. By approving this drilling, the government would be siding with oil and gas executives, not workers, giving false promises of job security, instead of investing the real cash that could make that a reality. 

These arguments can be added to the long list of specious industry talking points that are repeated by the kinds of politicians who listen more to lobbyists than to their constituents. Talking points include saying that Rosebank and Jackdaw are good for lowering energy bills (they will not reduce prices) and that more North Sea drilling is crucial for UK energy security. In fact, the best estimates show that Jackdaw would reduce our dependence on foreign gas by a piddling two per cent, and Rosebank by one per cent. 

What saying yes to more drilling would certainly do is cause irrevocable damage to the public’s already battered trust in leaders to do what is best for them and their children. It would let down millions of voters in Labour constituencies and beyond who want to see more action. And it would cement this government’s reputation for refusing to acknowledge the impacts its decisions have beyond our own borders.

If Burnham is serious about prioritising the most vulnerable in society, protecting our national security and future generations, his first big decision on climate must be to cement trust and demonstrate leadership. That means saying no to Rosebank and Jackdaw. He was right to listen to Zack Polanski and call an emergency COBRA meeting this summer while wildfires ravaged homes and wildlife, and our emergency services were at breaking point. But he was wrong to think that that was all people want when they demand ‘action’ on climate.

Strong leadership on climate would mean having the confidence to make the arguments. Yes, this transition will cost money, but these upfront costs come from taking a positive step to safeguard our planet and are nothing compared to what we are already paying, and will continue to have to pay as a result of inaction. The June heatwave this summer alone is estimated to have cost the UK economy more than £1bn in lost productivity. 

Every day that real action is delayed, we risk reaching an invisible but calamitous planetary tipping point from which we will never recover. The domino effects of that tipping point will hurt the already-disadvantaged the most – those already in poverty, insecure housing or without community support. 

It is rare in politics to have a clear problem, existing and scalable solutions, and the political will to act on them. What we need now is a prime minister with the courage to lead. 

Carla Denyer is the Green Party MP for Bristol Central and former co-leader of the Green Party

Everyday habits that could weaken your heart

1. Poorly controlled blood pressure

2. Untreated sleep apnoea

3. Drinking too much alcohol

4. Physical inactivity

Donald Trump and Theresa May at the White House in 2017 (Alamy/MediaPunch Inc)

4 min read17 min

It was just seven days after Trump took office and Washington was still reeling from Trump’s “American carnage” inauguration address, a tirade against America’s elite famously described as “some weird shit” by George W Bush. 

May was a conscientious reader of her briefing folders. But nothing in the collected thoughts of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had prepared her for the conversation she was about to have. In the opening tête-à-tête, Trump told her that her first step should be “to sue the European Union” as an opening gambit in the Brexit negotiation. In the subsequent plenary, Trump ignored the pre-cooked agenda and busked about what was on his mind: a phone call from the prime minister of Pakistan, the “crazy” cost of the next generation of US nuclear submarines, the unfairness of America’s trade deals. At one point, he sharply reprimanded his national security adviser, Mike Flynn, over the latter’s admittedly bizarre decision to withhold from Trump the fact that Vladimir Putin had been trying to call. Flynn was fired two weeks later. 

Andy Burnham will shortly go face-to-face with Trump. They will meet in New York this month at the UN General Assembly. No 10 reportedly has ambitions for a Burnham visit to Washington before the year’s end. And the Prime Minister will attend the Trump-hosted G20 in Miami in mid-December. How should he approach this Trump-laden autumn? 

First, he shouldn’t worry about the ideological chasm. Some of those around Trump are indeed hard-line ideologues. But for Trump, personal chemistry matters. He has a short attention span and hates being lectured. He finds the day-to-day workload – the briefings, the meetings, the almost entirely unread paperwork – excruciatingly tiresome. When he meets foreign leaders, he wants a conversation he enjoys: some banter, some gossip, some interesting anecdotes. 

For Trump, personal chemistry matters. He has a short attention span and hates being lectured

Advertisement

Second, Burnham should expect the pre-determined agenda to dissolve in front of his eyes. My guess is that Trump will want to talk about “the state of Britain” – which really means whether Burnham has plans to restore Britain to the utopia that Trump’s Scottish mother would describe to him. In particular, Trump is likely to ask where Burnham stands on North Sea energy; if, as is rumoured, the government has by then approved development of the Jackdaw North Sea gas field, the conversation will start well. Trump may then ask about Burnham’s plans on immigration: how will he end the “small boats invasion”, root out extremism, and stop the supposed spread of Sharia law? And Trump will press on defence spending. If reports are right that the Chancellor is backing away from the commitment that defence spending will reach three per cent of GDP by 2030 (though the PM has pushed back on this claim), Trump will be unimpressed. As for Burnham’s priorities, they should include Iran, Ukraine and tariffs. Iran is looking like a presidency-defining mistake for Trump.

Burnham may have to weather recriminations about lack of UK support but he should try to get Trump to talk about his exit strategy. On Ukraine, his message should be that the Ukrainians are doing better and Putin is under increasing pressure, so this is the moment to step up western support for Ukraine – not lose our nerve. And on tariffs, the daily threats from Washington of new tariff wars – today Canada, tomorrow China – are damaging everyone’s economy, including America’s. Can Burnham persuade Trump “enough, already”?

These first Trump/Burnham meetings should go well. After Trump’s recent clashes with Giorgia Meloni and Mark Carney, it will suit him to be seen to be bonding rather than clashing with an ally. But sooner or later, Trump will say something with which Burnham must disagree. With May, it was Trump’s November 2017 reposting of anti-Muslim videos by far-right Britain First. With Starmer, it was Trump’s disparaging comments about Britain’s contribution in Afghanistan. Something will happen. But the immediate priority is a good first encounter. As Irving Berlin wrote: “There may be trouble ahead/ but while there’s music and moonlight and love and romance/ let’s face the music and dance”. 

Lord Darroch is a Crossbench peer, UK ambassador to Washington 2016-2019 and former national security adviser

Gardening jobs for September

What to plant for spring 2027

Garden maintenance tasks for September

What is symptom borrowing?

Signs you may be symptom borrowing from social media

The symptom was only visible once social media named it

Your condition evolves with your feed

Monitoring symptoms becomes a chore

Labels become general

The more content you watch, the more confused you become

What should you do if a social media video genuinely concerns you?

Help and support:

Credit: Adobe Stock

Britain’s energy security debate is evolving. Alongside the familiar trilemma of affordability, sustainability and security a fourth dimension has emerged: resilience in an age of geopolitical confrontation.

From suspected sabotage of subsea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea to cyberattacks on critical energy assets and growing concern over hostile activity in the North Sea, energy systems are no longer merely economic assets. They are critical national infrastructure.

For the UK, the answer is not simply to generate more clean electricity. It is to build an energy system that is more secure, more resilient and rooted in British industrial capability.

That makes offshore wind about much more than clean energy targets and net zero.

As the UK develops one of the world’s largest offshore wind sectors, its wind farms and associated infrastructure are becoming increasingly important national assets. Offshore wind farms are vast networks of sensors, communications systems, subsea cables and digital infrastructure operating across strategically significant waters. By their nature they are exposed to attack by hostile nations.

With the right levels of protection, that infrastructure could do more than generate electricity.

ORE Catapult’s soon-to-be-published report, the “Offshore Wind Energy Security, Protection and Resilience study”, demonstrates that the same systems that support offshore wind operations could help strengthen Britain’s defence capabilities. Distributed Acoustic Sensing systems with integrated fibre-optic cables could potentially support the detection of unusual vessel movements and threats to critical subsea infrastructure. Offshore substations could provide platforms for monitoring equipment, while operational data and sensor networks could contribute to a better understanding of activity across the air, surface and subsea domains.

The UK’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review signals a growing role for the Royal Navy in protecting critical undersea infrastructure and enhancing maritime surveillance. The opportunity now is to ensure offshore wind contributes to that mission. Policymakers must move beyond seeing renewables as solely part of energy and climate policy and recognise them as strategic infrastructure central to national resilience.

Building greater security into offshore wind infrastructure from the outset could create demand for precisely the high-value capabilities Britain needs more of; advanced manufacturing, digital technology, subsea engineering, autonomous systems and skilled technical jobs.

And crucially, these opportunities can generate investment and employment in the industrial towns, coastal communities and regional economies that will power Britain’s future economy.

But the benefits need not be confined to coastal areas. The security of offshore wind is a national industrial opportunity, with supply chains, technology companies and research organisations spread across the country. From Plymouth to Aberdeen groundwork is already being established.

The policy implications are clear; embed security-by-design into offshore wind developments; create stronger partnerships between industry, defence, government and regional leaders; and invest in the technologies and skills needed to protect critical national infrastructure. ORE Catapult’s work shows what that means in practice: adapting designs, strengthening operational processes, creating new partnerships and fundamentally rethinking the relationship between energy infrastructure and national security.

Energy security is national security, and both can define our future energy system, whilst simultaneously becoming engines of generational regional growth.

6 min read4 min

For decades, incoming British administrations have succumbed to a quiet, insidious delusion: the belief that winning a parliamentary majority translates automatically into the exercise of power. Political parties arrive in Whitehall expecting the ancient machinery of state to passively translate their democratic mandates into reality. Instead, they encounter a system engineered, above all, for its own self-preservation.

The modern Senior Civil Service is not an agile, neutral instrument awaiting an operator; it is a self-perpetuating administrative state, risk-averse, process-driven and structurally insulated from the consequences of failure. The historic compact between the British people and their elected representatives has broken down, replaced by bureaucrats that treat democratic mandates not as binding instructions but as temporary disruptions to be managed and absorbed.

This institutional decay lies at the very root of Britain’s national stagnation. Over generations, authority has systematically drained away from elected ministers and pooled in the dark corners of Whitehall, especially in the network of unaccountable quangos that have appeared in the last two decades. When public services deteriorate, infrastructure projects stall, or control of our border is lost, the civil servant who controlled the advice, managed the budget and operated the bureaucratic levers faces no sanction whatsoever. Meanwhile, the minister – with no practical ability to direct those levers or even choose their own staff – takes the blame.

This is not democratic stewardship; it is a profound abdication of governance that hollows out our civic institutions and breeds legitimate public cynicism toward the entire parliamentary system.

At Reform UK, we will confront this constitutional breakdown head on. As head of our ‘Preparing for Government’ team, I will ensure that when Nigel Farage enters No 10 we do not fall into the administrative trap that has ensnared successive governments. 

Reform is building a rigorous operational setup capable of executing systemic change from day one. We recognise that the window of opportunity for an incoming government to effect structural reform is brief, while the economic, social and cultural challenges facing Britain are monumental. When permanent secretaries meet our future ministers and their teams, they will not be expected to nod politely at vague political aspirations while quietly shunting them into administrative oblivion. They will be met with explicit, non-negotiable operational directives for transforming the state, grounded in the absolute principle that civil servants answer to ministers, ministers answer to Parliament, and Parliament answers to the sovereign British people.

The work of my team in the Preparing for Government unit is focused on the painstaking, unglamorous mechanics of institutional restoration. We will overhaul the Civil Service and ministerial code, establishing clear lines of accountability, and restoring the actual, rather than merely formal, responsibility of ministers for policy delivery. We will dismantle the Cabinet Office, the bloated centre where executive decision making goes to die. We will split the conflicted role of cabinet secretary into focused, functional parts: an agile political chief of staff to advise the PM, a chief secretary responsible for Cabinet governance, and a dedicated CEO responsible for the administration of the Civil Service.

Furthermore, we will give ministers the long-overdue power to appoint and dismiss their permanent secretaries and immediate advisory teams, ending the absurdity of a bureaucracy that effectively selects its own overseers. To address the problem of ‘posh generalists’ who float from department to department making policy without domain expertise, we will proactively identify proven talent from the private sector and civil society to enter the Senior Civil Service. We will streamline processes through the ambitious adoption of artificial intelligence, overhaul performance management to reward genuine capability, and eliminate the pervasive DEI industry in favour of a culture dedicated solely to public service.

Concurrently, the vast majority of quangos will be ruthlessly pruned or absorbed back into departments, returning public authority directly to accountable ministers.

Over generations, authority has systematically drained away from elected ministers and pooled in the dark corners of Whitehall

Advertisement

Contrast this comprehensive, constitutional approach with the Labour alternative under Andy Burnham. His recent machinery of government changes represent a textbook case of technocratic tinkering: shuffling organograms and changing executive titles while leaving the central engine of administrative power completely untouched. By scattering economic policy across competing institutional hubs in the Treasury, the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade and a glossy new ‘No 10 North’, Burnham’s administration has not decentralised power – it has merely multiplied institutional friction and created entirely avoidable structural conflict.

Worse still, the Prime Minister has fallen victim to the Senior Civil Service’s favourite trick: allowing politicians to announce superficial reorganisations while the top mandarins quietly consolidate actual authority. Under Burnham’s watch, Cabinet Secretary Dame Antonia Romeo has successfully expanded her institutional grip, now commanding the Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Cabinet Office, ‘No 10 North’ and the Civil Service simultaneously. To reflect her supremely powerful position, she was promptly given a new office right next to the Prime Minister’s study. But be under no illusions: once Burnham’s star fades, she will move fast against her benefactor to defuse any changes that threaten the primacy of the Civil Service.

While Burnham shuffles the deck within the parameters permitted by Whitehall, Reform UK intends to change the rules of the game entirely. Restoring the British state cannot be achieved through management consultancy buzzwords or superficial departmental reshuffles. It requires a fundamental shift in political philosophy: a return to a Burkean understanding of institutional stewardship where democratic sovereignty is respected, executive power is properly accountable, and the administrative apparatus serves the public interest rather than its own institutional hegemony.

The work we are undertaking every day in the Preparing for Government team is the essential prerequisite for everything else we hope to achieve if we win office. A functional, accountable state machine will ensure that our promises on border security, economic growth and public services can be delivered quickly. In contrast, we can observe in real time how Burnham’s failure to prepare for the realities of power is proving to be his preparation for failure. 

We will not make the same mistake. When the British people grant us their mandate, we will be ready to govern, and ready to reform. 

Danny Kruger is the Reform UK MP for East Wiltshire