We're now four heatwaves in, and Britain finally has a chance to fix the trains, roads and water supply that keep buckling under the same pressure.

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Rail lines overheat, so trains slow. Tarmac softens, so flights are delayed. Reservoirs run low, so hosepipe bans follow. The grid strains, so power comes under pressure. Too often, each is treated as a separate local issue, with a rail delay here and a water warning there, when it's much bigger than any one of them.

These aren't isolated failures. They're symptoms of the same disease, and Britain needs to stop treating them as separate infections.

The issue is not only that these systems come under pressure at the same time, but that they affect one another. If a substation trips in extreme heat, it's not just your lights that go, it can be the signalling that keeps trains moving safely, or the pumps that keep drinking water clean and flowing. On a 40-degree day, one stress........

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