Labour has edged ahead of Reform for the first time in 18 months as more of its 2024 voters return to the fold, with Reform meanwhile leaking support to the Conservatives.

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Andy Burnham keeps announcing policies that weren't his. Jason Arday passed exams he couldn't write. Steven Tucker spots some astonishing parallels between Britain's two greatest fabulists.

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The Treasury faces a £13 billion hit from Labour’s 'green' North Sea shutdown, BP’s former finance chief has warned.

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London mayor points to ‘terrifying scenes’ this summer amid speculation Burnham may back Jackdaw and Rosebank projects

• Sadiq Khan: This burning summer is the proof: the voices of climate denial aren’t just delusional, they’re deadly

Sadiq Khan has called on the government to commit to revamped climate action and to reduce the UK’s reliance on oil and gas, as the UK endures a summer of drought, wildfires and heatwaves.

Writing in the Guardian, the mayor of London said that Andy Burnham’s administration must reaffirm its commitment to net zero and make clear it will continue to reduce the UK’s reliance on oil and gas “to get Britain back on track.”

John Barstow says oil expansion is a necessity, while David Parker wonders if the prime minister will protect the planet or the fossil fuel industry

North Sea oil expansion is a necessity (Burnham risks first revolt as PM over apparent support for North Sea drilling, 31 July). I state this as an environmentalist – not despite. Oil is a feedstock, not mere fuel. Oil is necessary for the day-to-day maintenance of wind turbines, nuclear plants and rail. Hence oil is part and parcel of supply chains for green tech. A domestic oil base brings such supply chains closer. This also underscores the case for approval of coking coal extraction in Cumbria. Green tech needs high-grade steel and high-grade steel needs coking coal.

There are much better ways of helping the environment, such as more tree planting and stopping plastic waste being dumped into our seas. The carbon sink factor would be helped. A major expansion of the UK’s North Sea oil sector will make a more cohesive UK, complete with more jobs in Scotland and the north of England, including in supply manufacturing chains.

Labour's growing credibility crisis has deepened, with Angela Rayner facing fresh questions over whether she blurred the line between her time as a home care worker and her years as a union rep.

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Labour MPs fear No 10 team lack up-to-date energy insight and don’t fully recognise voters’ climate concerns

Andy Burnham was told he could face the first revolt of his premiership as Labour MPs and climate experts condemned his apparent support for renewed drilling for oil and gas.

As the UK suffers through drought, fires and heatwaves, the prime minister gave the strongest indication yet on Friday he was minded to allow new drilling. His comments came just hours before the UN secretary-general warned “every new fossil fuel project” made heatwaves more dangerous.

PM tells reporters the government cannot ignore the energy resource ‘when people are struggling’

Andy Burnham has said he will take a “pragmatic” approach to oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, saying the government could not ignore the potential energy resources it holds.

The prime minister’s comments came in response to a question about his conversation with Donald Trump on his first day in No 10. Trump had said Burnham told him he would “open up” North Sea oil, something the UK summary of the call made no mention of.

Andy Burnham arrived for his first day at No. 10 North on a Government jet, prompting accusations of hypocrisy for a party immiserating the country for the sake of Net Zero and telling the public to cut air travel.

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Selection of economist formerly at helm of green thinktank marks continuation of decarbonising Miliband era

In her first 48 hours as energy secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh was left in no doubt about the thorny policy decision at the top of her in-tray. Protesters from Fossil Free London met her outside her new offices dressed as firefighters holding placards reading: “We’re already putting out fires, don’t start new ones.”

The MP for Peckham – a radical economist who is outspoken about the climate crisis – is a surprising choice as secretary of state for energy and net zero for those who believe the speculation in Westminster that Andy Burnham wants to approve new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.

Tories, Reform, fossil fuel industry and some in his party lined up against decarbonisation target as energy secretary

“Whenever the Labour party feels a bit sad,” according to one close observer of the current government, speaking some months ago, “they wheel out Ed Miliband to talk about rooftop solar.”

It might not have been literally true, but it often felt during Keir Starmer’s premiership as if energy secretary Miliband brought the sun. Unfailingly upbeat, with a simple message that was understandable to voters, he had a clear mission – to decarbonise the UK’s power sector by 2030 – that was seen to be progressing fast.

Party manifesto pledged to honour existing North Sea exploration licences but not issue new ones

Andy Burnham risks his first confrontation with Labour MPs if he announces new oil and gas drilling licences when he becomes prime minister, insiders have warned.

Speculation is rife that Burnham will unveil fresh plans for drilling in the North Sea after he is installed in Downing Street.

Campaigners say field will bring minimal benefit for UK economy, as industry lobbies Burnham for go-ahead

More people can fit on to the top deck of a standard London bus than will be directly employed on the new Jackdaw gasfield in the North Sea, industry documents show.

Only 27 direct full-time jobs would be created by Jackdaw, one of the biggest gasfields remaining in the North Sea, according to an environmental impact assessment filed publicly by its owner, Adura, a joint venture between Shell and Norway’s Equinor.

Heatwaves, high energy prices, calls for reindustrialisation and North Sea drilling are all high on the to-do list

Wildfires cast a pall of smoke this week over Greater Manchester, whose former mayor Andy Burnham stands on the threshold of No 10. Amid three UK heatwaves so far this year, which have killed thousands of people in England and Wales, damaged harvests and left children crying in classrooms, the new prime minister’s plans for the climate crisis remain as shrouded as his city.

“Burnham has been very quiet about the climate [crisis] so far,” says Chris Venables, an environmental campaigner and fellow at the Green Alliance thinktank. “I don’t think [it] is at the forefront of his mind, but that does not mean he will water down this agenda.”

All the young people the Guardian spoke to disagreed with aspects of the government’s proposed block

Sixteen- and 17-year-olds in Britain are to be encouraged to observe a midnight to 6am social media curfew but will be able to opt out by changing their account settings.

From next spring, they will be urged to refrain from using certain apps, with the block being switched on by default. But the curfew will not be mandatory and can be overridden.

There are far better ways to tackle climate breakdown, but successive governments have chosen to listen to the fossil fuel companies instead

The new prime minister will be looking for money? Well, here’s £21.7bn lying on the ground. The government could cancel its deranged, disastrous carbon capture and storage (CCS) programme at no cost to public welfare: in fact, it would greatly reduce the harm we will suffer.

Sorry, did I say £21.7bn? That’s the figure the government has been putting in its press releases for spending on this programme between now and 2050. But this covers only the first phase of the project. The climate experts Dr Andrew Boswell and Simon Oldridge worked through the data produced by the government’s Climate Change Committee, which was scattered across different spreadsheets, and discovered that the projected cost of the full CCS programme between now and 2050 is £264bn.

Labour has approved a wave of renewable energy projects, but turning plans into power remains slow. Why is that?

Labour has a race on its hands if it is to lock in its promise to achieve a virtually zero-carbon electricity system by 2030.

Britain’s next prime minister will have to move fast: the climate emergency is raging, high energy bills are driving up the cost of living and the reactionary right is threatening a fossil fuel push if it wins power.

"Is Miatta Fahnbulleh the brains behind Burnham?" asks the New Statesman this week, even coining the term "Fahnbullehism". No, says Charlotte Gill: it's the brains behind Fahnbulleh that we need to be looking at.

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Angela Rayner has been burnishing her Left-wing credentials this morning with a call for a hike in benefits as she joined other Labour big beasts in bidding to join Andy Burnham's top team.

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Prime minister was forced to row back on some policies despite strong support among voters for climate action

Keir Starmer has faced a problem no Labour government has needed to deal with before. His energy and climate policies – core to solving the cost of living crisis – have come under attack from opposition parties, which have made dismantling the agenda one of their top priorities, second only to immigration, in their pitch to voters.

This is new in British politics, where a cross-party consensus on the climate and environment has held at least since the days of Margaret Thatcher. She warned the UN of the climate crisis in 1988; David Cameron in 2006 urged voters to “vote blue, go green”; Theresa May enshrined in law the requirement to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050; Boris Johnson championed the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow in 2021; even Rishi Sunak only tried a partial rollback of green policies as a last desperate throw before calling an election.