Andy Burnham has barely acknowledged the climate crisis. If only Britain’s workers had that luxury | John Harris

There is a particular poignancy in a bus strike becoming the flashpoint for climate-related labor action. Public transport is supposed to be the climate solution — the greener alternative to private cars that politicians on both sides champion. Yet if the people driving those buses are enduring 44°C conditions in their cabs, the transition to sustainable transit becomes unsustainable in a different way entirely. This is the climate paradox of our moment: the policies we need to combat warming will only succeed if the workers implementing them are protected from its worst effects. The critique of Andy Burnham is worth considering from both angles. His defenders would note that as a metro mayor, his remit is local transport, housing, and policing — and that his focus on buses has genuinely improved public transit options for his constituents. He is, by most accounts, a politician who gets things done at a scale where action is possible. But Harris's charge cuts deeper: if a prominent Labour figure with real power and a platform on transport policy has "barely acknowledged" the existential threat of our era, what message does that send about political priorities? It suggests that even the left's most effective local leaders are treating climate as someone else's problem. There is also a legitimate political tension here that deserves fair acknowledgment. The new PM's instinct to spend the summer talking about the cost of living reflects a real electoral reality — voters consistently rank economic concerns above environmental ones in polling. Ordinary people worry about the price of food and energy before they worry about warming. But Harris's rebuttal is compelling: the two crises are converging. Heatstroke on the job, collapsing nurses, and uninhabitable cabs are themselves becoming cost-of-living issues, manifesting as lost wages, healthcare burdens, and diminished productivity. What makes this piece timely is its observation that Britain is approaching a threshold where climate denial is no longer required — only a more insidious form of avoidance. You can acknowledge the science while refusing to connect it to daily experience, policy, and workplace safety. The bus drivers of north London have made that connection for us. Politicians who ignore it, whatever their other virtues, may find themselves on the wrong side of history and, more immediately, on the wrong side of their own constituents' hospital beds and paycheck stubs. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/16/andy-burnham-climate-crisis-britain-workers-heatstroke