WE CONSTANTLY hear we need to “get real” when it comes to spending priorities.

Raising military spending is essential; addressing global warming is a gimmick.

The punishing heatwave that has gripped most of Britain for the past week — the second this year, and breaking temperature records for June — exposes how absurd that narrative is.

Our homes are not built for this. Nor are our schools or most GP surgeries. Nor our transport infrastructure.

The evidence in front of us — the hottest years on record that recur with ever greater frequency — is that these conditions are going to get more frequent and worse.

Heatwaves lead to premature deaths. Schools close, trains are cancelled. The economic disruption is significant.

And the wider impact of climate chaos is devastating.

Three of the five worst British harvests since records began (in 1984) have been in the last five years. A much more unpredictable climate means floods and droughts are ruining crops.

This is not just a British phenomenon: crop failures are reported with ever more frequency from around the world. Food prices are driven up — with the monopoly grip of a handful of gigantic corporations on the global trade in seeds and pesticides accelerating that.

Of course, climate change is not the only driver of food insecurity or higher prices: reckless wars like Donald Trump’s attack on Iran affect these things too, with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz choking up the international trade in fertiliser and natural gas.

But that only reinforces the point. Despite the propaganda, the British military is not primarily deployed to defend our shores but in acts of aggression worldwide — most obviously in the Middle East, where RAF surveillance flights co-ordinated with the genocidal Israeli invasion of Gaza and our bases, ships and aircraft played supporting roles in the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Britain’s military build-up puts us in more danger — since its motivation is deployment in alignment with Trump’s United States to maintain an unjust economic world order threatened by the rise of the global South. It is designed to fight wars we need to stop happening.

Adapting this country for a hotter planet and steps to address climate change are a far better investment.

But powerful vested interests are against it. Tony Blair, who recently attacked the government for its moratorium on new North Sea drilling, has as clients the same US firms planning to build energy and water-intensive data centres on British soil.

The Trump administration ties winning the AI revolution to intensifying exploitation of fossil fuels — partly because the US military machine is positioned to control global fossil fuel resources as things stand, while renewables are a field where China has the advantage.

These interests get a popular hearing because of the government’s failure to deliver on a just transition. The Tory victory in the Aberdeen South by-election reflects the catastrophic job losses — estimated at 1,000 a month — in the North Sea, which understandably outrage unions in that sector.

Yet a co-ordinated strategy to confront the climate crisis would involve job creation on a huge scale.

Programmes to retrofit the school and hospital estate, and upgrade residential homes. Investment in transport resilience and stronger emergency services.

Development of green technology and infrastructure, with a shift to building our own turbines and solar panels which could reinvigorate British manufacturing.

Combined with initiatives like Unite’s campaign to ensure infrastructure projects only use British Steel — something that would be impossible were we to rejoin the EU — we could see a just transition become a national mission that creates jobs, cuts emissions and improves living standards.

Treasury orthodoxies, armchair generals and press barons stand in our way.

But the alternative is bleak. More heat deaths and more disruption every year. More job losses.

And a refusal to take the initiative that leaves the field to the climate-denialist far right.