𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Andy Burnham has been accused of an “astonishing dereliction of duty” with the Labour Government blasted for its response to Britain’s scorching summer temperatures. The scale of the split on the British Left over the future of Britain’s energy policy was laid bare as environment broadcaster Chris Packham and Green Party leader Zack Polanski launched a blazing attack on Mr Burnham.

Mr Packham warned there is the potential for 50,000 people to die across Europe as extreme heat bakes the continent. He said that if such a death toll was caused by “terrorism or a pandemic”, the Government would have “cancelled its summer holiday”, held emergency COBRA meetings and launched a Covid-style public information campaign.

Donald Trump has claimed Mr Burnham, who is on holiday, told him he is “going to open up North Sea oil”. The Prime Minister has said he will take a “pragmatic approach” to the issue.

Mr Packham said “talk of drilling oil” is “simply madness” as he condemned a “total dereliction of duty in a time of extreme crisis”.

He warned: “We need Andy Burnham to step up before we [see] our only home burn down.”

Mr Packham made his remarks at a Green Party press conference in Westminster, where Mr Polanski warned that rain could lead to flooding because the soil is “baked dry”.

He accused the “very top of government” of saying “next to nothing” and claimed the “crisis” is “putting lives and livelihoods at risk across the entire UK”.

Failure to take action, he said, will lead to “unimaginably grave” consequences.

“The sheer scale of the devastation is hard to comprehend, but we need to look it in the face, because this is only a taster of what’s to come if we don’t act now,” he said.

He described Labour’s response as an “astonishing dereliction of duty from those whose very first responsibility is to keep all of us safe”. Mr Polanski also hiked pressure on Mr Burnham not to allow new North Sea drilling, including in the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields.

The Green leader said he was “worried” about the appointment of John Healey, who quit as defence secretary in protest at underfunding for the armed forces, as Chancellor.

He said the “climate crisis and nature crisis” were also matters of security and defence.

In a further sign of the bad blood on the Left between the Greens and Labour, Mr Polanski said one of his “biggest achievements” was his role in “toppling a very unpopular prime minister”. He said the Greens’ victory in the Gorton and Denton by-election had created a “leadership crisis” for Sir Keir Starmer.

The attack on new drilling in the North Sea comes on the heels of June’s Aberdeen South by-election, which saw the pro-extraction Conservatives oust the SNP and the Greens win fewer than 1,000 votes.

Shadow Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho said the Green party is “simply mad”, claiming its policies would lead to the UK replacing “our North Sea gas with dirtier imported gas with four times the emissions”.

She said: “This is all nonsense. The best thing for the economy, living standards and the environment is the Conservatives’ plan to make electricity cheap.”