In 2015, Andy Burnham said his first foreign visit as Labour leader would be to Israel - a genocidal, settler-colonial apartheid state that has massacred thousands of Palestinians over decades.
So when is the flight to Tel Aviv booked for?
Greta Thunberg has warned that 40C heatwaves in the UK are “only the beginning” and says Britain’s leaders have “their heads completely buried in the sand” regarding climate change.
Her comments follow revelations that Labour ministers met fossil fuel industry lobbyists more than 500 times during the party’s first year in power, while Labour MPs took tens of thousands of pounds in donations from oil and gas lobbyists.
The activist, 23, was speaking as the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) issued a rare red heat-health alert for the first time since 2022, with temperatures forecast to reach as high as 40C later this week.
“This is what experts have been warning about for decades,” Thunberg told Metro. “This is unfortunately only the beginning.”
She added: “We know that the climate crisis is here and now, and not a faraway threat in the future, and those suffering the most are the ones who have contributed the least to cause it.”
The red alert – which indicates heat that is life-threatening for even the healthy population – covers the East and West Midlands, London, and southern and east England from 1am on Wednesday until 11pm on Thursday.
The heatwave could also disrupt transport infrastructure, food and water access, energy supplies and force businesses to close, UKHSA warned.
Thunberg said: “What is most concerning about this is not only that we continuously shatter heat records and destabilise the entire biosphere way faster than models have been predicting, but that it is not treated as the existential crisis it is in media and politics.
“The UK’s responsibility for the climate crisis cannot be overstated, still its leaders continue acting as if there was no tomorrow.”
Research by UKHSA published last year found that as well as the elderly, the very young and people with pre-existing medical conditions, people experiencing poverty, overcrowded housing or difficult economic circumstances are also at far greater risk in the heat.
Thunberg’s comments were echoed by climate scientists, including professor Friederike Otto of Imperial College London, who said politicians had failed to respond to the first red heat-health alert in 2022.
“Our first 40C day was supposed to be a wake-up call, but clearly someone hit snooze,” she said.
🚨 REPORT | Britain ignored more than two years of intelligence warning of a “genocidal” massacre in Sudan’s El Fasher to protect its relationship with the United Arab Emirates, leading war crimes investigator Nathaniel Raymond, head of Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, has told Parliament in a written statement, the Telegraph reports.
Key Details:
🔸Raymond testified to the House of Commons International Development Committee that his team gave UK officials real-time intelligence as the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces besieged the city, which fell last October.
🔸 He said officials “prioritized” Britain’s “economic, security, and diplomatic relationships with the UAE above preventing the intentional starvation, forced displacement, and the genocidal slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians.”
🔸 Yale’s analysis estimates at least 60,000 people may have been killed within weeks of the city’s fall, a toll Raymond noted was about six times that of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide.
🔸 As the UN Security Council “penholder” leading on Sudan, Britain had “more than sufficient” intelligence to act, he said, including sanctioning UAE officials to cut “the clandestine UAE pipeline of advanced weaponry flowing to the RSF.”
🔸 Raymond also said that in May 2024, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) officials asked his university lab, rather than British intelligence, to publicly release intercepted phone data linking the UAE to the RSF, because Britain faced “significant private pressure” from Abu Dhabi.
🔸 He explained that the RSF briefly paused its assault after a UN resolution, on Abu Dhabi’s instruction, to gauge whether there would be consequences. When the UAE faced no further consequences, the attack resumed.
The failure, he said, spanned two governments, covering Foreign Secretaries David Cameron, David Lammy, and Yvette Cooper.
🔗 The full report is linked below.
Hearing Starmer tear up talking about spending more time with his kids was a special kind of enraging. How many Palestinian kids don’t have dads any more because of him. How many dads have no kids to hug because of him? Monster.
Andy Burnham…
🚩Joined Labour Friends of Israel in 2015
🚩Said the first place he’d visit as leader would be Israel
🚩Refused to call what’s happening in Gaza a genocide
🚩Opposes the BDS movement calling it “spiteful”
The players change, but the game stays the same
“It depends what version of Andy Burnham turns up.”
Green Party’s @ZackPolanski refuses to rule out a pact with Andy Burnham but says a deal rests on his positions on immigration and Palestine. | @cathynewman
➡️ https://t.co/lIKhrNxAlG
📺 Sky 501 and YouTube
Starmer’s legacy is genocide and austerity.
He has facilitated the rise of Reform and Nigel Farage.
Pogroms on the streets.
He has launched huge attacks against the working class. He is the most hated PM we’ve had.
Capitalism is crisis. The whole system needs to go.
Bills up.
Wages too low.
Record profits for Oil & Gas.
50 richest families with more wealth than 50% of population.
Shit in our rivers.
Pensioners jailed for protesting.
Migrants thrown under the bus.
Supporting a Genocide.
That's Starmer's legacy.
Keir Starmer lied through his teeth to become Labour leader.
He justified Israeli war crimes, arrested opponents of genocide, attacked pensioners, disabled people and migrants, pocketed freebies, crushed dissent and threw others under the bus to save himself.
History damns him
Meet Geraldine Coggins.
Greater Manchester councillor, Green group leader, straight talking anti-austerity campaigner - and your Green candidate for Greater Manchester Mayor.
Following the announcement that under-16s will be banned from social media in the UK, we spoke to our digital safety expert, Jeffrey DeMarco to get his thoughts on this and what children's rights look like in the digital age.
He explains that protecting children online is not simply about restricting access to technology or social media, but about building digital resilience, strengthening support networks and ensuring that technology companies design products with children's wellbeing in mind.
To find out more about how can we ensure children are able to benefit from the opportunities online platforms create while remaining safe, informed and empowered, watch the full interview on YouTube here: https://t.co/JZE2xg9Z23
The crazy thing is, if the Government's ban on socials for under 16s was around when I was a kid, I wouldn't be alive today.
It's as simple as that.
I wouldn't have had the escapes I needed, the communities I loved, the friendships I grew to have.
This will kill kids.
The girl at the end actually made an interesting point. Social media is very good for letting you know if there are dangers in your local area, it's probably the fastest way people can find out about violence, attacks, dangerous people on the prowl, etc.
Sign @pscupdates petition calling on the government to cancel all contracts with tech corporations enabling Israel's genocide against Palestinians, including Cisco Systems, Oracle and Palantir: https://t.co/wxT1TivdLx