Boston and the politics of denial

 

The Lincolnshire market town of Boston lies at the heart of the Fens, within striking distance of the North Sea. Its church – St Botolph’s, known locally as Boston Stump – dominates the surrounding flatness.

The area, famous as the starting point for the Pilgrim Fathers’ journey to the New World, is today defined by industrial-scale monoculture farming and food processing factories, employing a large immigrant workforce.

Perhaps not surprisingly, its once staunch Conservative political leanings have recently been swayed by the rhetoric of Reform UK Ltd.

This week, a report in The Guardian adds a third dimension, describing a town increasingly defined by flood risk, rising insurance costs and the slow erosion of confidence in the sea and river defences meant to protect it.

The article, ‘Seriously wrong’: flood-hit Lincolnshire residents at odds with Reform MP over climate, by Priya Bharadia and Matthew Taylor, notes that flooding is becoming a regular expectation for residents rather than an exceptional event, something already reshaping daily life.

From The Guardian article:

"Boston, nestled at the northern end of the Fens, is on the frontline of the UK’s flooding crisis, which experts say could lead to some towns being abandoned as climate breakdown makes many areas uninsurable."

"According to the Environment Agency, 91 percent of buildings in the Boston and Skegness constituency are at some level of flood risk – more than in any other English constituency. And the science is clear that winters are getting wetter in the UK due to climate breakdown, with warmer air holding more water vapour, meaning heavier downpours."

This is not some future prophecy. It's present tense. And yet, into this reality steps a populist political narrative that seeks to deny, deflect and diminish the underlying cause.

Mainstream challenge 

Richard Tice, MP for Boston & Skegness and a leading figure in Reform UK, has questioned the extent to which climate change is driving increased flood risk – reflecting a broader stance within the party that challenges mainstream climate science and policy responses.

There is something revealing about this disconnect. Flooding is not abstract. It is not ideological. It is not a matter of opinion. It is water, moving through landscapes according to physical laws – shaped by rainfall, sea level, drainage and, increasingly, by a warming atmosphere.

Boston is already experiencing the compounded pressures of tidal flooding, heavier rainfall and – despite increased spending in recent years – the physical limitations of existing defences. “Flooding is now part of life here,” one resident told The Guardian bluntly.

In practice, climate-driven change rarely arrives as a single catastrophic event. More often, it manifests as a gradual redefinition of what is considered safe, viable or sustainable. It is precisely this gradualism that makes denial politically convenient.

If catastrophe were instantaneous, the response would be immediate and unavoidable. But when change arrives incrementally – another flood, another insurance refusal, another breach of a raised embankment – it can be framed as coincidence, mismanagement or simply bad luck. Anything but systemic transformation.

That framing matters. Because if flooding is treated as an isolated problem, it will be addressed with isolated solutions: higher walls, bigger pumps, more funding for local defences. All necessary – but ultimately limited.

Political narratives 

In contrast, when it is understood as part of a broader climatic shift, the implications become more profound. Who gets protected? At what cost? And for how long?

The Guardian article makes clear that these questions are already pressing in Boston, where concerns about affordability, insurance and long-term viability are no longer theoretical but lived realities. The sense of permanence that once underpinned the town’s housing and infrastructure is beginning to erode.

What is striking – and troubling – in a town like Boston, and elsewhere, is how often political narratives lag behind lived experience.

Residents dealing with repeated flooding and uncertain futures are not engaging in abstract debate. They are responding to material change.

To suggest that the underlying drivers are exaggerated or irrelevant – in the face of mounting local evidence – is not simply misleading. It risks creating a widening gap between political language and physical reality.

There is also a deeper cultural dimension at work. For decades, climate change has been positioned as something distant – geographically, temporally and psychologically. Something that happens elsewhere, or in the future. Reality is eroding that.

The story of Boston is part of a wider national and global shift. Climate impacts are becoming local, immediate and difficult to ignore. They intersect with housing, insurance, infrastructure and identity. They reshape not just landscapes, but expectations.

Understanding the future 

And this is where storytelling – whether journalistic or fictional – becomes important. It's because we are dealing not just with data, but with meaning: how people understand what is happening to them, and what it implies for their communities and their lives.

In my own climate fiction novel, FloodWaters Down, I explore a near-future version of the Fens shaped by many of these pressures – rising water, strained systems, self-interested behaviour and fragmented responses. Increasingly, it feels less like speculation and more like extrapolation.

What Boston illustrates, with uncomfortable clarity, is that the key tension is no longer between alarm and complacency, but between experience and interpretation.

The water is rising, whether we acknowledge it or not. The question is not whether we can stop that entirely – we cannot – but how we respond to it. Whether we align our politics, planning and language with the realities emerging around us – or continue to argue with the tide.

Water does not negotiate. It does not respond to rhetoric. And, in the end, it does not care whether we believe in it.

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Flood Waters Down is released by Cliftop Publishing on 9 April 2026 and is available now on pre-order from bookshops and online. 

It will also be published as an ebook. 

Always support your local independent bookshop where possible! 

For interviews, review copies, book signings, etc, email: books(at)cliftop.co.uk

When the Water Wins

 

Upper River Welland in flood (Feb 2026).                        Photo: Ian Bateman

There is a particular kind of dread that comes not from sudden catastrophe, but from slow acceptance: the point at which something once shocking becomes familiar, then normal, then mere background noise.

In recent weeks, flood warnings have scrolled across our phones, met with only fleeting attention. Roads close. Trains stop. Fields disappear beneath shallow seas. Insurers quietly retreat from whole postcodes. Phrases like “managed retreat” and “once-in-a-century event” lose their meaning through overuse.

Last week, that background noise briefly came into focus with the story of Clydach Terrace in Ynysybwl, South Wales.

The local authority in Rhondda Cynon Taf agreed to spend up to £2.6 million to buy up and demolish 16 homes on a residential terrace that has repeatedly flooded – including during Storm Dennis in 2020, when water inside homes reached almost two metres deep.

The homes, on a floodplain beside the Nant Clydach, were deemed so dangerous that there is no economically viable way to protect them. Natural defences are no longer viable; the risk to life is judged “high”.

Journalists covering the story described this as the first time in the UK that a whole street has been bought out and will be demolished because of climate-linked flood risk: a de facto announcement of the country’s first climate evacuees – though the word itself remains carefully unspoken.

The most frightening thing about climate collapse is not the spectacle of it, but how quickly we absorb it into everyday life.

That sense of quiet inevitability – the feeling that something fundamental has shifted beneath our feet – is what led me to write Flood Waters Down.

I live on the edge of the South Lincolnshire Fens, a landscape that exists only because we forced it into submission. Drained, straightened, regulated, pumped. A triumph of engineering and agricultural efficiency – and a reminder of a very old human habit: believing control to be the same as permanence.

The Fens are flat, exposed and deceptively fragile. They sit mostly at or below sea level, held in place by embankments, lock gates and sluices – and by faith in powerful pump engines that must work perfectly, all the time. As the atmosphere warms and the seas rise, that bargain begins to look increasingly brittle.

Historically, when the water returns to the Fens, it does not do so politely. It spreads. It lingers. It reshapes the land and the people who live on it.

The phrase – the water always wins – became a quiet mantra while I was writing Flood Waters Down. Not as a slogan, but as an observation. Nature does not need to be dramatic to be unstoppable. It only needs time.

So why turn to fiction this time, rather than reportage?

I’ve spent much of my career reporting on complex systems – space, technology, the environment. Good, honest journalism is vital. It tells us what is happening, who is responsible and why it matters.

But it has limits. In the context of climate change it struggles to capture what collapse feels like from the inside. How it alters relationships, priorities, morality. How people adapt not in heroic arcs, but in compromises and retreats. How systems designed to protect us quietly begin to outlive us.

Fiction offers the possibility of stepping beyond the headline and into the atmosphere. To explore not just submerged landscapes, but flooded institutions. Not just environmental breakdown, but the psychological weather of a society learning, slowly, that it may not recover.

Flood Waters Down is not set in some far-off, abstract tomorrow. It occupies the narrow band of time where today’s assumptions still mostly hold – but are beginning to fail.

Its lineage owes more to J.G. Ballard than to blockbuster dystopia: environments that shape behaviour, infrastructures that become characters in their own right, and futures that feel uncomfortably adjacent to the present.

The flooded Fens become a fragmented, part-rewilded zone of survivors and renegades. Elsewhere, enclaves of wealth retreat behind technology and automation, convinced they can outlast the chaos. Over it all hangs the presence of increasingly autonomous systems, designed to manage crisis, but quietly redefining what “order” means.

None of this requires a leap of imagination. We are already living with early versions of these dynamics: climate adaptation by postcode, algorithmic governance, uneven resilience, the quiet return of sovereign rule, the outsourcing of responsibility to systems no one fully controls.

Nothing transforms the world overnight – the future arrives with more of a shrug than a bang. But fiction can change how we pay attention.

Climate fiction, at its best, is not about predicting the future. It is about rehearsing emotional and ethical responses to the futures we are already drifting towards. It asks uncomfortable questions: Who adapts? Who retreats? Who decides? What do we cling to when the structures we trusted begin to dissolve?

As Flood Waters Down moves towards publication, I find myself less interested in whether readers find it frightening than whether they find it recognisable. That quiet click of understanding. That sense of yes, this feels plausible.

Because once a future becomes imaginable, it becomes discussable. And once it is discussable, it becomes harder to ignore. The water, after all, does not need our belief. It only needs our inaction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flood Waters Down is released in paperback by Cliftop Publishing on 9 April 2026 and is available for pre-order.

Fighting for the Fens

 

The Fens of South Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire have always been precarious – a landscape engineered by human determination, machinery and hard labour.

Now, as ageing infrastructure meets rising seas and volatile weather, the vast area of low-lying land faces its gravest threat since it was drained in the 17th century.

According to a report this week on the Lincolnshire Live website (Jamie Waller, 29 September 2025), the county could be forced to “surrender the Fens” back to the sea unless billions of pounds are spent on new defences.

As someone who lives on the edge of the Fens, I read his account from Lincolnshire County Council’s Environment Committee with unease – it could almost have been lifted from the pages of my upcoming novel Flood Waters Down (to be published Spring 2026).

Amy Shaw, flood risk manager for the Environment Agency (EA), didn’t sugar-coat it. “The cost is likely to be billions, not millions,” she told councillors. “The problem will be here before 2100 – within the next 10 or 15 years we will need to have a clear direction.”

This is no longer a hypothetical dilemma for the future. Decisions made now will determine whether the Fens and low-lying lands of Lincolnshire remain habitable for future generations.

Breaking point
Most of the area’s pumping stations and sluices were commissioned in the 1960s and recent Environment Agency studies show what would happen if those pumps stopped: vast swathes of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire would be under 1.5 metres of water.

Combine this with rising sea and tide levels, and it’s clear why the issue is urgent. Daniel Withnall, chief executive of the Black Sluice Internal Drainage Board, laid out the scale of the threat. “If we do nothing, we are surrendering the south of Lincolnshire – that’s how drastic it is,” he said.

The Fens 2100+ partnership (a consortium of local authorities and interested organisations) has begun preparing proposals to bid for government funding. But the scale of the ask is daunting and political priorities are often short-term.

Councillors at the meeting made no attempt to disguise the severity of the problem. Tom Ashton (Conservative) said: “I’m pleased our ambition to defend the Fens matches the ambition of our ancestors to create it. It will come down to money, and a huge amount of it. It’s unfortunate that river maintenance money is going down, not up.”

Raymond Whitaker (Reform UK Ltd) warned about the decrepit state of existing infrastructure: “If we have a couple of big storms, the pumping stations could break down and Lincolnshire could flood.”

And Ashley Baxter (Independent) brought both history and climate politics into the room, citing an ancestor who first came to the country as a refugee to help drain the Fens. “Now, four centuries later,” he warned, “climate change is the elephant in the room.”

Battling against nature
The Fens have never been entirely “won”. Every field, every straightened river and drainage channel is part of a centuries-long battle against water.

In dry summers, the black peat soils shrink and crack. In wet seasons, pumps groan under the strain while the North Sea, higher now than at any time in recent history, creeps upward year by year.

Locals know this instinctively. Farming families talk about the land “sitting on borrowed time.” And yet, the Fens are more than well-drained soil: they are one of the UK’s most productive agricultural regions. A third of the nation’s vegetables come from these fields.

Foreshadowing reality
When I began writing Flood Waters Down, my aim was to push the current fragility of the Fens into the future, imagining a scenario where sea defences are neglected, climate extremes accelerate and political will falters.

The novel explores the consequences for communities forced to adapt to flooded landscapes – some clinging on with technology, others turning to new ways of living. It’s a speculative narrative rooted in the science of climate change and infrastructure decay.

Blurring the lines
It’s rarely comfortable when fiction and reality come together. Reading the Lincolnshire Live report felt like opening a chapter of my own novel – except this time the decisions rest not with imagined characters but with government ministers, councillors, engineers and all of us who live in this landscape.

The Fens have always been a battleground between human ingenuity and nature. Four centuries ago, our ancestors chose ambition and succeeded. Today, the question remains: do we defend or retreat – or just prevaricate until nature decides for us?

To stand still is to gamble because, as Councillor Whitaker pointed out, one or two big storms could push fragile pumping stations past breaking point.

Perhaps this is the true value of stories like Flood Waters Down – to bring perspective and help us imagine potential consequences before they unfold. Either way, the clock is ticking.

Heat, wealth and denial

 

The Earth is on fire – literally and politically. From southern Europe to the American West, from South Asia to the UK, we are witnessing heatwaves, floods and systemic breakdowns. These are not outliers but the new normal.

And still, somehow, we go on pretending.

The Guardian's recent opinion headline – “Why do we pretend heatwaves are fun and ignore the brutal, burning reality?” – poses exactly the right question. Inflatable paddling pools, rooftop cocktails and weather presenters chirping about “glorious sunshine” are still our cultural defaults, even as climate systems tip dangerously toward the edge.

This dissonance is a form of climate denial. Not the outright rejection of science but a quieter more pervasive refusal to let the facts fully alter how we live, lead or legislate.

Adaptation limits

This week (23 June 2025), the UK’s Climate Change Committee released its latest review, warning that Britain remains dangerously unprepared for what lies ahead. "We are not resilient to the changes that are already happening," the report states. And worse, the pace of adaptation is slowing just when it needs to accelerate.

While the report argues that the UK could still reach net zero by 2050, it warns that this alone will not protect the country from flooding, heatwaves and food system instability. "Adaptation is as important as mitigation," the committee notes, "and right now we’re failing on both fronts."

This echoes what climate scientist Tim Lenton told The Guardian in a powerful interview entitled 'This is a fight for life'.

Lenton, an expert on climate tipping points, warns that cascading climate failures are not decades away – they are unfolding now.

What may once have been theoretical risks are becoming visible ruptures in our weather systems, water cycles and social infrastructure.

"We are in a planetary emergency," he declares bluntly. "But there’s still agency. We have a meaningful chance to turn this around – if we act."

Tipping points and privilege

Among the most chilling parts of Lenton’s interview is his critique of how the wealthy attempt to insulate themselves from climate impacts – by migrating, insuring, air conditioning or building physical barriers.

"People with financial resources are trying to buy resilience," he says. "In the long run this is not a crisis that respects wealth."

We saw that vividly in 2023’s flash floods in Germany, and again in recent Canadian wildfires and southern US droughts. Critical infrastructure collapses. Water fails. Food prices spike. Insurance markets break down. And while the vulnerable suffer first, no one is untouched

In short, climate chaos is not a distant threat to people in far away lands. It is here, now, and it is coming for the systems we all rely on.

Fiction as foresight

As someone who has turned to fiction rooted in climate science as a means of conveying urgency, I see this means of storytelling as a way to make the different facets of climate change more real. 

My forthcoming novel, Flood Waters Down, imagines a near-future Britain fractured by flooding, individual greed and collective disorientation.

The geography is drawn from Climate Central’s real-world sea level projection tools. The characters – though fictional – face choices rooted in policy inertia, displacement and social fragmentation.

They live in a country that pretended, for too long, that it could “cope” its way through climate change.

If that sounds familiar, it's because it is.

In the same week, CNN in the United States detailed the now-undeniable link between human-caused global warming and record-breaking heatwaves across the globe. "We are seeing extremes that scientists didn’t expect until the 2030s or 2040s," one researcher noted. "We’ve accelerated the timeline of risk."

Heat isn’t neutral

Extreme heat is not just uncomfortable. It kills. It erodes productivity, threatens food security and degrades mental health. It disproportionately affects the elderly, the poor, outdoor workers and those living in poorly insulated or densely built environments.

And yet, in much of the UK’s mainstream media and politics, heat is still largely treated as a lifestyle issue, not a public health or systemic risk.

Another recent editorial in The Guardian put it plainly: "We must stop thinking of climate breakdown as a future issue. We need to build national readiness now, or we’ll let everyday life keep breaking down."

That means investing in climate-resilient infrastructure, yes. But it also means telling new stories – stories that prepare people not just with facts, but with frameworks for feeling, thinking and acting differently.

Inflection point

The convergence of science, policy warnings, media coverage and lived experience is no coincidence. We are in an inflection moment – when the consequences of inaction are visible yet the possibilities of change and adaptation remain open.

Whether we respond with courage or complacency will define more than just the future of emissions. It will define the kind of society we become and the kind of world we leave.

In Flood Waters Down, the waters rise – and so does something else. Its characters and the challenges they face aren’t far from us. They’re just a few degrees – and decisions – ahead.

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 Flood Waters Down – for further details contact Clive Simpson