People on X have been ‘raining’ on Starmer’s parade. In no small feat, after the catastrophically unpopular prime minister made a somewhat positive announcement on flood defences, naturally he simultaneously managed to open up the floodgates to a shower of (earned) criticism:
Flooding wrecks homes, businesses, and lives.
That’s why today we are going further to protect families and businesses from the devastation of flooding, with record investment in flood defences across the country.
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) February 5, 2025
Starmer’s flood defences spending: mercilessly dragged
Keir Starmer has announced record investments in flood defences across the country. As the BBC reported:
The government says it will spend more than £2.6bn, over the next two years, to protect more homes and businesses in England from flooding – £250m more than previously announced.
Many X users were quick to point out that, as usual, Starmer is focusing on entirely the wrong thing:
Flood defences are all well and good but the causes have to be addressed. Rivers not dredged for decades. No reservoirs built to help with over from rivers. Allowing millions of more people into the country and having to build millions of houses and concreting over land. Drains🥴 https://t.co/hSuPEaVEAe
— Peter Richardson (@peterpecker11) February 5, 2025
Clearly, flood defences protect houses and people from flooding. However, so does preventing flooding in the first place.
Back in 2014, devastating floods cut off several villages and damaged homes in Somerset. Since then, the Somerset Rivers Authority have dredged the river, meaning the flooding is now unlikely to happen again. If it did, it would be far less devastating. This proves that there are actions the government can take to protect people and houses from destruction, without wasting money:
Could save a few bob and just unblock the drains and dredge the streams and rivers https://t.co/SFxF4nEgrq
— Tom Motley (@motleygolf) February 5, 2025
Building on flood plains
Meanwhile, councils are allowing housing developers to build homes on floodplains. A 2024 analysis by Aviva showed that 1 in 13 new homes built in the last 10 years were done so on flood zones. This is despite warnings from both the Environment Agency and the Committee on Climate Change:
Stop building homes on floodplains then, you dolt https://t.co/wYyrXAgjAW
— Socialist Voice (@SocialistVoice) February 5, 2025
Yet their ridiculous house building plans will likely see more houses built on flood plain areas. Thick as frozen mince. https://t.co/VgyZT7JJH1
— Alistair MacLeòid (@Al_Mc72) February 5, 2025
Fuelling the climate crisis
What Keir Starmer fails to realise – or maybe, pretends to not realise – is that the actions of his government are having a direct impact on the climate crisis. Which is already here:
Oh fuck off, flooding is caused by climate change which YOUR actions are accelerating eg expanding airports, new licences for coal, oil, gas fields, supplying weapons for genocide. Maybe stop doing those things, eh? https://t.co/HOSMifSuxH
— ruth craxton (@truthxarcon) February 5, 2025
Recently, the Labour Party government expressed conditional support for the expansion of Heathrow airport. This is at time when the UK has set legally binding commitments to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Extra flights, along with construction emissions mean these climate goals will be even harder to reach.
Under The 2015 Paris Agreement, countries agree to:
Substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to hold global temperature increase to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change
This decade, we need to slash emissions in half for this to become a reality. Keir Starmer would do well to remember this:
And yet you refuse to take action to mitigate climate breakdown and take the fossil fuel shilling . https://t.co/TlwDEThivT
— Tash 🌿☽𖤐☾ 🍉 (@ZaffranRiver) February 5, 2025
Nature is the only sustainable flood defence needed…not concrete, not runways. https://t.co/mTY5p8Q7iW
— Max (@PoetryRebellion) February 5, 2025
Wrecking homes, businesses and lives? Sounds a lot like Labour to us:
Well look at that! Labour describing themselves as flooding. https://t.co/EvWR6tARqh
— BarbieBarbarian (@BBarbaraian) February 5, 2025
Taking out woodlands and building over green spaces doesn’t exactly help either. But why apply common sense to anything, eh 🤷🏻♂️ https://t.co/MazLcYOKqX
— Andy (@AndyNotSoHandy) February 5, 2025
Labour’s shiny new flood defences investment pledge is really just a drop in the ocean on action that’s really needed to tackle climate fuelled flooding.
Promising to build up the UK’s flood defences is welcome, but Labour’s recent record on green-lighting climate and biodiversity-wrecking projects, shows it fails to grasp how nature and the climate are connected. And there was nothing in his announcement that suggested the government are planning to cease the shortsighted exercise of building homes in areas of high flood risk either.
So, that extra cash will very quickly go down the drain, even while climate-exacerbated flood-waters fail to.
Feature image via
