Not a priority

The Prime Minister will chair COBRA this afternoon on extreme heat, wildfires and drought. Firefighters have attended 185 wildfires in the first ten days of August. The Fire Brigades Union calls it a national emergency. On the facts, it warrants the room.

So we will not pretend this is a meeting about sunshine. It is the second heat COBRA this year, and it is the right call.

Notice instead what the machine can do when it decides something is an emergency. Within days: the committee convened, ministers from three departments summoned, the Environment Agency in the room, a Downing Street statement naming firefighters, farmers and NHS staff. Fast, coordinated, visible. Nobody said the work continues.

Now recall what we were told about the Channel three weeks ago, after 881 crossings in a week including the largest single boat on record. Asked whether the Prime Minister wanted the asylum hotels closed, his spokesman said: "The work on that continues." There is "no change" to what the Home Secretary is doing in her department.

Two problems. One gets COBRA. One gets a progress update.

The difference is not urgency, and it is not scale. It is that heat has no opponents. Nobody defends a wildfire, no court will overturn a drought response, no backbencher resigns over a hosepipe ban. Convening COBRA on the weather is free.

The Channel costs something. So it gets a department, a timetable and a sentence in the passive voice.

This is what we mean when we say government answers to the pressures that can punish it. When ministers genuinely want to move, we now know exactly how fast they can move. Remember that the next time you are told a thing is difficult.