white heat

plural white heats

1. countableuncountableThe state or temperature at which matter emits white light.

   George comes over to work the doors while you swing well-broken coal into flame fiercer than ever, at pure white heat that drives you back scorched and blind from each quick shot.

   1956 February, W. A. Tuplin, “Hot Work on a "Star"”, in Railway Magazine, page 94

2. countableuncountableA state of intensive activity.
3. countableuncountableA critical situation which causes a significant development in something; a force that metaphorically forges something.

   The white heat of events tempered these new political ideas, allowing the magistrates and others to forge them into a coherent alternative ideology.

   1995 September 28, James B. Collins, The State in Early Modern France, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 248

   1 more example

   The Britain that is going to be forged in the white heat of this revolution will be no place for restrictive practices or for outdated methods on either side of industry.

   1963, Harold Wilson, quotee, The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations, Penguin UK, →ISBN

4. UKcountableuncountablegovernmentA strategy for economic growth through technological development, especially associated with the government of Harold Wilson.

   The Internet revolution had been one of the trends which for all Blair's white-heat futurology he had underestimated in Opposition.

   2013 June 20, John Rentoul, Tony Blair: Prime Minister, Faber & Faber, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   Wilson's white-heat strategy continued down the same path; its potency as a vote winner in its own right offset by the attention ministers themselves gave to modernising rhetoric.

   1997 June 30, Kevin Jefferys, Retreat from New Jerusalem: British Politics, 1951-64, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 194

   We had moved from being the party of ‘white heat’ to the party of sepia-tinged nostalgia. We had become a party squabbling over its own past, rather than one focused on the future of the country.

   2021 September 23, Peter Walker, quoting Keir Starmer, “Keir Starmer’s words – and what they mean for Labour”, in The Guardian