Brandon To is a Politics graduate from UCL and a Hong Kong BN(O) immigrant settled in Harrow

When Mark Hehir, a London bus driver, helped chase down a thief who had just snatched a passenger’s necklace, he probably assumed he was doing the right thing.

He was wrong. At least according to modern Britain.

Instead of thanks, Hehir was sacked by Metroline. His crime? “Excessive force” while stopping a fleeing robber.

Let’s be clear about what this means: Stopping a thief is now, apparently, too much.

So what is acceptable? A polite request? A strongly worded suggestion? Perhaps a hymn, sung gently, in the hope that divine intervention persuades the criminal to hand the necklace back?

This case would be funny if it weren’t so revealing.

A new chilling message is now being sent to the public: do not intervene. If you help, you may be punished. If you step in, you may lose your job. If you act decisively, you may be accused of doing more harm than the criminal himself.

Is it any wonder that bystanders look away?

TfL staff are told not to challenge fare evaders. Passers-by hesitate before helping victims. Even the police, in countless videos circulating online, appear reluctant to chase criminals, paralysed by the fear of complaints, and accusations that have little to do with justice.

Put it frankly, this is cowardice, dressed up as “compassion”.

Behind it lies a justice culture warped by liberal and “woke” ideology. In this worldview, criminals are endlessly contextualised, even sympathised with, as it’s always the “system” that failed them.

But who is there to sympathise with the victim? Or in this case, the hero who stood for them?

And heaven forbid if identity politics can be dragged into it. Suddenly, the act of stopping a thief is no longer about theft at all, but about race, systems, or abstract theories dreamed up in universities, far from the bus stop where the crime actually happened.

Against this backdrop, Kieran Mullan, the Shadow Justice Secretary, deserves credit for speaking up and standing with Mark Hehir. This is precisely what Conservatives should be doing — drawing a clear moral line and refusing to apologise for it.

But words are not enough.

If Conservatives are serious about restoring order, and about shedding the legacy of a government that was too weak and overly liberal on crime, then we must go further and be explicit about protection.

We should introduce clear legal safeguards for citizens who intervene, in good faith, to stop crime. If someone acts to prevent theft or violence, they should not later discover that the real punishment comes from their employer or a compliance department.

Employers who sack staff for intervening should be required to publicly justify their decision. Where dismissal occurs, it should be treated as a no-fault dismissal, with enhanced compensation. And if a company refuses to reinstate or explain itself, the state should step in. Not to micromanage, but to send a message: those who stand up for public order will never be abandoned.

This is how culture changes. Not through slogans, but through real actions.

At this point, defenders of the status quo raise a familiar objection: people don’t intervene because it’s dangerous. Criminals might be armed. It’s safer to do nothing.

But this argument collapses the moment one looks at reality.

Take the recently viral footage of thieves smashing a jewellery shop in Richmond in broad daylight. Dozens of people stood nearby. Not one intervened. Not one shouted. Not one tried to distract or deter. Most simply filmed.

I’m not suggesting reckless heroics. But shouting, calling the police, or trying to throw things at the thieves from a safe distance? Yes, they may not be immediately helpful, but at least we created pressure that might urge them to leave earlier. At least we tried hard, and fulfilled our civic responsibility.

The problem is not fear of weapons. The problem is a culture that has trained people to believe that any involvement is dangerous. That culture exists because, time and again, the heroes are punished.

Mark Hehir’s case lays this bare.

He should not be unemployed. He should be thanked. Better still, he should be held up as an example of civic responsibility, of what a noble Britishman should be like.

But of course, we won’t see a “good citizen” award from City Hall. Under a mayor like Sadiq Khan, we might have to be grateful that he’s not arresting Mark Hehir for “systematic injustice “, or whatever new jargons he and his team invented.

And Conservatives should not miss the moment.

This case exposes exactly what happens when a country becomes more afraid of offending criminals than protecting citizens. If stopping a thief is now “excessive”, then the system itself has become excessive. Excessive in weakness, and excessive in its contempt for common sense.

Britain deserves better. And Mark Hehir deserved a medal, not a dismissal.

Help and support:

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) propaganda machine is working at top speed again. This time by making cuts to benefits sound like it’s for disabled people’s own good. The DWP released a shiny new press release bragging about how they plan to reform welfare to “support people into work”.

DWP cutting UC health element by over £200

This is, of course, the Universal Credit Bill, which comes into effect in April. The final amendments for which were laid out in parliament yesterday (Monday 9 February). I know what you’re thinking, since when were amendments newsworthy? Well, since the DWP realised they needed to generate as much good press around these abhorrent cuts as possible.

What the press release does finally confirm is just how much the DWP will be fucking over new disabled Universal Credit (UC) claimants. And it’s by over £200 a month. The department proudly gushed that they will be introducing a lower rate of the health element for new claimants. This means that instead of £429.80 a month, new claimants will get just £217.26. That’s a loss of £212.54 a month and £2550.48 a year.

Don’t worry, though, standard allowance is going up too and it’s higher than inflation for the first time ever! Aren’t the government good to us?! For under 25 year olds it’ll go up by a whole £21.60 a month or £259.20 a year. For over 25s it’ll be going up by a whopping £24.76 a month or £297.12 a year. So you’ll only need to make up an extra £2291.28 or £2253.36 a year.

Painting cuts as a good thing and benefit claimants as fakers

Even more cruelly, the DWP is selling this cut as a good thing that will help disabled people.

The press release said:

The system inherited from the previous Government means people receiving Universal Credit for health reasons are paid more than twice as much as a single person looking for work and aren’t given the support to move closer to – or into – jobs.

A reminder that disabled claimants get double what a non disabled claimant does is because the DWP have already judged them unfit for work. They know that these people can’t find a job without it being detrimental to their health.

The DWP continued:

The reforms – coming into force in April – will tackle these perverse incentives by introducing a lower Universal Credit health element

Because nothing incentivises you like the prospect of starvation and homelessness, does it?

The deserving and undeserving disabled

The government also didn’t pass up an opportunity to paint a clear divide between the fakers and the real disabled people. They assured the public that people with the “most severe, lifelong conditions” would still receive the higher rate. Though when they get to decide who fits that criteria, it’s obvious that many will suffer. This rate also applies to those with a terminal illness and current claimants.

By not including current claimants, the government clearly hopes disabled people will keep quiet and play nice. This shows just how selfish and vile they are if they expect the community to turn its back on newly disabled people to save our own skins. That sounds much more like politician behaviour.

DWP chief Pat McFadden said:

The benefits system we inherited was rigged with the wrong incentives and wrote people off instead of backing them. We are changing this.

It’s absolutely vile that the government are still pushing this narrative that disabled people choose not to work because it pays better. When it’s clear to see that many find work inaccessible in a system that cares more about profits than people.

He continued:

These reforms put more money in the pockets of working people on Universal Credit, while ensuring those who can work get the support they need to do so.

This is such a fucking lie, it’s insulting. McFadden knows full well that the health element means people are too sick or disabled to work. So to say the DWP wants to support those who can work is implying they’re faking it.

Overwhelming evidence that the DWP isn’t fit for purpose

To try and make it look like they care, the DWP refers once again to all their bullshit plans to push disabled people back into work. This is despite the overwhelming evidence that the department is a complete farce.

Recently, the DWP was crowing about the rollout of WorkWell, which sells work as a cure for disability. This is despite there being no proof of it actually working at all, never mind well. There’s also the fact the Public Accounts Committee absolutely ripped the DWP a new one over their ability to support people into work.

The PAC also drew attention to the fact that the DWP doesn’t publish data on work coach numbers. So while the DWP brags that 100,000 advisors will be redeployed in Pathways to Work, we don’t actually know how many there are. And if they’re planning on putting them in GP offices and moving them onto the skills brief we really need to know how many there are to go around.

The DWP doesn’t give a fuck about disabled people

What is clear, despite the DWP saying otherwise, is that they couldn’t give a fuck about disabled people.

If they actually wanted to support those of us who could work, there’d be proper detailed plans. Not just passing disabled people around work coaches. They also wouldn’t be quietly cutting Access to Work whilst spaffing on about wanting to help us. If they actually cared about people who were out of work because of disability they’d be ensuring we could live our lives without fear.

More than anything, if the DWP actually cared about disabled benefits claimants, they wouldn’t be doing everything in their power to demonise us in the press. But then if all of this was true they wouldn’t need to use the press to further their agenda by bragging about fucking amendments.

Featured image via the Canary

The Canary has received reports of an alleged backroom deal between Jeremy Corbyn, The Many, and Redbridge Independents. In January 2025, Corbyn announced his endorsement of the Redbridge Independents, declaring:

we are the alternative, we are the community.

However, this excited endorsement has been challenged by anonymous insiders. And, this revelation comes just as The Many accused Grassroots Left of undermining member decisions at the fledgling party’s inaugural conference.

But, the Canary have received a report from a source that was present in a meeting between Corbyn, Redbridge Independents, and candidate on The Many slate on Tuesday 26 January — one day before Corbyn declared his public support for Redbridge Independents. The source alleges that Corbyn traded his public endorsement for a commitment from Redbridge Independents to deliver votes for The Many.

If accurate, this would represent a clear attempt to exert political influence behind closed doors.

Corbyn pushes The Many

As Your Party gears up for its Central Executive Committee (CEC) elections that will determine leadership of the party, internal rifts are evident. Whilst Corbyn endorsed The Many, Zarah Sultana has endorsed the Grassroots Left slate.

An anonymous source told the Canary that Noor Begum and Tahir Mirza, two candidates on The Many slate, were present at the alleged meeting with Corbyn and Redbridge Independents. If Corbyn has indeed traded public endorsement for assurances of support for The Many, there must be serious questions over the erosion of democratic principles during the course of these elections.

Furthermore, according to our source, Begum confessed she had been told by Laura Alvarez, Corbyn’s wife, that it was imperative that both candidates be elected in the London region. If not, Corbyn and his allies would not have ultimate control of the CEC. As a result, they would not control the party itself.

These are hardly the actions of people committed to member-led democracy. Instead, they are the actions of a group of people clinging to shady Westminster-style backroom politics where what matters is who you know.

Accusations against Grassroots Left

As we mentioned earlier, these revelations come as The Many accuse Grassroots Left of undermining the principle of one member, one vote:

NEW: Some on the Grassroots Left want to overturn conference & abolish one-member-one-vote in Your Party.

The Many will defend OMOV.

Power with the members, not the sects. pic.twitter.com/uQvBb7mq3m

— The Many (@TheManyYP) February 8, 2026

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For months, Corbyn and his allies have briefed against Zarah Sultana and those in her team. Namely, the allegation is that Sultana is attempting to take control of the party. As these allegations swirl, it is clear that Your Party is far from guaranteeing member-led democracy.

A party divided: democracy undermined from within

In February 2026, members of Your Party will vote nationwide to elect candidates to its Central Executive Committee (CEC), the body responsible for carrying forward the membership’s will through democratic debate and decision-making. Since the party’s inception, both sides have accused each other of attempting to seize ultimate control. Furthermore, Zarah Sultana claimed she was pushed out of the process. She denounced it as a “sexist boys club” dominated by unelected bureaucrats.

Reports suggest these struggles for control have been present from the very beginning. Corbyn’s team reportedly opposed Sultana’s involvement and resisted the proposed co-leader model. However, the announcement of that model inspired hundreds of thousands of people across the country to take notice.

Jeremy Corbyn’s Zarah Sultana’s YourParty has reached 800,000 and heads toward a million signs up’s and has 6 MP’s (Independence Alliance MP’s are party of it) and counting.

You can join the Biggest Party in UK here.https://t.co/wqcecuaaK2

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— JmRoyle #LFC #YNWA #BLM #RejoinEU (@MyArrse) August 12, 2025

Members should have put this divide to rest in November, when Your Party’s inaugural conference overwhelmingly backed dual membership and collective leadership. Yet the back and forth accusations suggest that the democratic mandate from members is not being treated as such.

We have already reported how candidates aligned with Jeremy Corbyn have allegedly had to commit to overturning conference decisions regarding leadership model and dual membership. We even exposed the controversial reality that Corbyn’s aide, Karie Murphy, chose to block a sortition member once becoming aware of their socialist credentials. Nevertheless, the group appear willing to sink to ever greater depths of shadiness.

NEW: Our Proposals to Empower Members & Get Your Party Back On Track 📢

Your Party needs to harness the power of a mass movement. That means empowering members to get organised, and ensuring ALL members have say.

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Here’s our plan 🧵 pic.twitter.com/38vfQAka0E

— The Many (@TheManyYP) February 8, 2026

‘Reminiscent of old-style Labour party’

Michael Lavalette, Independent councilor in Preston and candidate for a CEC public office seat, was unimpressed by reports of yet more factional scheming within Your Party. In response to the alleged backroom deals, Lavalette told the Canary:

This is a symptom of the factional fight going on inside Your Party. Groups are trying to make deals to get their slate over the line.

But we should be against backroom deals, this is so reminiscent of old-style Labour party and trade union politics that Your Party was meant to break from.

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We need Your Party to be broad and inclusive. We know in many parts of the country there are independent groups and Your Party proto-branches in the same space. We need to find ways for them to work together for the benefit of YP as a whole, to work together and gradually evolve into a unified political presence on our communities. We certainly shouldn’t be looking at a ‘franchise model’ of establishing recognised groupings.

Your Party must be a big tent, a broad left of Labour party, insurgent, based in our communities, social movements and trade unions.

With a vision of establishing a better world for the millions, not the millionaires.

As Lavalette astutely points out, these toxic tactics with each camp vying for control, has meant constituencies have opposing groups organising for the same political party. Had member decisions been respected and implemented without fear or favour, this conflict would never have emerged. As a result, we can see candidates on The Many slate resorting to behaviour that can only be called dishonest and manipulative.

Top-down ‘feudal’ politics or member-led democracy

The elephant in the room is now impossible to ignore. The two slates, The Many and Grassroots Left, are drastically different in model and vision. However, the party will only endure if its leaders commit to enforcing member-led decisions. They must put personal gain and power aside.

The recent actions of Corbyn and The Many suggest they are deeply unhappy with the collective leadership model where members set the course and ‘steer the ship’. They are seemingly intent on assuming control of the CEC to row back member-led decisions to permit dual membership. Given the alleged reports of calls for Corbyn to be sole leader, it appears even the leadership model might be under threat. This is especially true if The Many assume control.

Regardless of where you sit in this debate, one principle should unite us all. Vital decisions must rest with Your Party members, made democratically, transparently, and collectively. Not MPs wielding their popularity to decide who gets a voice and who is shut out.

This new party must be about ‘how’ we show up, not which ‘team’ we show up with.

Your Party and The Many had not responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.

Featured image via the Canary

Over 1,500 UK students, academics, researchers and university staff have signed an open letter demanding UK universities cut ties to the arms trade. The letter claims the links are fuelling “global instability, injustice, and environmental harm”.

Demilitarise Education (dED), puts the value of arms-linked partnerships at approximately £2.5bn. This figure represents the combined value of partnerships held by universities in arms companies, including investments, research and academic partnerships, over the past eight years.

This data is held on the Universities and Arms Database, which dED developed and hosts.

Demilitarise Education’s arms trade campaign

dED is running a national campaign highlighting the deep and ongoing ties between UK universities and the arms trade.

The campaign has already garnered widespread support. 1,595 academics, researchers, university staff, and students have signed an open letter. It calls for an end to institutional partnerships with arms manufacturers and military-linked organisations.

Through rigorous research, advocacy and collective action, the organisation calls for transparency, ethical funding and an education system with policies committed to peace, social justice and the public good.

Dr Iain Overton, executive director at Action on Armed Violence, said:

UK universities cannot credibly claim to be solely serving the public good while taking billions from the arms trade. These are not neutral partnerships. Defence money shapes research priorities, it legitimises militarisation, and it binds centres of learning into often hidden and distant systems of violence that produce very real civilian harm.

But what this open letter shows is that such institutional consent is not uncontested. Staff and students are no longer willing to accept such complicity as the price of funding. They refuse to allow those who have profited from well-recorded civilian deaths in places like Gaza and Yemen to end up funding our Universities.

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Participants not bystanders

The £2,556,647,429 figure exposes higher education institutions as active participants in military supply chains, rather than neutral bystanders. Signatories argue that these relationships implicate universities directly in systems that sustain war, militarisation and global violence. And often there’s no transparency, democratic oversight or meaningful consent from university communities.

This intervention comes amid intensifying global conflicts from the devastating genocide in Gaza and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to the ongoing civil war in Sudan and rising geopolitical tensions elsewhere.

These conflicts have caused widespread civilian suffering, resulting in numerous crises across the stated locations, with millions displaced, health systems collapsing and education infrastructure destroyed.

dED argues that university arms trade partnerships form part of the same global architecture that enables and sustains such violence.

BAE Systems

One of the most involved arms companies in UK universities is BAE Systems. At the University of Manchester, BAE is partnering on research to accelerate combat air systems, including research projects aimed at improving fighter jets.

BAE Systems’ weapons and technology have been linked to serious violations of international law. In 2019, the company was accused of “aiding and abetting” war crimes in Yemen.

Components manufactured by BAE for F-35 fighter jets have seen use in Israeli bombing campaigns in Gaza, resulting in thousands of deaths, including hundreds of children.

By supplying regimes engaged in indiscriminate violence, BAE has contributed directly to war crimes, mass civilian casualties, and extensive environmental destruction. Despite reporting on production emissions and business travel, BAE does not account for the catastrophic environmental damage caused by its weapons, including toxic pollution, infrastructure collapse, and long-term ecological harm.

The dED Universities and Arms Database tracks UK university links to arms companies listed in the SIPRI and Defense News top 100. So far, 90 UK universities have been identified as having direct ties. The database allows users to explore how individual universities contribute to arms company activities.

The open letter marks a clear break with institutional consent, as staff and students publicly challenge the normalisation of defence-funded research, arms-linked partnerships and military recruitment pipelines within higher education.

Arms trade ‘incompatible’ with uni aims

Campaigners argue that universities’ stated commitments to the public good, social responsibility and global justice are fundamentally incompatible with their material involvement in the arms trade. As militarism expands internationally, staff and students increasingly identify universities as a key node within the military-industrial complex.

The letter contends that research collaborations, weapons-linked funding streams and defence-aligned innovation programmes play a material role in enabling arms production and export, including into active conflict zones. They also embed militaristic logics within institutions historically understood as spaces of independent thought and public good.

Aleks Palanac from the University of Leicester says:

UK universities cannot legitimately claim to be places of sanctuary for refugee students whilst continuing to actively contribute to the causes of their forced migration in the first place through their involvement in the global arms trade.

Stop the recruitment drive

The campaign also responds to mounting pressure on universities to function as recruitment and talent pipelines for the defence sector. The UK government’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review outlines plans to align higher education with military and defence industries more closely. This includes the creation of a Defence Universities Alliance and targeted investment in STEM disciplines to support military technologies and defence roles.

dED criticises the government’s proposed “whole of society” approach to defence. This includes increased exposure to military careers among school-aged children and initiatives such as paid armed forces “gap years” for under-25s. The organisation says this risks normalising military service as a default life trajectory for young people. And particularly so in the context of widening inequality and shrinking civilian opportunities.

Jinsella Kennaway, the co-founder and executive director of dED, says:

Over 1,500 members of the UK knowledge community have put their names to this open letter. This is no fringe view – it is a clear mandate from within our universities. This is a stand against the use of education to fund, legitimise and supply the war machine.

Universities must honour their duty to serve the public good by choosing partnerships that build the conditions for peace, not profit from conflict. No ethical integrity can be claimed while arms industry partnerships amplify the lethality of war and stakeholder calls for change are met with silence.

The letter calls on universities to realign their policies and practices with the dED Treaty framework. It demands full transparency over defence-linked funding, research and partnerships, alongside formal commitments to exclude arms companies from university collaborations.

It further calls for an end to recruitment ties with the armed forces and arms manufacturers. And it looks for a renewed commitment to research and teaching that prioritises peace-building over warfare.

Campaigners argue that universities must remain spaces of critical inquiry and humanistic values, not extensions of the military-industrial complex.

Featured image via the Canary

The Child Who Got A Grammy

Kevin Mazur via Getty Images

The Bride And Groom

Todd Rosenberg via Getty Images

The ‘64’ On His Jersey

A Puerto Rican Social Club

Kevin Sabitus via Getty Images

The Power Lines

Stan Grossfeld/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

The Light Blue Puerto Rican Flag

Kevin Mazur via Getty Images

Celebrity Cameos

Carlos Avila Gonzalez/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

The Jumbotron Message

A Beloved Taco Truck

Illustration by Tracy Worrall

11 min read29 min

It is almost midnight on 31 December 2029, deep in the bowels of Whitehall. A room where monitors bedeck every surface is filled with officials scurrying to and fro. A bespectacled man is on the phone, pinching the brow of his nose in frustration.

“…I know, I know, I know. Inertia. Just please turn it off for the next half hour, and spin up a battery instead.”

He puts down the phone with a heavy sigh. “TEN SECONDS TO MIDNIGHT,” yells one of his staff.

All eyes turn to the screen, where a bar labelled “GAS” is starting to shrink.

“FIVE.” The bar is now halfway down.

“FOUR.”

“THREE.”

“TWO.”

“ONE.”

The bar falls to zero. The room erupts. The lights stay on.

The government is building an enormous machine. It could already raise the temperature of the North Sea, albeit by a single degree and in 200 years. But by 2030, it hopes to have upgraded the machine to such an extent that it would take a mere 150 years.

This machine is the electricity system, and it touches every part of our isles. It is, by a substantial margin, our most complex device. It is in every home, every office and every factory, and it connects them together through a web of cabling that is now well over a century old. While the individual wires may have been replaced, the circuit endures.

The original point of building such a vast machine was to manage the reality that our demand for electricity is not a flat line but varies continuously throughout the day. But the more people connected to a circuit, the more their varied times of switching on the kettle even out. This allows fossil fuel generators to run much more efficiently. Constantly switching them on and off takes more fuel, and instead being able to gently ramp them up and down over the course of the day made electricity considerably cheaper.

Labour won the last election in part through a promise to cut bills by £300 by weaning the country off gas. Its plan for doing so is to decarbonise power by 2030 and thus ensure that the energy crisis, prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, can never happen again. The public face of this plan is Ed Miliband, and his political future is tightly tied to its success. As part of this, he has given considerable new powers to the National Energy System Operator, the body responsible for both balancing the minute-to-minute operation of the grid and now planning its upgrade.

This is not an easy task. Power plants that run on sunbeams do not have the same performance characteristics as plants that run on gas. You can’t switch the Sun on and off, and indeed in the UK the weather will frequently switch the Sun on and off for you. This means that renewable power plants can’t respond to demand. So, to replace gas, you must not simply build solar panels and wind turbines but all the infrastructure necessary to ensure that demand can be satisfied. And then you must ensure that you can actually make that infrastructure run smoothly.

Nuclear power helps out in part but suffers from almost the opposite problem to renewables: it is very hard to switch off. You can change its output at the margins, but demanding that it have the same performance characteristics as a gas plant will lead to a nuclear engineer saying terrifying things like, “Well, I suppose we could poison the reactor with xenon.”

Nonetheless, having a nuclear backbone helps. In 2025, always-on demand equated to about 13m kettles all boiling at once. Most of the UK’s nuclear reactors are older gas-cooled designs. The last of these came online in 1988. They are now ageing and will need to come offline for decommissioning.

By 2030, it is likely that only one of those reactors will remain online, alongside the 1990s vintage reactor at Sizewell in Suffolk. The only nuclear power plant currently being constructed in the UK, at Hinkley in Somerset, consists of two very large reactors, one of which has the potential to be online by 2030. Without this last reactor, the 2030 target will be in trouble, and considerable effort is going into making sure it happens.

However, while nuclear can take care of our 13m kettles, at maximum the UK consumes power equivalent to 60m kettles. This means there is a very large volume of variable demand to solve. As above, we can’t do this with wind and solar alone. We need ways to store their power and ensure it can get to where it needs to go. But even with that, we’ll still need a lot more wind and solar. The government’s task here is to make that happen.

To put this into perspective, we currently have 16GW of offshore wind around our coasts. You don’t need to know what a gigawatt is to know that adding at least 28 more is a lot. Luckily there’s enough already in process to mean that the government is likely to only need to buy 16-20 extra gigawatts. In its most recent round of renewables purchases it was able to buy 8.4 of this total, putting it within striking distance of hitting its target.

But the problem government now faces is that the price it paid for offshore wind in this round was higher than it has paid for other recent rounds, and developers now know that it’s willing to pay over the odds to hit its target. This implies that if it wants to buy the same amount in the next round it might be charged even more. At the same time, the US’ current antipathy towards wind projects in its own waters will prompt developers to pivot away towards Europe and Asia, potentially improving competition.

The same challenge applies to onshore wind and solar. Onshore wind needs to double, and solar needs to triple. In February we will find out how much government has paid to bring more of these projects online. But the big problem these projects face is much less getting paid and much more about getting connected.

Where pylons stride across landscape, local opponents could cause delay, whether by judicial reviews or planning inquiries

The wires that run the length of the country, the high voltage highways of the power system, were built when most of our power stations were located in the middle of the country and the task was to get the power from the middle to the edge. But the windiest parts of the UK are in Scotland, and the sunniest parts are in Cornwall, which means we now need to rewire the country to bring power from the edges into the middle. Given that our existing grid was slowly built out over the course of about a century, rewiring everything everywhere all at once is a colossal challenge by itself.

It will involve building about 1,000 kilometres of wire onshore and about 4,500 kilometres of wire offshore. The onshore cables will carried by pylons, aside from a small number of locations where they will be buried in the ground to protect nationally significant landscapes. The offshore cables will take the form of enormous wires stretching through the North Sea from Scotland to the Midlands, ensuring that wind can get out of Scotland efficiently, as well as new offshore connections around East Anglia.

Whether onshore or offshore, these projects will face opposition. Where pylons stride across landscape, local opponents could cause delay, whether by judicial reviews or planning inquiries. Offshore cables are not immune because bringing high-voltage direct current connections onshore means very large converter stations. To the uninitiated, these resemble large coastal warehouses – and those who live near them have already started to organise.

Without sufficient connectivity, adding more wind farms will not actually reduce emissions: even if England buys their power, if the power can’t physically get to England, gas power stations will need to be switched on to meet demand.

But because if you’ve sold your power you still get paid regardless of whether it can get to your customer or not, lots of applications for wind, solar and battery projects have been put in across the country. Not all of those can efficiently connect to the grid. Historically, new grid connections have been managed on the basis of first-come first-serve, but in a context in which literally hundreds of gigawatts’ worth of projects had applied for a connection, something new was required.

The System Operator has, therefore, decided to stop allocating connections based on who happened to have bought an option on farmland in Yorkshire and applied on the never-never six years ago, and instead moved to a much more centrally directed regime. Quite simply, it’s looked at all the regions of the UK, looked at how much connectivity it has to play with, and said, “Alright, we need more solar here, some batteries there, and a few wind turbines over here.” It’s then allocated grid connections on this basis and stripped out all those applications from people who hadn’t even bothered to get planning permission.

Batteries and solar – and projects with solar and batteries on the same site – have been the big winners from this process, even if a lot of more speculative applications for these technologies have fallen by the wayside. Lithium-ion batteries, typically made in China but controlled by British-designed software, are expected to come into their own for the purposes of 2030. They will be increasing fivefold from their current capacity of 5GW to closer to 25GW. This moves them from an interesting technology project into the daily mainstay of the grid, storing the midday sun and pumping it out at teatime.

But this new approach to grid connections relies on the wires that provide that connectivity actually being built on time, and here the picture is not quite as positive. The Norwich to Tilbury line, essential for conveying as much offshore wind to the South East as possible, has been delayed to 2031. Without it, the volume of low carbon power that can reach demand will be lower.

Delays are a function of both engineering challenges and financial engineering challenges. In building all of this new grid infrastructure, the transmission companies can only spend up to the amount that Ofgem has allowed them to, before it starts cutting into their bottom line. Ofgem has not allowed the network companies to spend everything they might need for 2030 yet. They have taken the not-unreasonable view that all the generation needed might not materialise, and if it doesn’t materialise then the wires aren’t needed. The spending is therefore locked up inside Uncertainty Mechanisms, a term of regulatory art that doesn’t refer to a mechanical magic 8-ball but rather to a set of conditions under which the money will be unlocked. Which includes progress on delivering all the renewables projects laid out above.

The government’s problems don’t end there. While gas will only provide about five per cent of the electricity needed to run the system, actual gas plants will need to run 20-30 per cent of the time. But much like the nuclear fleet, our gas fleet is ageing and it’s not clear whether many of the existing plants will stagger over the finish line.

The government currently plans to carve out a special market for new build and refurbished gas plant – but, much like with offshore wind, the market knows that these plants are needed and will extract as much value as it can.

These are strong headwinds, but there is an unexpected chink of light. The government may be on course to achieve its 2030 target, albeit not in the way it expected. Many of the large numbers set out above presume significant increases in demand. If demand doesn’t increase dramatically – driven by heat pumps, electric cars and data centres – then a smaller generation build-out might be sufficient to decarbonise the power system. Given that demand for electricity has been declining for the last 20 years, this would be in keeping with the existing trend.

This may be excellent for the target, but this chink of light would in fact be the lights of an oncoming train of failure for the government’s other objectives. Progress on decarbonising heat and transport – not to mention progress on rolling out the data centres necessary for AI – will have gone seriously off-track.

The government’s Warm Homes Plan calls for 200,000 fewer heat pumps than the Climate Change Committee’s target. The Treasury has decided to levy a similar tax on electric vehicles that, when imposed in New Zealand, saw deployment fall by half. The newspapers are full of claims that AI is a bubble.

The triumphant crossing of the finishing line at the end of the decade may yet be realised – but the way we got there may mean it doesn’t feel that great. 

Starmer fends off coup his aides accuse Streeting of being behind, as Badenoch insists his position is still untenable

“Sir Keir Starmer on Monday insisted he was “not prepared to walk away” after he survived the most serious challenge yet to his leadership, even as fresh tensions emerged between the embattled UK prime minister and one of his leading rivals. Starmer’s authority was badly damaged after Anas Sarwar, Labour’s leader in Scotland, called on him to resign less than two years after winning power, saying there had been “too many mistakes”. The prime minister’s allies claimed that Sarwar’s move was co-ordinated with health secretary Wes Streeting, who is seen as a contender for the Labour leadership if and when Starmer leaves office. “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to wonder whether Wes knew about and encouraged him to make a move,” said one MP close to Starmer. Streeting’s team hit back, criticising Starmer’s Downing Street operation for trying to implicate the health secretary even after he had voiced some support for the prime minister. “We did not ask Anas to do this, he did not co-ordinate with Anas on this, Anas is the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, he is his own man, and Wes has the highest respect for him,” said a spokesperson for Streeting.” – FT

• ‘Too many mistakes’ Scottish Labour leader tells Starmer to quit now and blasts ‘it’s not good enough’ – as PM desperately clings on to career – The Sun
• Cabinet bounced into giving PM ‘a stay of execution’: Ministers back Starmer after 24 hours of silence as markets wobble in wake of Scottish Labour chief telling Sir Keir ‘go now’… amid war with Wes – Daily Mail
• Starmer still standing after the coup that never was – The Times
• Cabinet forced to back Starmer to save his skin – Daily Telegraph
• ‘This is my fight’ Starmer vows to fight on & beat rebels in Labour showdown as he pleads with MPs to battle Reform after Mandelson scandal – The Sun
• Keir Starmer tells MPs: I’ve won every fight I’ve been in — as it happened – The Times
• Keir Starmer says he is ‘not prepared to walk away’ after call for resignation – Guardian
• Starmer stumbles on as rivals balk at killer blow – FT

Editorial

• While Sir Keir clings on to his leadership, next to nothing is being done to fix UK’s broken borders or flailing economy – The Sun

Comment

• Starmer should go for the good of the country – Kemi Badenoch, Daily Telegraph
• Blimey, what a Monday! But the nasal knight will live to honk another day – Quentin Letts, Daily Mail
• Neither good nor serious – Ben Sixsmith, The Critic
• Labour’s toxic cult of masculinity has been Starmer’s undoing – Suzanne Moore, Daily Telegraph
• McSweeney’s exit sounds Starmer’s death knell – William Atkinson, CapX

Today

Wes Streeting blamed by Starmer loyalists for ‘coup’ attempt that failed

“A fresh row broke out between Wes Streeting and Downing Street on Monday night after the Health Secretary accused No 10 of briefing against him while he was out defending the Prime Minister. Downing Street accused Streeting of co-ordinating with Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar to call for Keir Starmer to quit over the Peter Mandelson scandal, the Health Secretary’s spokesman said. The hostile briefing against him took place while Streeting was doing an interview with Sky News in which he expressed support for the PM, they added. Despite that support, the Health Secretary seemed to be clearing the path for a potential leadership bid as he published his private WhatsApp messages with Peter Mandelson. As dark clouds gathered around the PM last week, Streeting’s name was once again thrown into the mix to replace him, leading to a vicious briefing war with other rivals, who made much of his friendship with the disgraced peer.” – Daily Mail

• Streeting accused of No 10 coup – Daily Telegraph
• I’m not prepared to walk away’: Starmer tells Labour MPs in showdown meeting as he fights for his future – but his woes deepen as Streeting reveals how he moaned about PM’s ‘no growth strategy’ in Mandelson WhatsApps – Daily Mail
• Starmer just one Cabinet resignation from being forced out, insiders say – The i
• Streeting told Mandelson Labour had no growth strategy in private texts – Daily Telegraph
• Wes Streeting’s Mandelson texts: ‘No growth strategy at No 10’ – The Times
• Streeting accused of coup against Starmer as plot to oust him exposed – Express
• Streeting wrote off his re-election chances in WhatsApp exchanges with Mandelson – Guardian
• Keir Starmer to force out cabinet secretary over Mandelson vetting – The Times

Comment

• Wes Streeting is disloyal, untrustworthy – and right on many things – Stephen Pollard, Daily Telegraph
• The Cabinet’s belated – and frankly unconvincing – show of loyalty has brought Starmer a stay of execution only. All it would take is a puff of wind to blow him over now – Jason Groves, Daily Mail
• What could a Starmer government possibly achieve now? – Isabel Hardman, Spectator
• Cabinet delighted to save Sir Keir… now they own him – Tim Stanley, Daily Telegraph

Angela Rayner for leader website went live briefly last month…

“An unfinished website claiming to launch Angela Rayner’s Labour leadership campaign was published temporarily in January, prompting further speculation that the former deputy prime minister could be gearing up for a contest to replace Keir Starmer. The Guardian was alerted to the website, which appeared to be under construction, by a source in the IT industry – before the US Department of Justice’s latest release of documents on Jeffrey Epstein threw the UK government into disarray. It was published, seemingly by accident, on a “staging site”, before being removed from the internet. The domain name angelaforleader.co.uk was registered within minutes of the apparent publishing error, at 9.48am on 27 January, with the same company – Webfusion – as her official parliamentary site. Rayner has denied any links to the website, with her team dismissing it as a “fake” that had neither been commissioned by her, nor with her knowledge, while one ally described it as a “false flag” operation.” – Guardian

• Angela Rayner ‘leadership website’ revealed as she claims it’s ‘nothing to do with her’ and steps back from killing off Starmer – after Scots Labour leader said he must go on day of drama – Daily Mail
• Rayner for leader’ site proves race to succeed Starmer is well under way – Guardian

Comment

• Why Angela Rayner would be the most abysmal PM of my lifetime – Stephen Glover, Daily Mail

Yesterday

Jimmy Lai sentenced to 20 years in jail by China just days after PM asked for his release

“Jimmy Lai will die in prison, his daughter warned, after the Hong Kong newspaper owner was sentenced on Monday to 20 years in prison under the territory’s national security law. Despite Sir Keir Starmer’s personal lobbying of President Xi of China in Beijing last month, Lai, 78, received the longest sentence given so far under the law after being convicted in December of sedition and collusion with foreign powers. Eight other defendants, including journalists at Lai’s former Apple Daily newspaper, were sentenced to terms ranging from six years and three months to ten years, at the end of a trial that has been condemned by western governments and human rights organisations.” – The Times

• Keir Starmer accused of ‘monumental diplomatic failure’ as China jails British citizen Jimmy Lai for 20 years just weeks after Prime Minister raised his plight during talks in Beijing – Daily Mail
• Jimmy Lai: will Hong Kong media tycoon die in jail? – Guardian

Today

Palace will cooperate with police over Andrew’s connections to Epstein

“Buckingham Palace has said it will support police in their investigation into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and his links with the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. The King emphasised his “profound concern” about his brother’s alleged conduct and said the Palace would provide help to police if it was requested. Thames Valley Police has expanded its inquiry into Andrew, who was already under investigation over allegations that he was introduced to a second victim of Epstein — someone other than Virginia Giuffre — at Royal Lodge in 2010. Andrew denies wrongdoing. The force confirmed that it would also assess allegations that Andrew leaked confidential information as a trade envoy.” – The Times

• King Charles says he will help UK police investigate brother’s links to Jeffrey Epstein – FT
• King Charles expresses his ‘profound concern’ at allegations of Andrew’s conduct after Epstein file release, as Buckingham Palace says it ‘stands ready to support’ the police – Daily Mail
• King Charles ‘ready to support’ police over claims about Andrew – Guardian
• King Charles’s U-turn in response to Andrew scandal proves one important thing – Express
• King ‘stands ready’ to support police probe into Andrew amid claims ‘he leaked confidential docs to paedo pal Epstein’ – The Sun

Reform-led Worcestershire set to issue England’s largest council tax rise

“Reform-led Worcestershire county council is likely to issue England’s largest council tax rise this April after it was given special permission by the government to increase it by up to 9%. Worcestershire is one of a handful of authorities whose requests to be allowed to increase local rates above the standard 5% cap from April have been accepted by ministers. Its cap-busting tax hike will be embarrassing to Reform UK nationally, which has made low council tax a political priority; while it has already led to one local Reform councillor quitting the party in protest. Ministers have also announced the government will clear about £5bn of historical debts accumulated by English councils who have overspent on special educational needs and disability (Send) services in recent years.” – Guardian

• Eric Pickles: ‘Cancelling local elections is unconstitutional’ – Daily Telegraph

Yesterday

For successful economic reform, the sums need to add up and Reform’s economics don’t – Mel Stride

News in Brief

• Our armed forces are hollow – and our enemies know it – Nick Carter, Spectator
• Who has the courage to fix Britain’s debt crisis? – Anne Strickland, CapX
• The conservative case for Keir Starmer – Mary Harrington, Unherd
• Call for the King – Nicholas Boys Smith, The Critic