What the UK’s record-breaking heatwave reveals about governing in an age of climate crisis
By Chiara Ruggieri Mitchell
The country’s next governance challenge is already here. Last month offered a striking reminder of that, as the UK experienced record June temperatures of 36.7°C, disrupting transport, closing 1,200 schools, with several NHS trusts declaring critical incidents amid strained services. Even while drafting this article, the record-breaking temperature changed three times. And this week we’ve had yet another heatwave – the third this year.
The country’s current lack of preparedness for such temperatures is difficult to ignore. Climate experts have warned for decades that this scenario was foreseeable, but political action has failed to keep pace with the rapid rate of change. Climate change is no longer just an environmental issue; it now represents a significant governance challenge.
With June’s heatwave coming in the same week as Keir Starmer’s resignation, Britain has become transfixed by the question of who will lead the country next, and in what direction. Will a new administration — and those that follow in the years to come — be able to govern successfully through the climate impacts that are already being felt across the country?
The impacts are already here
Successive governments, including Starmer’s, have announced ambitious climate, energy security, and clean power targets, particularly amid the ongoing geopolitical turmoil, which has sent energy prices soaring. And yet delivery on climate mitigation (actions taken to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere) has been slow. Climate adaptation (actions taken to adjust to and prepare for the present and future impacts of climate change) has received even less political attention — so much so that in May, the independent Climate Change Committee warned that the country’s infrastructure was ‘built for a climate that no longer exists’.
This concern only grows amid Met Office projections of a ‘2056 scenario’, which could see temperatures peak at 45°C in England. Even at lower temperatures, heatwaves are a threat to life. The summer of 2025 saw 1,504 heat-associated deaths in England during five heat episodes. These heat episodes are defined as days when the mean Central England Temperature is at least 20°C. So, under recent temperatures and those forecasted, thousands of people will lose their lives.
Mortality isn’t the only threat, though. Climate change-induced extreme heat sees worker productivity drop by 2% for every degree over 20, negatively impacting the economy and threatening national resilience. It also threatens water and energy systems which are needed to keep core infrastructure functioning as demand spikes. This will only worsen if the government is unable to deliver on its clean power targets and continues to rely on fossil fuels. It will be further exacerbated by the energy demands of AI data centres, particularly as calls for sovereign AI capabilities grow.
Another consideration is that not everyone is affected by heatwaves and climate change equally. It actually worsens existing inequalities. And politically, there is a real threat of this crisis being co-opted by populists as a way to undermine the government’s ability to deliver.
The governance gap
A regular criticism of UK governments, across a whole host of policy areas, is that they invariably end up responding to crises, rather than preparing for them. But with climate, we are already in a state of crisis and have been for a long time — it’s just not the type of crisis we’re used to responding to. As was said when the last record temperatures were set in 2022, ‘this will be one of the coolest summers of the rest of our lives’. So the urgency to rethink climate change as a significant governance challenge is critical.
It’s also not a crisis that fits neatly into political cycles. Such a challenge demands a long-term, interconnected vision of how to tackle it, a renewed bipartisan consensus that has fractured in recent years, and a coordinated governance framework built to deliver it. It requires investment long before the true impacts are felt, which does not align with political incentives that reward short-term outcomes.
Although individual government departments are tackling climate change within their respective silos and have developed long-term strategies, there is a mismatch between the nature of the challenge and the way the government is structured to respond. While the recent announcement of an expert taskforce is a welcome start, its focus on the security impacts of climate change must not limit wider attention on infrastructure, health, productivity challenges, and the interconnection between these areas.
From climate policy to climate governance
Meeting this challenge will require more than new targets, strategies or departmental plans. It requires a fundamentally different approach to governing. That means a focus on existing and future conditions, an end to climate change being treated as a standalone policy area, or a discrete area within departmental silos that fail to coordinate, and the delivery of resilient infrastructure at pace, built for the climate of the future. Adaptation can no longer remain the forgotten half of climate governance – it must become central. Climate change must be recognised as the force increasingly shaping the context in which wider policy decisions are made.
Climate change is also increasingly shaping the conditions for economic growth itself – a key focus for the government. Productivity, infrastructure, energy security and technological capability all depend on the resilience of the systems that underpin them. That means climate considerations cannot sit alongside economic policy – they must increasingly be embedded within it.
The renewed debate over North Sea drilling illustrates this challenge. Supporters wrongly assert that it will bring down consumer energy prices and deliver energy security. But continuing to rely on a dying industry and fossil fuels is hardly the way to secure a resilient future for the country, particularly as it will directly contribute to worsening the climate crisis.
But there are reasons to be optimistic. The cost of renewable technologies continues to fall, with a drop in solar and EV battery costs of 80% over the last decade. More and more innovative solutions are being developed, with public support for clean energy growing and government beginning to respond by making technology such as plug-in solar more accessible.
However, we cannot rely solely on technological innovation. The issue remains not one of technological possibility, but of how climate is governed through institutional capability. As part of this, FGF’s forthcoming work on clean energy transitions will explore the barriers and opportunities across clean energy deployment at scale; what the trade-offs look like for government; and how the state can change to meet these challenges.
The next Prime Minister will inherit many immediate political challenges in a volatile geopolitical landscape. The lesson from recent record-breaking temperatures for the next phase of political leadership is that climate change is already woven through every major policy challenge the country faces. It’s time the government started acting like it.