Peter Black

Having just spent four days in sweltering heat in the Hay Literature Festival, I was not amused to see this article in the Guardian that predicts that it can only get worse.

Bill McGuire takes us to the last day of July 2052:

From the air, London resembles a colossal refugee camp. Streets, gardens and parks are teeming with tents and cobbled-together shelters, within which the city’s residents have spent another uncomfortable night away from the heat traps that their houses and flats have become. After six days when the temperature peaked at about 40C, another scorcher is on the way.

Half-hearted attempts to upgrade insulation across the country’s housing stock ran out of steam and cash decades earlier, and most homes still have few barriers to the infiltrating heat. Almost all the country’s electricity is now from renewables, which has brought the cost down, but the relentless onslaught of extreme weather has driven an ever-deepening economic depression across the world. Many now have air conditioning, but can’t afford to run it.

Early risers yawn and stretch as they queue at standpipes for water. A succession of dry winters and a spring drought have brought water rationing across the south-east of England, adding to the woes of those waking from another sticky, broken sleep. Ironically, there is plenty of rain now, and every day ends with an electric storm and torrential rain. Most of this, however, cascades directly into storm drains that can no longer cope, bringing surface flooding to lower-lying parts of the capital, but no end to the dearth of potable water.

Growing crowds cluster around state-run grocery stores that provide the basics at affordable prices. Failed harvests at home in the previous two years, and massively reduced food imports, as other nations stricken by extreme weather hold on to what they have, has meant the rationing of bread and other staples. Supermarkets still exist, but they are struggling to keep prices down, and so cater almost entirely to the wealthy.

The power is out again, as it has been intermittently since the start of the heatwave. The problem isn’t generation but transmission; the extreme temperatures making cables sag and break and causing transformers to overheat. The doors of houses are open to let in the relatively cool air of the night, although the temperature hasn’t fallen below 29C. Trailing cables lead to televisions that some have shifted outside to watch, when the power is on, and to laptops over which crouch office workers marooned at home by widespread transport problems. A combination of the heat and extended power outages has brought chaos to rail and tube networks, while damage to road surfaces and malfunctioning traffic lights means that getting to work by car is a lottery.

Every hospital is overwhelmed as the incessant heat and humidity take their toll on vulnerable people, the old and the very young, and the final death toll across the country once the heat has abated is likely to be in the tens of thousands.

McGuire says that this future has every chance of coming to life if we continue to blunder unprepared into a climatically challenging future. Rather disturbingly, he says that we can’t stop what’s coming, but we can do plenty to help us cope better:

At the top of any to-do list is the critical importance of properly insulating our entire housing stock, so that homes can become refuges from the heat rather than potential death traps. At the same time, the large-scale roll out of generously subsidised rooftop solar power, combined with battery storage, will do much to make homes at least partly independent of the grid, and able to run air conditioning during peak heat, even when the power is out. Personal rainfall harvesting, which is already big in Germany and other countries, will also help to address the predicted water deficit. While we need to seriously rethink the country’s food strategy as a whole, encouragement and incentives for as many people as possible to grow at home their own fruit and vegetables can also help to ease the burden of inevitable shortages.

While such measures will help to mitigate the worst, casting a shadow over our efforts will be the impact of a failing climate on the global economy, and the consequences for the UK – with a number of analyses forecasting significant reductions in global GDP by mid-century. Inevitably, this will translate into increased hardship for many UK citizens, compromising their ability to cope with the new conditions. At the same time, a seriously weakened national economy will leave government with less money to build the resilience the country needs to successfully prevail in a hotter world.

Bearing in mind that we continue to pump out CO2 equivalent to the weight of 800,000 Titanics every year, and fossil fuel corporations are actively planning to expand operations, it is practically impossible for emissions reductions to happen fast enough to reduce the rate at which our world is heating. Consequently, 40C-plus mid-century heat in the UK is now baked in. We need, then, to face the fact that life in the 2050s is going to be very different from today, and act now. The sooner we recognise this and begin – as a nation – to prepare and adapt accordingly, the better we will be able to meet these enormous challenges to our everyday lives.

It looks like future Hay Festivals will be just as unbearably hot even if the government does take action to mitigate th impact/

This is an article I wrote for Liberator about the Senedd elections:

It all started to go wrong for the smaller parties at the Caerphilly by-election, a first-past-the-post contest that saw Plaid Cymru hold off Reform to take the Welsh Senedd seat from Labour.

In that election, Plaid was seen as the best choice to stop the Welsh branch of Farage’s limited company from taking the seat, and from that moment all the opinion polls had the subsequent Senedd election as a two-horse race.

The only problem was that the elections on 7th May were not being conducted on the same basis. We had a new system – sixteen constituencies each electing six MSs using the closed list d’hondt method.

It was a change designed to help the two larger parties. It gave control of the lists to party apparatchiks rather than ordinary members and set a threshold of around 11-12% of the vote to even have a chance of getting elected.

The irony was that having designed the voting system, Labour plummeted in the polls and found themselves victims, rather than benefactors. The other parties suffered as well, because by this time Plaid Cymru were hammering the message that they were the only choice to stop Reform, despite the fact that even this PR system does not work that way.

The election campaign was frenetic. I have never had so many pieces of paper through the door, all promising the earth, none of them, including the Welsh Liberal Democrats, properly costed, or taking account of the projected tightening in public expenditure over the next four years.

From that perspective it was a resource-intensive election, which meant that the Welsh Liberal Democrats had to target their campaigning to what was winnable. This started off as working five of the new constituencies, but by the end we were focussing on three – Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd (incorporating Brecon and Radnorshire and Swansea East and Neath), Gŵyr Abertawe (incorporating Swansea West and Gower) and Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf (incorporating Cardiff North and Cardiff West).

Throughout the campaign, the polls had the Welsh Liberal Democrats on between 4% and 6% and projected to win between zero and three seats. Our only hope lay in intensive campaigning and getting our vote out.

One question that is consistently posed to our representatives by the Welsh media is why we are not doing as well in Wales as in England? This is a complex question, but essentially our support has never really recovered following the coalition.

One reason for that much of the output of our party is so English-focused, aimed at soft Tories in the home counties, which does not help those of us in a six-party system in a left of centre country.

I would argue as well that despite being a federal party, most of those in charge do not understand what that means, or how they should deal with policy and issues in the new landscape, and often they do not understand devolution. I have lost count of the number of statements from spokespeople that imply they are speaking for all of the UK, when in fact the issue is devolved. I do not except the leadership in that judgement.

The difficulty caused by Ed Davey was over a controversy that arose about our Welsh leader’s previous work as a social worker. Jane Dodds was accused of committing a “grave error of judgement” while working as a senior manager in the Church of England, because she failed for months to arrange a crucial meeting involving the sexual abuse of a young man by a Bishop.

Jane worked for the Church of England for a year from 2015 as part of a central team advising and supporting case managers throughout the country. At the time of the error, the bishop in question was already deceased.

Jane apologised for her error, but unfortunately, Ed Davey jumped in with both feet and, instead of leaving the matter to be dealt with by the Welsh Party, as should have been the case, he called for Jane’s resignation.

For too long Ed Davey's default position in any crisis has been to call for his opponent to resign. This is not a position he, himself, ever took over the Post Office scandal, and quite rightly, as he was one of a dozen ministers duped by the post office management into supporting their position.

It was not Davey's place to tell the Welsh Party what to do, nor to insist that Jane resign. His highly performative foot-in-mouth moment galvanised even sceptics to back the Welsh leader, with the result that Jane didn't go, and it put the party in an almost impossible position during the Senedd election campaign.

It was quite clear that if Ed Davey came to Wales, the entire visit would have been dominated by questions over his relationship with Jane Dodds. As a result, the federal leader’s involvement in our campaign was limited to a private meeting with activists. No media were invited and Jane Dodds found other campaigning work to do.

To be fair to the federal party they did provide substantial funding for the Welsh campaign, however it was not enough for us to get over the line as we would have wished to. In all 16 seats, our support was squeezed by the incessant two-horse race argument being promoted by Plaid and Reform.

Many long-standing Welsh Liberal Democrat voters in held wards went over to the Welsh nationalists to stop Reform. As a result, although our vote in the two target areas we missed out on was twice that of our national average, we failed to win a seat.

This left Jane Dodds in Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd. She secured the fifth seat with 11.8% of the vote and remains the only Welsh Liberal Democrat in the Senedd.

The new Senedd now has 43 Plaid Cymru members (35.4% of the national vote), 34 Reform MSs (29.3% of the vote), 9 Labour members (11.1% of the vote), 7 Conservatives (10.7%), 2 Greens (6.7%) and one Liberal Democrat (4.5%).

Forty-nine seats are required for a majority, so it is likely that Plaid Cymru will form a minority administration. This means that they will be looking to make deals to get every piece of legislation and every budget passed.

Meanwhile, Labour in a particular face an existential crisis. They have dominated Welsh politics for over a century, have never secured fewer that 26 seats in the former 60 seat Senedd, and have led the Welsh Government for 27 years.

Their appalling record in managing public services, especially the health service, and the economy has caught up with them, as has the massive unpopularity of Keir Starmer and his government.

In many ways things could have been much worse for the Welsh Liberal Democrats. We have taken a small step back from the precipice but remain in jeopardy. The need to rebuild organisation and support remains, but there are upsides.

Despite a small membership and activist base, the level of activity and enthusiasm the party managed to generate for this campaign was extraordinary. Even in the most hopeless of seats, members were out delivering leaflets, speaking to voters, attending debates and recruiting new workers.

Activity was mostly focused on key wards, providing a good base for tackling next year’s council elections. If we can maintain that work rate over the next 12 months, then there is a real chance that we can grow our local government base.

For now, however, there are by-elections to fight. Of the 96 people elected to the Senedd, some are already councillors and need to resign from the council to take up their place in Cardiff Bay. The campaigning goes on.

With all the controversy over Reform's alleged links with Russia, with Nigel Farage saying he admires Vladmir Putin, and the party's opposition to the support offered by the Welsh Government to Ukrainian refugees, now is not the best time for the party's leader in Wales to reinforce people's perceptions about Reform's sympathy towards Putin over his invasion of Ukraine.

And yet, as the BBC report, Dan Thomas has backed calls from one of his Senedd members for the Ukrainian flag outside the Welsh Parliament to be removed.

For once the Welsh Tories are on the side of common sense, with Welsh Conservative Senedd leader Darren Millar saying the flag was a "visible sign of the Senedd's resolute opposition to Russia's illegal invasion".

Still it is less than a month since the Senedd elections and already,Reform are promoting an agenda that would make Putin proud.

It is a sure sign that the government is getting too obsessed with social media when the Speaker of the House of Commons scolds Labour ministers for making major announcements on TikTok before Parliament.

The Guardian reports that, speaking in the House of Commons yesterday, ahead of Rachel Reeves' cost of living plan announcement, Lindsay Hoyle criticised ministers for announcing policies on social media before updating MPs:

The chancellor received a dressing down from deputy speaker Judith Cummins as she prepared to set out measures to mitigate the economic impact of the Iran war, several of which had already been briefed to the media.

The Ministerial Code, which governs how ministers should behave, states that policy announcements should be made first in Parliament.

After stressing the importance of the code, Sir Lindsay said: “ We've had the last three days of this announcement being drip-fed to the media. That is not in line with the government's own rules, and it is unacceptable.”

“ These backbenchers of either side are elected to this House to hear it first, not to be outside a Morrisons petrol station, not to be on a bus, not doing it to TikTok.”

At least Ministers arent showing off their dance moves on Tik Tok,

The Mirror reports that Dame Emily Thornberry, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, has voiced her frustration about the amount of information being redacted about Peter Mandelson's appointment, accusing Ministers of putting "obstacles" in the way of the truth over the former Ambassador's appointment.

The paper says that one of Keir Starmer's top aides was confronted by senior MPs who accused the Government of changing the goalposts over which documents it plans to release. This is despite the fact that the PM has committed to releasing all relevant files and messages around the decision to name Mandelson as ambassador to the US:

Thousands of pages of documents will be published after the next Parliamentary recess, which ends on June 1. But ministers face calls to explain why some files have been redacted or withheld.

Darren Jones, the PM's chief secretary, told the Commons that details such as junior officials' names, emails, and phone numbers - and data about third parties - were rightly being removed. And he said raw data around vetting, such as bank account and relationship details, would never be released as this would undermine the process.

But Tory Sir Jeremy Wright, a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) - which is overseeing the release of documents - accused the Government of finding new reasons for withholding information. He said that while ministers agreed documents would be redacted to avoid compromising national security or international relations, other reasons are now being used to do so.

He said: "We cannot accept that the government is entitled to ignore or to unilaterally alter the terms of the humble address (the Parliamentary motion demanding the documents are released)."

The Government is under intense pressure after it emerged UK Security Vetting (UKSV) had not recommended giving Mandelson security clearance before he was sent to Washington. This was overruled by the Foreign Office without the PM or his team being told.

Mandelson was sacked as the UK's 'Trump whisperer' in September last year as new details emerged about his relationship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. He was arrested in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office following claims he shared senstive information with Epstein. This is alleged to have included details of an EU bailout following the 2008 economic crash. He denies wrongdoing.

Dame Emily Thornberry, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, told MPs: "I am disappointed at the answers that the Government has given.

"It seems to me that one of the questions in relation to the Mandelson appointment is why it is that when the UKSV document had two red boxes ticked - which included this man should not be appointed - that somehow or other that was translated into he should be appointed.

"And it is very important that the public know and understand that we are learning from the mistakes that were clearly made, and we cannot know that those lessons have been learned unless they are checked.

"And the committees in this House, my committee and the ISC are trying our best to get to the truth of this, and we are having obstacles put in our way."

This is not a good look for Keir Starmer's government nor will it help to win back public confidence.

As if the controversies around HS2 weren't bad enough, the Guardian reports that the high-speed railway will now cost up to £102.7bn and trains will not start running between London and Birmingham until as late as 2039, £70bn more and 13 years later than originally promised.

The paper adds that the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, said the truncated railway would not be entirely completed until as late as 2043:

The figure is the first official estimate of HS2’s budget in 2026 prices. Alexander said the total cost would range between £87.7bn and £102.7bn, with only a third of the rise resulting from inflation. 

The Guardian reports that Nigel Farage is facing fresh scrutiny over his claim that he paid for his £1.4m house from a reality show fee rather than the millions gifted to him by a crypto billionaire.

The paper says that accounts for the Reform leader’s personal media company, Thorn in the Side Ltd, suggest that money was not withdrawn from the firm at the time of the house purchase:

The apparent discrepancy raises fresh questions about Farage’s transparency with regard to his finances. He is currently being investigated by the parliamentary standards commissioner over his failure to declare a £5m gift from Christopher Harborne, as revealed by the Guardian.

He claims that the gift was made to fund his security. But Farage bought his house in Surrey on 10 May 2024, only weeks after receiving the money from Harborne, a billionaire who has lived in Thailand for two decades.

Farage’s spokesperson had told the BBC last week that he paid for the Surrey property purchase with his £1.5m fee for participating in I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! in late 2023.

An analysis by the Financial Times raises questions about that claim.

Farage has previously said that his earnings from the reality show were paid to Thorn in the Side Ltd.

Accounts for the company show its cash position increased from £300,000 on 31 May 2023 to £1.7m on 31 May 2024.

The accounts suggest that no dividend was paid out in the period and its cash position increased from £1.7m to £2m between May 2024 and May 2025.

Farage, rather than Thorn in the Side, bought the Surrey home and there is no mortgage on the property.

A Reform spokesperson said the house was not bought with Harborne’s gift.

The spokesperson suggested that this was proved by the fact that anti-money laundering checks relating to the purchase were carried out before the gift was made.

The spokesperson said: “Nigel has multiple sources of income, as you can see from his parliamentary register.”

He did not respond to the question of whether the Reform leader stood by his claim that the money from the reality show was used to buy his home.

Farage did not register Harborne’s gift, which was made within 12 months of his election as the MP for Clacton, in his register of interests. He claims that this was not necessary as it was a personal donation.

The parliamentary standards commissioner has announced an investigation into the Reform UK leader’s failure to declare the gift.

Nimesh Shah, a tax expert at accountancy firm Blick Rothenberg, reviewed the company accounts for the FT and said they suggested money from Farage’s reality TV show appearance was not used to purchase the house.

There needs to be a lot more scrutiny on Farage's finances, so it is refreshing to that somebody has made a start.

The Guardian reports that a row has broken out at the top of the Labour party over whether Britain should try to rejoin the EU after Wes Streeting said the country should eventually seek to regain membership.

The paper says that Streeting, who resigned as health secretary last week in protest at Keir Starmer’s leadership, kicked off a war of words after he argued on Saturday that Britain’s future lay back in the EU:

After the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, dismissed his comments as odd, Streeting’s allies hit back, saying the government’s lack of willingness to discuss the issue was symptomatic of why it is so unpopular.

The row is an indication of the divisions within Labour as the party heads into a byelection in Makerfield that could determine the fate of the entire government.

It began when Streeting said: “In 2026, the British people increasingly see that in a dangerous world we must club together, both to rebuild our economy and trade, and improve our defence against the shared threats from Russian aggression and America First.

“The biggest economic opportunity we have is on our doorstep. We need a new special relationship with the EU, because Britain’s future lies with Europe – and one day back in the European Union.”

He also said he intended to stand in a leadership contest if one was triggered, as is likely if the Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham, wins in Makerfield and then challenges the prime minister.

Nandy, however, criticised Streeting’s comments on Sunday. She told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg: “I actually think this is just a bit odd. I listened to what Wes had to say very carefully yesterday, and I know that he’s got a strong view about this, and always has had, that we shouldn’t have left the European Union.

“Frankly, that’s one that I share. I campaigned for remain, I think it [Brexit] was a mistake, and I think the Brexit deal has been a real problem for us. But I don’t really understand why the sudden focus on Europe.

“We’re already, as a government, trying to repair in a pragmatic way the needless damage that was done by that poor Brexit deal to people’s living standards in towns like mine, without reopening the circular arguments that we ended up in as a country.”

Streeting allies promptly hit back, saying Nandy’s unwillingness to talk about EU membership was a symptom of a wider reluctance to take political risks, which they argue is one of the reasons Starmer is so unpopular and may face a leadership battle within weeks.

“There is no point in trying not to upset anybody, that’s what got us into this problem,” said one. “Sometimes you have to be willing to upset people to get things done.”

The timing of this row is interesting. With Andy Burnham set to contest the Makerfield by-election, an area that voted overwhelmingly for Reform, anything that suggests leading Labour figures want to unravel Brexit could well impact on his campaign. I'm sure Wes Streeting had no intention of that happening.

The BBC reports on a promise by one of Plaid Cymru's new ministers that the arts in Wales can expect "increased funding year-on-year", after years of being "in crisis".

They add that Plaid Cymru's Heledd Fychan told them that the arts, culture and heritage sector did not get adequate support from the previous Labour Welsh government.She is promising to reverse that trend and that this is "clearly a priority" for new First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth, with her being given a seat around the cabinet table to represent it:

"We can't promise huge investment overnight, but I will clearly put together a plan where we can see that increased investment year-on-year," she told Radio Wales Breakfast.

Fychan said she would put together a plan, over the next 100 days, to support a sector which she said had been "siloed and under-funded" by Labour.

She said her portfolio, which also includes sport, had a significant role to play in the well-being of people.

Heledd Fychan had a senior job at Museum Wales before becoming a Senedd member in 2021

Last year, a Senedd report, external found Wales had the second lowest spending per person on cultural services in Europe and the third lowest on recreation and sports.

The Labour Welsh government's budget for 2025-26 saw funding for culture, the arts and sport restored to 2023-24 levels.

However, that follows a period of cuts to the sector as the government prioritised frontline services including the NHS.

This is highly commendable and fully in line with what I would expect. If Fychan can achieve this ambition then she has my full support. The cynic in me, however, says that year-on-year increases in fundings for the arts is not going to be as simple as she suggests.

Plaid has only been in government for a matter of days, they haven't had time to get to grips with the nation's finances, and we are aware that things are going to be tight over the next few years. With other promises to fulfil around childcare, health and many other issues, they really are going to have to find a magic money tree.