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The gathering storms: politics in an age of drivel and distraction
As deadly weather events spread death and destruction, ALAN SIMPSON argues that Labour’s first Budget has failed to address the converging crises of climate breakdown and democratic alienation that require transformative change

AS all eyes focused on Labour’s first Budget in 14 (long) years, barely anyone saw fit to link it to events in Valencia, the Amazon or the heat dome over central Africa. Yet these are the bigger issues around which global politics, economics and national Budgets will increasingly revolve.

Droughts in South America and central Africa might seem too remote for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to be juggling with. But the images from Valencia ought to have intruded somewhere in her Treasury conversations.

More than a year’s worth of rainfall hit Valencia in eight hours. Torrents swept through the streets, turning them into impromptu scrap yards of displaced cars. Over 150 people have died. Dozens more are missing.

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