Liberal Democrats Demand Urgent Cross-Party Climate Resilience Talks

Five Heatwaves, a Cobra Briefing, and a Letter the PM Won't Answer

As The Guardian reports, the Liberal Democrats have called on Prime Minister Andy Burnham to convene cross-party talks on extreme heat, drought, and climate resilience — a request the government has not answered in the two weeks since Lib Dem leader Ed Davey and energy spokesperson Pippa Heylings put it in writing. The backdrop is concrete: five heatwaves since May, mounting pressure on water supplies and farmers, and a "super El Niño" forecast to intensify autumn and winter storms. The political class is being asked to stop performing crisis management and start governing. It is not a radical demand. It should not need to be.

The Material Reality

Five successive heatwaves have hit water supplies, farmers, and food production. The forthcoming El Niño, Heylings warned, "will have impacts here in the UK exacerbating our extreme weather particularly with more intense flooding and storms over the autumn and winter. We're looking at a double whammy." The arithmetic is simple: the longer consensus is treated as optional, the larger the bill lands on the people least equipped to absorb it — households facing water restrictions, farmers watching harvests fail under growing pressure on food production. These are the material conditions a serious government plans for. This one has not.

The Ask, and the Silence

Heylings and Davey proposed a meeting of UK party leaders "to discuss the long-term measures needed to protect our country from climate impacts and build resilience to the extreme weather we are already experiencing." Two weeks on, no reply. Heylings noted that Burnham has shown willingness to seek cross-party consensus on social care — but on extreme heat, she told the Guardian, "there's been a baffling silence from him." The prime minister chaired a Cobra emergency meeting on the drought earlier this month. That was the ceiling. Banning disposable barbecues is not a climate strategy; it is a press release.

The Opposition That Isn't

Labour MP Clive Lewis backed the call: political cooperation, he said, "is the start of consensus building, something any radical transition has to build across both political parties and society, especially if they're to take on those vested interests that want the status quo to continue." His colleague Jon Pearce, MP for High Peak, was blunter about why Burnham is unlikely to act. "The Conservatives and Reform UK have ripped up the political consensus on tackling climate change as they compete to see who can most downplay the need for action," Pearce said. "The idea the Conservatives and Reform UK would be willing to face up to the risks we face is for the birds."

Pearce names the problem correctly. The Conservatives and Reform UK have vowed to scrap net zero outright and turned climate denial into a competitive sport. A cross-party meeting that includes them is, on present form, a forum for legitimising that posture — which is exactly why the Lib Dems are right to demand it, and exactly why the demand must come with structural teeth. Consensus without binding adaptation targets, a statutory resilience duty, and money that actually moves is just a word both sides weaponise while the reservoirs run dry. We will know soon enough whether Burnham treats this as a chance to lead — or another opportunity to triangulate away from the climate file while the El Niño approaches.