Admitting that it was “painful to lose a sponsor”, Louis stood by the interview, claiming: “That’s what I do. That’s my unique place in the British broadcasting landscape. I’m willing to have difficult conversations and long may it continue.”

He continued: “The interview went out a couple of days after [a terrorist incident outside a synagogue in Manchester on the holy day of Yom Kippur], and there’s a lot of fear that’s real, and I want to acknowledge that.

“At the same time I’m very proud of how we handled the interview and how we did it. But I don’t want to minimise the feelings that are going on.”

He told his X followers: “I went on the podcast and as hard as the lobby groups and media tried, they couldn’t twist anything I said. So they have resorted to lobbying for Louis’ sponsorship to be pulled in an attempt to scare others out of giving me a platform.”

The creative director behind Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance is lifting the lid on how one of his halftime show’s most talked-about details came to be.

In a new interview with Variety, creative director Harriet Cuddeford explained that this came about when the NFL wouldn’t grant Bad Bunny’s team permission to use the 25 carts that would have been necessary to bring their plans to life on the field.

Their solution, apparently, was to ditch a lot of their intended foliage in place of around 380 costumed background artists.

Cuddeford admitted: “That solution of making the plant people, and then the plant people getting on and off in time, plus all the sets and all the performers – it was audacious in every direction. There were over 330 actual cast performers in addition to the plant people. It was just huge.”

She also shared: “There’s just so many variables in live TV. Even the weather. It was on a real grass field, and there’s no roof. We had to have backup rain plans.

“There were so many things that could have caused an issue. But it just kind of almost flawlessly unfolded before our eyes. We were all just like, ‘Wow, it worked!’.”

Pippa Heylings MP (Photography by Dinendra Haria)

8 min read2 min

As Nigel Farage kindly undertakes a thorough “spring cleaning” for the Conservatives, with the offer of a home for unhappy MPs, Kemi Badenoch’s right flank is falling away. She has not, however, changed tack to lean into her more centrist base.

With the Tories now opposed to their own 2050 net-zero target, the Liberal Democrats believe Badenoch is making a mistake – one they are happy to exploit.

Ed Davey’s party gained 60 seats from the Tories at the last election, mostly in rural and suburban areas across the south of England, and at the heart of their campaign was anger over sewage being discharged by water companies into rivers and seas.

According to Pippa Heylings, the Lib Dems’ energy spokesperson, turning the Conservatives further away from net-zero action will help her party “solidify” its grip on those formerly Conservative seats.

The 61-year-old MP for South Cambridgeshire points to polling from More in Common, which last year showed that around 25 per cent of those who voted Lib Dem consider ‘climate change and the environment’ to be one of the top issues facing the country – almost twice the proportion of the public as a whole.

“At the moment, you’ve got Reform, who are weaponising concerns around net-zero”, she says, and “the Conservatives recklessly rowing back on the very infrastructure they created to tackle climate change, which is the Climate Change Act”.

Many of the Tory MPs who now claim that the UK’s 2050 net-zero target is causing damage to the economy – like shadow cabinet member Andrew Bowie – were the same people who helped enshrine the goal into law in 2019.

“Andrew Bowie was Theresa May’s private secretary when that happened,” Heylings points out. “I can’t understand the cognitive dissonance of that – except pure politics.”

Badenoch and Farage, she says, are fighting over a relatively small minority of voters who are opposed to the net-zero target. 

The result? Lib Dems will find it easier to hold and gain seats.

“I think they’re underestimating the appetite for more on climate change,” she says of the Conservatives and Reform. “Our polling, consistently, is showing that. Energy companies are doing this polling as well, and they’re finding exactly the same.”

Voters in her constituency, she insists, “really worry” about global warming, and tell her so on the doorstep.

“What they say is: ‘I really want to know that we’re handing on a better world, because it’s a scary world now, and I want to hand on a better world to the next generation’.”

Speaking at last year’s Lib Dem conference, Heylings pledged that her party would take on “the myths being peddled” about net-zero by parties on the right. But are they doing that forcefully enough?

“We can always do better,” she admits. “We’ve got to find the cut-through in the media to hear us, but in the Chamber, time after time – if you just look at what the Lib Dems are doing – we are constantly challenging that.”

When Richard Tice chucks out his “net-stupid zero” phrase, Heylings counters it with “fracking stupid Reform”.

“Reform wants people to go down the pits again,” she argues. “They want them to go down the mines again. This is not going forwards.”

What does Heylings make of Energy Secretary Ed Miliband?

“I think he’s doing very well,” she says, particularly delighted by news that the UK has joined nine other European countries in accelerating the rollout of windfarms in the North Sea, which will be internationally linked via interconnector cables.

“We are actually looking at a collective offshore wind target that will power millions and millions of homes and will drive the costs down. To me, this is just absolutely brilliant.”

Her “one concern” is that amid such heavy focus on energy security, Miliband and his department are not paying anywhere near enough attention to the net-zero half of his brief.

“That’s why we brought forward the Climate and Nature Bill,” she says, referring to a Private Members’ Bill that the government refused to back. “We have to be looking at adaptation and resilience as well. How communities – and the environment that we’re in – can be resilient to the climate shocks we can no longer avoid.”

For Heylings, Labour’s most damaging move since taking office has been its decision to put nature against growth. Ministers have suggested there is a binary choice between, for example, protecting newts and getting homes built.

It is a “lazy” approach, she says. “You can do both growth and nature recovery. We’ve proven it. It’s what I’m dedicating my life to – that balance.”

The MP, a previous planning committee chair on her local council, adds: “I’ve worked with developers, and I know that if you get the rules clear, you’ve got policy certainty, they will absorb that need.”

Prior to her involvement in politics, Heylings worked internationally with NGOs, governments and charities, including eight years in East Africa and 15 years in Latin America and the Caribbean. In that time, she served as a policy adviser to the UK’s international climate policy programme, supported governments at global COP summits and played a key role in the creation of the Galapagos Islands Marine Reserve.

“It completely changed my outlook on the world,” she recalls. “On the interdependency of society, prosperity and natural resources. That was because I was seeing it at levels where people were living on the edge – literally, in terms of poverty.

“Climate change was already impacting those communities, so you could see immediately the impact of resource scarcity throwing whole communities into desperate situations.”

When she returned to the UK in 2012, she joined the Green Party, having been inspired by their manifesto for youth. After a couple of years, she found herself put off by the party’s anti-markets stance.

“I know that we need disruption, entrepreneurialism, innovation – we need the markets, in a regulated way. That’s what I found with the Lib Dems. I found governable policy.”

Since Zack Polanski’s election as leader, the Greens have overtaken the Lib Dems in national opinion polls, leaving her party trailing in fifth place. Does Heylings see Polanski as a threat to the Lib Dems’ ability to attract environmentally minded voters?

“What is needed right now is for the voices across all parties to be as strong as possible, to bring us back to the need to tackle the climate and environment crisis,” she replies. “So it’s good, for me, that there are loud Green Party voices as well and that they’re getting airtime.”

She appears similarly relaxed when asked why the Lib Dems are failing to make more progress of their own in the polls.

“Last year we had our best local elections and we beat – for the first time ever – both Conservatives and Labour in terms of the number of seats we won,” she says, adding that the party has continued to score impressively in council by-elections since then. “When you actually put ballots in boxes, people are choosing us.”

Yet there is clearly debate amongst the party’s MPs as to whether a wider policy prospectus and stronger messaging is needed.

One of Heylings’ disgruntled colleagues recently told The Guardian that Davey and his team must “move with significant pace towards the development of a national story for the party to tell”. Are they right about that?

“I don’t support anybody talking outside the party in that way,” says Heylings. “I think, like every party, we are internally working on that. There may be colleagues who want to work at a faster pace, but we are working on it.”

While she sees anonymous briefings to the media as unhelpful, Heylings insists she is “absolutely” in favour of an internal debate about what the national narrative should be, adding: “I want that to be as live and robust as possible – and we’re having it.”

Another reported complaint among her colleagues is that the Lib Dems lack a “big retail offer on the economy”. Does the party have one of those?

“It’s coming,” she whispers. “You will see the beginnings of that at the spring conference.”

She tells The House that this offer will “help define and differentiate us”, while also relating to her brief around climate and energy costs.

With that work under way, the MP goes so far as to claim it is possible that the Lib Dems could become Britain’s next official opposition.

“I’m very ambitious. I’m ambitious in terms of: we want to be the next official opposition. Absolutely.”

Some might say, given how the Lib Dems are currently polling, she sounds worryingly similar here to 2019-era Jo “next PM” Swinson. Does Heylings really believe that is doable? “Yes,” she replies.

“We are listening very hard right now. You can’t just go in and say, ‘This is what we’ll do’. We’re listening very hard to know, in the seats that we want to win, what else do we need to be offering, and how do we need to be offering it. You will be hearing from us.”

The Warm Homes Plan (WHP) shifts from a ‘fabric first’ towards a ‘heat pump first’ approach. Combined with the decision to end the Energy Company Obligation, which had a fabric-first approach, more homeowners will be encouraged to install low–carbon heating technologies.

But, are the right technologies being supported, and will rural households have access to the support needed to decarbonise their heating fairly and affordably?

While heat pumps will undoubt­edly play an important role in many homes, there is no single solution that fits the diverse realities of the UK’s rural housing stock. Many rural homes are older, harder‑to‑treat, and face significant challenges with insulation, electricity supply, and instal­lation. For these households, which often face higher levels of fuel poverty, mandating only electric solutions risks imposing high upfront and running costs, substantial disruption, and, ultimately, limited consumer uptake.

For rural MPs, the WHP must be read along­side the consultation on Exploring the Role of Alternative Clean Heating Solutions which closes on 10th February. This seeks to identify alternatives for the estimated 20 per cent of homes the government recognises might not be suitable for heat pumps.

Calor welcomes the government’s ambition and the prin­ciple of universal access outlined in the WHP. However, the plan lacks a strategic approach for rural homes as many of the technologies currently supported might not be suitable, locking them out of schemes. Fairness and consumer choice for rural households must sit at the heart of policy design.

 This means ensuring that Renewable Liquid Gases (RLGs) – such as BioLPG – are fully taken forward in the government’s heat strategy.

BioLPG is already available in the UK and is fully compatible with existing heating systems, and can cut carbon emissions immediately. BioLPG, offers up to 90 per cent carbon savings compared to conventional LPG, while producing dramatically lower particulate and NOx emissions than heating oil.

Heat pumps can cost upwards of £12,000 to install in off‑grid homes, even before fabric improvements are considered. The bill for some homes can be considerably higher. In contrast, switching to BioLPG requires no disruption, protects consumer choice, and ensures a just transition for house­holds that cannot easily electrify.

The consultation rightly acknowledges the potential of renewable liquid fuels. An ambi­tious and well‑designed Renewable Liquid Heating Fuel Obligation, similar to that already deployed in the transport sector, would unlock investment, give certainty to producers, and accelerate supply of RLGs at scale. It is vital the government continues its dialogue with industry to bring forward an obligation as this would enable rural households to transition quickly and affordably.

As the UK shapes its future heat policy, the priority must be a prag­matic, consumer‑led pathway that delivers emissions reduction while safeguarding rural communities. Heat pumps have an important role to play, but they are not the only answer. RLGs present a ready‑made, cost‑effective and low‑carbon solution that can work alongside electrification – not in competition with it.

If the WHP is to properly deliver for rural communities, RLGs like BioLPG must be given the full policy recognition they deserve.

NDA group apprentices attend the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Apprenticeships Parliamentary Fair.

5 min read21 min

Over the past month, the NDA group has played a central role at two key events in Parliament, the NIA’s Nuclear Week in Parliament, and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Apprenticeships Parliamentary Fair.

Both events were an opportunity to showcase the nuclear industry’s contribution to jobs, growth and energy security across the UK, and engage with parliamentarians and industry figures. 

The NDA group, responsible for safely decommissioning the nation’s earliest nuclear sites, played a prominent role in demonstrating how decommissioning is not the end of the nuclear story, but a vital enabler of the UK’s wider nuclear ambitions.

From securing legacy facilities and safely managing nuclear waste, through to unlocking opportunities to restore land for future beneficial use, the group is increasingly trusted to do more. In the coming years, this will also include taking on decommissioning of the UK’s seven Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor stations following defueling, reflecting the breadth of expertise within the group.

The NDA group, comprising Sellafield Ltd, Nuclear Restoration Services (NRS), Nuclear Waste Services (NWS), and Nuclear Transport Solutions (NTS), oversees one of the world’s most important environmental restoration programmes. It employs 19,000 people directly – equating to 32% of the UK’s civil nuclear sector – and supports over 40,000 more jobs through its supply chain, making it central to unlocking further economic growth.

Alongside the development of the existing workforce and bringing in experienced professionals with transferable skills from other sectors, key to sustaining progress in both decommissioning and the wider civil nuclear sector is the prioritisation of early careers. As the UK nuclear workforce is set to expand, sector-wide collaboration through the National Nuclear Skills Plan has underpinned this, with NDA subsidiary Energus providing graduates and apprentices to partner organisations.

The NDA group is currently marking National Apprenticeship Week, celebrating how apprenticeships deliver long-term skills, rewarding career routes and opportunity for communities surrounding NDA sites.

At the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Apprenticeships Parliamentary Fair, NDA group apprentices shared their journeys with parliamentarians. Grace Ormesher-Southall, a fourth-year Sellafield Design Degree Apprentice, spoke highly of her time at Sellafield, saying: “I’ve had the opportunity to complete work across civil engineering, structural calculations, architectural work, project management, and CAD design.” She also reflected that she has “enjoyed playing an active role in delivering complex projects that contribute directly to Sellafield’s mission”, sentiment shared by graduates across the organisation.

With 90% of NDA group apprentices successfully securing a role within the group at the end of their scheme, apprentices are well placed to go on and work in the sector, building skills and industry in their local communities and unlocking the growth this brings.

There are also 400 apprentices set to join the group this year, who will continue to play a crucial role in delivering the NDA’s mission on behalf of the UK.

Nationally, the number of those beginning their apprenticeship schemes has risen by nearly 8% this year, driven by increases in government funding and a growing number of roles.

Minister for Skills, Baroness Jacqui Smith, said:

“Nuclear decommissioning is creating exactly the kind of skilled, well-paid careers we need more of in this country – and these jobs are being built in communities that have long been the backbone of British industry.

“This government is investing in the workforce of the future to give employers greater flexibility to train the next generation.

“By supporting high-quality apprenticeships and skills programmes, we are helping people into good jobs while strengthening the industries our economy depends on.”

Early careers were also front and centre at Nuclear Week in Parliament’s Skills and Apprenticeships Fair, hosted by Lizzi Collinge MP in January. At the event, 11 NDA group apprentices from sites across the UK again engaged with MPs to share first-hand the work they are delivering, and the skills they are gaining from their participation in the NDA group’s extensive apprenticeship programme.

Speaking at the event, Keely Salter, an NRS Health Physics Apprentice and the National Skills Academy for Nuclear (NSAN) Apprentice of the Year 2025, said her apprenticeship had helped her develop key skills to advance her career “through learning from experienced members of the team and other on‑site staff.” She added that an apprenticeship was “an environment where learning never stops” – something she hopes to share with others in her work promoting nuclear industry opportunities to local schools.

Keely is one of 1,100 apprentices and graduates currently working within the NDA group, which sees investment into such programmes as central to the delivery of its mission. With £55 million of investment into early careers each year, the group is helping grow a nuclear workforce to enable the government’s ambitions for cheap, clean, homegrown energy. In addition to early careers programmes, the NDA sponsors 150 PhD students and five post-doctoral researchers, developing advanced skills to tackle its unique and complex engineering and environmental challenges.

For more information on apprenticeships in the NDA group, visit: Early careers – The NDA group

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When it rains, it pours, as they say – and this February, it looks like there’s going to be a fair amount of pouring.

With rain expected most of this month (at the time of writing), the outlook is looking pretty dreary for the next few weeks – but fear not, there are things you can certainly do (and buy) to help make it feel a lot less miserable.

From water-repelling bags to wellies to waterproof parkas, here are some of the best, if not most exciting, buys to help you brave the elements and stay comfortably dry in this terribly British weather….

1. ‘I’m sorry.’

FG Trade via Getty Images

2. ‘I was in survival mode.’

3. ‘I’m really proud of you.’

MoMo Productions via Getty Images

4. ‘Your life path is different than mine, but I support you.’

5. ‘Do you want advice, or would you prefer for me to listen?’

Westend61 via Getty Images

6. ‘I’m still here for you.’

Lazarus didn’t have a better revival, if you are in the Labour Party.

One day after the resignation of his Chief of Staff, the ‘brains of the operation’, Mandelson protogé and eventual sacrificial lamb, Morgan McSweeney, the man who relied so heavily upon him was on the ropes. Ugly for Starmer was the Monday mood in Westminster, and yet the coup that couldn’t deliver the coup de grace announced itself in Edinburgh.

It’s a really heartwarming thing to see so many people that you know have doubts, like you, about Starmer’s ability to do the job, suddenly spontaneously express their strong conviction that this ‘man of integrity’ in his borrowed suit and glasses is the man to lead them. Almost as if it was co-ordinated, by his allies.

The Cabinet had spent the middle of the day with their tanks strangely quiet, their ranks confined to barracks, waiting to see which way the wind blew, as Kemi Badenoch stalked the skies, and Sky, eager to add another ‘kill’ to the fuselage of her fighter plane. But despite Anas Sawar firing the opening salvos, battle did not commence.

And then arose a faintly ‘saintly’ Sir Keir from a meeting of the PLP. A shame the ‘best speech of his life’ took place behind closed doors, rather than the nasal Nightol he usually serves up in public, and suddenly all is well in the best of all possible Labour worlds. They’ve really turned the corner. The leopard has abandoned spots as yesterday’s fashion.

The truth is the PM ‘saved the day’, or rather his bacon, and will be back at the despatch box this afternoon, where the woman he once felt able to write off will no doubt be right up in his face.

Actually Starmer has merely bought time. How long? Probably the length of an HMRC tax investigation, or May.

I’m old enough to remember when, having survived Conference 2025 with aplomb, we warned that with Robert Jenrick in the Party (he was actually already in Reform – he just hadn’t told anyone yet) that May 2026 was the moment Kemi was most vulnerable.

However with a sustained personal, if not party, revival and Robert Jenrick actually gone that threat has not only reduced substantially, it’s flipped onto a Labour leader who once, filled with confidence, liked to dangle that threat over the Conservative leaders head at PMQs. I doubt he’d risk that today.

One wonders, since he’s expressed his full confidence in so many people shortly before they’ve fallen – or been thrown- under a bus, if he’s confident in himself? The illusion of the big Starmer reset being real, rather than him being taken hostage by his Cabinet and his party – will unravel as he is forced, sans Morgan, to ‘talk left and govern lefter’.

But I have a doubt? What’s Kemi Badenoch’s play here?

She’s gunning for the PM, and with a substantial stack of ammunition on his poor judgement over Mandelson, taking the risk with national security by making him Ambassador to Washington, she’s harried him and will continue to with relentless accuracy. There’s lots more to come out, even today.

But do the Conservatives, who shied from a leadership challenge in the last nineteen months for the very same reasons Labour have for the moment, really want Starmer out?

Strategically it’s a tricky question. What’s the end game we are after? Almost all potential replacements for our adenoidal overlord are flawed in ways that will either see them unable to win over the membership of the Labour party or those that can run a government so akin to socialism the country and economy implode further and faster than Keir and Rachel have delivered already.

ConservativeHome columnist Miriam Cates pushed at this in her role as GBNews presenter when interviewing Kemi this week. She asked the Conservative leader who she thought could fill Starmer’s shoes, and predictably but effectively Kemi said “me”.

Right so we get, I even fully support, that aim. Kemi for PM and all that. But we’re not there yet. The mission seemed to be ‘Operation Remove Starmer’ not Operation General Election. Indeed, Kemi herself has said some while back that Labour are not under any obligation to call an election until 2029 and with as majority their size they won’t. Angela Rayner made much of the fact that every new Conservative Prime Minister should have sought a fresh mandate from the people. She’d be reminded of that if she won any race.

Right now it will be a Labour somebody who’d replace Starmer.  The Reign of Rayner? Downing Streeting? back on the Milibandwagon? Engineering the destabilising impact on the country of a leadership contest mid term, a process the Conservatives now know is downright toxic to voters and have for that reason avoided having their own repeat, might look a little off. Quite a lot off actually.

And whilst they continue to crow – and I don’t remotely blame them – about poll leads, and uniparties, and bang on about Bangor, Reform, even with Farage performatively putting his party on an ‘election war footing’ are no more ready than the Conservatives to actually fight one right now. And our poll numbers still show, that an increasingly popular Kemi can’t save the Conservative brand alone.

Take candidate selection processes as just one example of why Reform and the Conservatives are not ready yet. Which is fine because it’s three years away, right?

Unless the cautious careful  planning, the deep dives into policy to build a platform for government are suddenly to be rushed forward to bring down a PM, which might in short order in a number of scenarios eventually bring down a Government.

Besides there are advantages of having a deeply unpopular and mortally wounded and weakened individual struggling on in the top job. Maybe that’s the plan. I can see that.It’s a bit party before country, but then Starmer is the hypocritical expert there.

Maybe I’m instinctively too cautious, maybe I lack the killer instinct, happier with the logic of phased  well thought out plan over four years to change, learn tough lessons, acknowledge mistakes, offer a consistent message to voters over years, and develop the language, policy and mindset to tackle the challenges the country faces, which no party, including our own, has yet demonstrated that it truly understands when it comes to the scale of the the remedies required – all of which will be bad medicine to the voters.

Credible radical unpopularism is, if you’ll forgive me, a bastard to sell on doorsteps.

I await PMQs with interest today. It will be hard to get the audible gasp of last week’s skewering. The fact at the PM is at the despatch box at all shows that so far, the when, if perhaps not the if, is still not fixed.

But if it is to be ‘Keir today, gone tomorrow’ I just wonder if we need to be careful what we wish for.