Ross Clark

Just a few weeks ago the trade union movement seemed to be on a high. It has got rid of its hated Tory government. Legislation which made it harder to call strikes had been hastily abolished by the incoming Starmer government. There were generous public sector pay rises all around. If you were a trade union leader, you had every right to feel pleased with yourself. How things can change. As a trade union leader, you really don’t want a Labour health secretary calling your actions ‘unconscionable’, and suggesting that your members must ‘feel pain’ in order to discourage other unions from striking too. A Conservative health secretary, sure, but a Labour government is supposed to be on your side.

The official cost of the deal to surrender the Chagos Islands to Mauritius – a country which never owned the islands in the first place – has been put at £101 million a year over the 99-year term of the lease. But the real cost could end up being multiples of this. Not only did it involve putting the sovereignty of an import airbase into the hands of a nation which is close to China, but it has sent a powerful message to developing countries all around the world that Britain – or at least its current government – is a pushover which can be plundered for payments on all kinds of issues.

Hurrah! We are going to get a new water regulator. Sir John Cunliffe’s independent water commission has recommended that Ofwat be abolished and replaced with a new body which also incorporates the drinking water inspectorate. It will be yet one more opportunity for a quangocrat to take a plumb job, while Ofwat’s bosses are pensioned off generously, no doubt. But what are the chances of getting rid of Thames Water, Southern Water or any other failing water company? Water companies which get into financial trouble should be allowed to go bust That doesn’t seem so likely. Rather, Cunliffe has pitched his report as an attempt to rebuild confidence in the existing water companies.

Will Britain continue to be dragged back closer and closer to the EU so that when we eventually rejoin, in say a decade’s time, our politicians can present it as a mere exercise in regularising an arrangement which effectively already exists? At some point it must have dawned on most frustrated remainers that they were never going to reverse Brexit in one fell swoop. That would reopen old wounds, motivate a strong reaction from Brexiteers and a sense of ennui. Such an attempted move would probably be doomed by the ‘Brenda from Bristol’ effect alone (the elderly lady who reacted to the declaration of the 2017 election campaign by exclaiming to a reporter, 'What, another one?'). But what if Britain were to be drawn back into the bloc by degrees?

Gerrymandering is as old as the hills, and neither of what have been Britain’s two main political parties for the past century has a clean nose. Why did the Conservatives extend the franchise to long-term expats who are not even paying taxes in Britain? And why has the present government just announced that 16- and 17-year-olds will be granted the vote in UK general elections for the first time? Forget any high-mindedness about fairness, encouraging responsibility and so on – these are raw attempts to swing the political arithmetic in the governing party’s favour.

For once, Ed Miliband is right about something: the British way of life is under threat. But it is not for the reasons he claims. Our way of life is under threat because high energy prices are leading to Britain’s rapid deindustrialisation. Once a proud and wealthy industrial nation, we are becoming an impoverished country ever more reliant on importing stuff that we used to make ourselves. Miliband, by contrast, claims that our way of life is being ruined by a changing climate. Today he will make a statement to the House of Commons revealing the contents of the latest annual ‘State of the Climate’ report by the Met Office and Royal Meteorological Society – a statement he describes as an 'exercise in radical truth-telling'.

Just what was Wes Streeting expecting when, shortly after becoming health secretary last July, he offered junior doctors (who now like to be called 'resident' doctors to disguise the fact they are still in training) a thumping 22 per cent pay rise with no strings attached, no requirement to accept improved working practices to lift lamentably low productivity? According to Streeting at the time, it was the act of grown-up government, which would result in more mature relations between government and health unions in future. The only way to deal with the BMA's pay claim is to call its bluff Some hope. Now, the BMA is back, this time demanding a 29 per cent pay rise – and calling five days' of strikes later this month if it doesn't achieve it.

So, 260 Londoners died as a result of last week's heatwave, of which 170 can be attributed to climate change. So claims Imperial College and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Hot weather does kill people, or at least it does older people There's just the one problem with this: the researchers haven't actually counted any deaths at all. The study rushed out this week is nothing more than a piece of modelling, which estimates the number of deaths which might be expected to have been caused by the hot weather, as well as trying to guess how much hotter last week's weather was than it would have been without man-made climate change.

Thank God for the Guardian website. Without it I would never have known that I have been marching through a killer heatwave. For the past couple of weeks I have been quite happily carrying a 15 kilo rucksack over Alpine passes, walking the GR 5 trail which leads from Lake Geneva to the Mediterranean. So, too, have plenty of others. Around Mont Blanc the path was positively crowded, remarkably with Chinese hikers. It has been hot work at times, though there is a good way to counter that: with a ‘chapeau d’eau’ – fill your sunhat with water from a tumbling stream and then put it back on your head. The biggest meteorological hazard, though, was a hailstorm, which was like being pelted with golf balls for half an hour.

According to official figures from the Department for Work and Pensions, benefits fraud costs the taxpayer £9.5 billion a year. But does anyone really believe it isn't higher, given the massive rise in people apparently so incapacitated by poor mental health that they are incapable of working? It transpires that Liz Kendall's efforts to save the taxpayer £5 billion a year will do nothing of the sort. A government impact assessment estimates that the benefits bill will actually rise by £8 billion over the next few years as the claimant count increases by 750,000. And even Kendall's reforms may end up being watered down if Labour backbenchers have their way. Enough of them have threatened to rebel to wipe out the government's massive majority.

As if the saga of HS2 could not get any worse, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander will reportedly announce today that, actually, the railway line will not be open by its latest proposed date of 2033, and that 2035 is now more realistic. But I wouldn’t book your ticket just yet. Some analysts believe the line – which is a truncated version of the original proposal, only reaching Birmingham – will not be open for a couple of years or so after that. For some reason a Conservative government then decided the state should handle HS2, in spite of the lousy record of civil servants in managing such projects That will be more than quarter of a century after the then-Conservative government decided to go ahead with it.

How much of the government’s Welfare Reform Bill will survive the mauling of backbench Labour MPs? If this bill even achieves £5 billion worth of savings by the time it becomes law, it will be something of a miracle. Once again, Rachel Reeves’ claim to be an ‘Iron Chancellor’ is about to be tested. No-one should be surprised if she folds. This week, the wobbling began. In her post-spending review interview with the Today programme, Reeves initially said that she would not be reviewing the proposed changes to the criteria for claiming Personal Independence Payments (Pips), which are supposed to mean that hundreds of thousands of people are no longer eligible. Then she hinted that she would be listening to objections from within her party.