Event: Noël Coward

State failure and Net Zero ideology have left us unable to cope during a heat wave. ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.’ So goes the famous Noël Coward lyric, mocking the English willingness to head outside on baking hot days. Today, however, we no longer need to go out into the midday sun to suffer. We have now built a country that struggles to cope with the heat even when we stay indoors. As this week’s heatwave has shown, Britain must change its approach to cooling down indoors. Above all, we need much more air conditioning in Britain. While around 90 per cent of homes in the US and Japan have it, only three per cent of British homes can say the same. The same lack is apparent in our public infrastructure, especially our schools. As temperatures climbed this week, at least one thousand schools across England and Wales sent children home early or shut entirely. Pupils were forced to learn online, and working parents were sent scrambling for childcare. Some pupils were forced to sit exams in sweltering school halls-turned-saunas. Our hospitals, offices and trains have been similarly affected by the intense heat. MRI scanners have stopped working, offices are shutting and trains are breaking down. In fact, it is so bad that two hospitals have declared critical incidents and cancelled hundreds of appointments. These serious problems are the result of choices made by successive governments – and they follow a pattern that is all too familiar. Whether it is prisons, housing, welfare, water, migration, transport or energy – the same cycle repeats itself. Politicians repeatedly promise to address an emerging problem, but ideology, political incompetence and state incapacity prevent them from ever doing so. Enjoying spiked? Why not make an instant, one-off donation? We…