Labour faces political obscurity if it backslides on climate action, the Green party leader has warned, as a fresh heatwave intensifies the political debate over the UK’s energy future. Zack Polanski, who has led the Green Party of England and Wales since September 2025 and overseen a surge in membership from 60,000 to 225,000, said that Andy Burnham — widely expected to become the next prime minister — must be bold on climate justice. “Half measures or backsliding on climate action would be a moral and political failure from Andy Burnham,” Polanski said. “He has the chance to be bold, and failing to do so will see our country get poorer and his party slip further into obscurity.” The warning comes as the UK swelters under searing heat for the second time this year, with June 2026 recording unprecedented temperatures and the UK Health Security Agency reporting more than 10,000 premature deaths linked to summer heatwaves between 2020 and 2024.
Union divisions deepen over North Sea drilling
The debate over Labour’s climate commitments has exposed sharp divisions within both the party and the trade union movement, with the question of further North Sea drilling at its centre. Polanski said any move to boost fossil fuel production would seal Labour’s fate. “Decades of inaction on the transition to clean energy has already put the UK way behind where we should be, with huge cost to the economy,” he added. “As the country swelters under extreme heat there has never been a more prescient reminder that we simply cannot afford to keep burning fossil fuels.”
On one side of the argument, the leader of Britain’s biggest union, Unison, has called for an end to new drilling. Andrea Egan, who became Unison’s general secretary in January 2026, wrote this month that further extraction would do nothing to help working-class people. “Climate change denial is creeping into politics like never before, with far-right parties treating fossil fuels as a panacea for the country’s problems,” Egan said. “Plundering the North Sea wouldn’t make a significant difference for working-class people in Britain, and it would be grossly irresponsible to working-class people in the global south.” Egan, who was previously expelled from the Labour Party for sharing articles from a proscribed group, has warned Labour to change course with progressive policies or risk Reform UK taking power.
Joining her are the Fire Brigades Union and the National Education Union. Steve Wright, general secretary of the FBU, said his members were on the frontline of the climate crisis dealing with wildfires and heatwaves. “We see first-hand the need for urgent climate action and that must include restrictions on drilling in the North Sea,” he said. Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU, pointed to the disruption caused by the current extreme heatwave across the education system. “This certainly isn’t the moment to move away from trying to tackle the very causes of what we are experiencing this week; if we make that mistake, these episodes will only continue to get worse,” he said.
But a powerful faction within Labour and the unions argues the opposite. Former health secretary Wes Streeting, considered a potential rival to Burnham for the leadership, has called for more drilling in the North Sea, including giving the go‑ahead to the massive Rosebank oilfield and the Jackdaw field. Streeting advocates a pragmatic approach: managing the decline of the oil and gas sector while channelling proceeds into green projects and protecting jobs. He has also proposed loosening immigration restrictions to attract scientists and talent to the UK. Donald Trump has described Streeting as “extremely liberal” and suggested he would likely not open up the North Sea.
Sharon Graham, leader of the Unite union, which represents workers in the oil and gas industry, also backs new drilling. She has said that the commitment of Energy Secretary Ed Miliband to net zero would be a “noose around the neck” of job creation. Unite argues that domestic production has a lower environmental footprint than importing liquefied natural gas and that the war in Iran highlights the need for energy security. The British Chambers of Commerce has urged Burnham to exploit what fossil fuels remain in the dwindling North Sea basin “to avoid mass job losses”.
Critics of the pro‑drilling stance point out that the number of jobs supported by the industry has more than halved in the last decade — from 441,000 to 214,000 — despite previous governments issuing hundreds of new licences. Statistics show that between 90% and 93% of all viable oil and gas has already been drained from the basin. Projections from Offshore Energies UK suggest the oil and gas workforce could fall further, from 115,000 in 2024 to between 57,000 and 71,000 by the early 2030s. The UK EITI reported that in 2022‑2023 the industry supported just under 189,000 to 206,000 jobs — approximately 0.6% of all UK employment.
Internal tensions within the union movement are also surfacing. A senior trade union source said there was widespread unease at Unite’s pro‑drilling stance. “Many in our union – and other unions – are worried that Sharon’s interventions are boosting [Nigel] Farage and his crypto‑backers,” the source said. “And that her attack on Ed played right into the hands of the Labour right. Wes as chancellor would be a bad outcome for the working class, including Sharon’s members. It’s not strategic at all.” The debate over who should be Burnham’s chancellor has seen some on the right of the party and the union movement back Streeting over Miliband. Nigel Farage and Reform UK have opposed net zero policies, though recent reports suggest a potential softening of their stance on outright climate change denial.
Net zero delivers economic growth and higher wages
Amid the political clash, evidence has emerged that the net zero economy is already delivering significant benefits. According to a recent CBI report, the net zero economy is worth about £100 billion a year to the UK, growing faster than the rest of the economy and producing higher‑paid jobs. More recent CBI research from June 2026 puts the value at over £100 billion annually, supporting more than a million jobs with higher wages and nearly half a trillion pounds in planned investment. A separate CBI report from February 2025 found that the net zero economy supported 951,000 jobs, with wages 15% higher than the UK norm. The Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit also reported in June 2026 that the net zero economy exceeds £100 billion annually and supports over a million jobs.
Polanski said the choice facing Labour was stark. “Decades of inaction on the transition to clean energy has already put the UK way behind where we should be, with huge cost to the economy,” he said. His party has labelled Streeting’s proposals “environmentally reckless and economically illiterate”. Wright of the Fire Brigades Union added that firefighters were being pushed beyond limits to respond to the scale of wildfires this summer and would continue to be in future years unless the government delivers an urgent plan for adaptation that protects people’s health as well as the environment.
