Andy Burnham Talks to Civil Servants - and El Nino

Here are three thoughts whilst we wait for Andy Burnham to reveal his new Cabinet.

First, Ailbhe Rea yesterday drew attention (on Sky News) to the fact that Andy Burnham’s ‘accession talks’ with senior departmental officials have (of necessity) not involved their various future Secretaries of State – nor the new Chancellor. If he has used the talks effectively, therefore, our new PM will have given each department a strong steer to which the incoming Secretaries of State will to some extent find themselves bound. This could/should improve the chances of coherent policy-making across government, and of less internal strife.

Second, Mr Burnham will need a supportive (and in this area generous) Chancellor if he is to succeed in forcing through any new Adult Social Care regime. Much the same probably applies to greater devolution and increased property-related taxation. All these policies create short-term losers who will need, to some extent, to be cared for.

Finally I really don’t like Mr Burnham’s 40 years of decline argument - including the period after Mrs Thatcher came to power in 1979 and before Mr Blair resigned in 2007. Here is GDP/head over that and subsequent periods. Mr Burnham will have done well if he can revive the spirit of the 1979-2007.

Jonathan Simons agrees with me, for many better and wider reasons:- What I didn’t like about Andy Burnham’s speech.

Now, whilst I am writing, here are some thoughts on one very current issue that will continue to dominate national and local policy-making:-

Global Heating

Global heating data and analysis is becoming increasingly scary, irrespective of how relaxed you were in the first place.

Here, first, is my summary of an analysis by Dean Rovang in this Substack who debunks sceptics’ claim that recent climate change is due to the planet’s natural variability.

He first analyses data over 66 million years and shows how the Earth’s natural feedback mechanism has indeed caused its temperature (GMST = global mean surface temperature) to rise and fall in line with the concentration of Carbon Dioxide. (The current GMST is 15 degrees C and the CO₂ level is c.400ppm.)

But … his next chart adds recent data as the green line. There is a clear hinge point in or around 1850 where modern climates depart from the above curves - thus showing the very clear effect of human-caused CO₂ emissions. These emissions are now increasing far too fast for the Earth to be able to cope via natural feedback mechanisms.

The extra heat causes all sorts of problems, of course. One of them is that it kills people – 62,000 last year in Europe alone. The data is very confusing but this very clear Substack by Andrew Dessler will help you understand it. More generally, it is well worth following Andrew’s The Climate Brink Substack if you are interested in these issues (and want to be terrified).

More recent posts include:

• this one in which he and Zeke Hausfather point out that Canada’s boreal wildfires aren’t caused by bad forest management (Donald Trump please note!), and

• this one in which the same two authors predict ‘the Strongest El Nino ever”.

We are as yet way off the El Nino peak (the following chart shows the latest data in the red line) but the experts seem confident. (I will update the chart from time to time for those who subscribe to this Substack.)

Returning to the first theme of this newsletter, energy policy will be one of Andy Burnham’s key challenges. I don’t always agree with Dieter Helm but this blog - British energy policy is not cheap, not homegrown, and not secure – provides plenty of food for thought.

Martin Stanley