Hot topic: why is Burnham so reluctant to talk about the climate crisis?

Extreme heat is harming the wellbeing of the ordinary people the PM champions, yet he has ignored the subject From the first day Andy Burnham came into office, climate scientists, campaigners and some of the ordinary people surviving through this summer of extreme heat began to wonder when he would start to talk about the climate crisis. Up until this week, many held back from criticism. After all, he had only been in power for a couple weeks; it felt far too early to start to judge and call him out on it. But as we watched the footage of terrified horses galloping over cindering heathland in the New Forest while yet another wildfire took hold, it no longer felt too soon to wonder. Now people are asking aloud: why is Burnham ignoring what is in front of his face – the devastating impact of climate breakdown on the country and its citizens? “As the prime minister tours every region of the UK, it will be hard to miss the impacts of this extraordinary summer: wildfires, drought, parched farmland and people struggling to work in extreme heat,” said Emma Howard Boyd, the former head of the Environment Agency who is now a professor in practice at the Grantham Research Institute on Climat