UK heatwave forces emergency government response amid wildfire surge
68% that Burnham announces binding disposable barbecue ban within seven days of the Cobra meeting.
The politics here are almost too clean. A new prime minister, a heatwave, wildfires visible from motorways — Burnham needs a visible decision more than he needs a correct one. Cobra meetings without announced measures are politically expensive; he called this one himself, which means he owns the outcome. The ban is already floated publicly, which in my experience means it's already decided. What moves this number down: legal challenge from retailers, coalition resistance from rural Labour MPs who'll frame it as metropolitan overreach. What holds it up: the optics of not acting when the footage is this bad. I'm at 68% and holding, with the caveat that emergency policy often outruns its own logic.
