Burning issues
Hackwatch , Issue 1681

LAST week, as the fourth heatwave of 2026 swept across the country, a drought was officially declared and Suffolk joined the Cairngorms and much of Europe on fire, the Telegraph was tackling the really serious issue – is it conservative to care?

Monday
“Climate change is real – and the Right needs to get serious about it,” declares an unequivocal headline in the comment pages.

“Global warming – yes, we can call it that – is killing things conservatives claim to love. Farming. Rural tradition. Millions of French chickens,” writes columnist Tim Stanley, who has been obliged to take off his bow tie, so warm has the weather become. “I’m coming to the view that the Online Right is going wrong, eschewing compassion or charm, talking itself into corners of angry irrelevance.”

Naturally the Online Right – in the person of those below the line on the Telegraph website – are more than happy to demonstrate his point.

More than 9,000 comments are posted over the next few days, among the most “liked” being: “No it is not. Like Covid this is another way of the mad looney left to whip up fear and spend taxpayers’ money, our money.”

Tuesday
“We don’t need to trash the economy to save the planet,” declares the nominatively determined David Frost in his own column. “I agree with Tim that the climate is changing. It always has and it always will. I agree that it is getting somewhat warmer.”

Can you tell there’s a “but” coming?

“I don’t agree that we need to run around shouting that we are in a ‘climate emergency’ or stop thinking seriously about the problems. Shouldn’t Disraelian conservatives be showing a bit of scepticism about the view that the human intellect, even with the most powerful AI backup, can confidently know the future of the climate and tell us we have no choice but to reorder the entire global economy at breakneck pace, whatever the cost?”

Wednesday
Nonsense, shrieks a sweaty Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, writing from his farm in France where the temperature has soared over 40°C and he can see smoke from his back door.

“Kemi Badenoch has chosen an abominable political moment to flirt with climate nihilism. The anti-green backlash has already peaked and electrotech is fast winning the global economic argument... What can be more conservative than Edmund Burke’s contract of eternal society? It entails a moral duty to pass on the world we have inherited...

“This was the code of Margaret Thatcher, who led the world in repairing the ozone layer, her greatest accomplishment. I wish Kemi well but I would caution her to play a longer game and show more respect for sophisticated free- market greens because otherwise she may preside over the destruction of her ancient and once-great party.”

Thursday
Cometh the hour, cometh the woman herself.

“Ambrose Evans-Pritchard completely misunderstands my approach on the environment,” writes Kemi Badenoch on the Telegraph letters page, a point she expands on in a column in the following day’s paper. “Climate change is real. The net zero plans are not. They are a political fiction.”

Final word goes to Allister Heath, a man who can see the apocalypse in almost anything except the possible end of the world.

“Net zero must be scrapped,” he declares in his column. “There will be plenty of losers, but it is pointless seeking to prevent the inevitable. There will also be benefits and winners... Without minimising the severe downsides of global warming, especially on some poorer nations, many in Britain would enjoy the kind of warmer climate predicted by modellers, if we (and the authorities) were properly equipped to cope. Millions head to the sun on holiday or to retire.”

In any case, “We should commend the Tories for seeing the light and embracing a far more rational energy policy, and Reform under Nigel Farage and Richard Tice for having the courage to smash the net zero taboo. This new, broad consensus on the Right is one of the rare hopeful signs in an otherwise bleak Burnhamite Britain.”

At least, in those parts of it that are not actually on fire.

More top stories in the latest issue:

END OF THE PIERCE SHOW
Columnist Andrew Pierce has abruptly left the Daily Mail, but the paper is being strangely silent in the face of queries from the Eye.

PILING ON THE POUNDS
More wrangling in court over how much Prince Harry and others will have to pay the publisher of the Daily Mail in the case they lost so comprehensively.

BAD CREDIT
The Daily Mail has quietly apologised and made financial recompense in at least three long-running cases in the past month.

PROFANITY WATCH
Evgeny Lebedev has called a critical journalist a “little shit”, in an echo of the newspaper proprietor’s 2023 outburst at the Eye’s editor.

BREAKING STORY
The Telegraph ran a lengthy court report on the trial of two men accused of helping Iranian spy Daniel Khalife, but it didn’t mention its own connection.

QUALITY STREAK
Reach is desperately trying to reshape its clickbait empire into a home for quality journalism – but is it already way too late?

IGLOO EFFECT
The Mail on Sunday’s “Talk of the Town” diary column reported that director Christopher Nolan was a fan of Pingu – having missed an obvious joke post.

CHEAP SHOTS
Picture agency Alamy has infuriated freelance photographers, many of whom will now get to keep just a fifth of the money generated by their pictures.