Forwards: Christiana Balogun (Bristol Bears), Sarah Bern (Bristol Bears, 79 caps), Hannah Botterman (Bristol Bears), Abi Burton (Trailfinders Women), May Campbell (Saracens), Mackenzie Carson (Saracens), Kelsey Clifford (Saracens), Amy Cokayne (Sale Sharks, vice captain), Maddie Feaunati (Exeter Chiefs), Liz Hanlon (Harlequins), Daisy Hibbert-Jones (Loughborough Lightning), Lilli Ives Campion (Loughborough Lightning), Sadia Kabeya (Loughborough Lightning), Haineala Lutui (Loughborough Lightning), Alex Matthews (Gloucester-Hartpury, vice captain), Annabel Meta (Trailfinders Women), Maud Muir (Gloucester-Hartpury), Marlie Packer (Saracens), Connie Powell (Harlequins), Demelza Short (Bristol Bears), Morwenna Talling (Sale Sharks), Jodie Verghese (Saracens, uncapped)

Backs: Holly Aitchison (Sale Sharks), Jess Breach (Saracens), Millie David (Bristol Bears), Zoe Harrison (Saracens), Tatyana Heard (Gloucester-Hartpury), Natasha Hunt (Gloucester-Hartpury), Megan Jones (Trailfinders Women, captain), Ellie Kildunne (Harlequins), Claudia Moloney-MacDonald (Exeter Chiefs), Lucy Packer (Harlequins), Sarah Parry (Harlequins), Flo Robinson (Exeter Chiefs), Helena Rowland (Loughborough Lightning), Emma Sing (Gloucester-Hartpury), Mia Venner (Gloucester-Hartpury), Bo Westcombe-Evans (Loughborough Lightning)

The Sunday Times Best Places to Live 2026 have been released – and a Cambridgeshire city has made it onto the list

A Cambridgeshire city has been named among the best places to live in Britain by The Sunday Times. Cambridge has been identified among the best places to live in the East of England in the list, released on Friday, (March 20).

Expert judges from The Sunday Times visited all the locations and assessed factors including schools, transport, broadband speeds, culture, access to green spaces, and the health of the high street to determine the best places to live.

Cambridge was named among the best locations in the East of England, alongside Norwich, Manningtree, Essex, Bedford, Chelmsford, Essex, Saffron Walden, Essex, and Woodbridge in Suffolk. The overall East of England winner was Manningtree in Essex. Norwich in Norfolk was named the best place to live in the UK.

Helen Davies, editorial projects director and Best Places to Live editor, says: “This guide is a great opportunity to highlight the best places in Britain. It is full of places that show that our village, town and city centres can still be full of life, as well as places bursting with natural beauty, culture, connectivity and most importantly a sense of community.

“Our expert team of judges visit every location on the list and talk to the locals to find out what they love about the place they live. These judges have travelled the length and breadth of the UK, from the Scottish Highlands to the Cornish coast, selecting the top towns and villages, suburbs and cities for the 2026 guide.”

There are more new entries than ever before in this year’s guide. Judges looked for thriving locations with a strong sense of community rather than famous names with high house prices.

Helen added: “One thing all our chosen locations have in common is that the people who live in them are proud to call them home.”

The list entry about Cambridge said: “Cambridge is an A*-list location, known for three bs: beautiful buildings, brains and bicycles – and now a fourth, biotech. The city of gowns and historic colleges has transformed into a fenland science and tech powerhouse. The economy has boomed – along with the population and traffic – and house prices have become turbocharged.

“Yet the magnetic pull of the place that has nurtured more Nobel prizewinners than any other is hard to resist. Cambridge has top-class schools and is also the UK’s cycling capital, with about a third of trips in the town made by bike. The city has strong cultural foundations, a lively coffee scene and an excellent selection of interesting places to eat and drink.”

The guide was sponsored by mortgage lender Lloyds Banking Group for the first time this year. The lender provided an average house price for each location.

“For many, navigating the housing market can feel overwhelming,” Kate Townson, Lloyds relationship and customer development director said. “At Lloyds, our aim is to support all home buyers, including those taking their very first step onto the property ladder, with clear guidance, practical tools and tailored products that help them move forward with confidence and clarity.

“Our partnership with The Sunday Times Best Places to Live aims to give trusted insight into communities across the UK, helping homebuyers to make confident, informed decisions about their future home. ”

All things considered, Chelsea have had better weeks.

Losing captain Reece James to injury, Champions League humiliation, Enzo Fernandez’s transfer bombshell and a suspended transfer ban were just the headlines. There was also Pedro Neto pushing a ballboy, a huge injury scare for Trevoh Chalobah and losing ground in the race for a top five finish after defeat to Newcastle United.

Good news has been hard to come by. But the sight of Levi Colwill back in training will have been a much-welcome lift.

Colwill has not played a minute of the season after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee the week before the campaign started in August, undergoing surgery in what was the biggest setback of his career to date. Suffice to say, his presence has been sorely missed.

Chelsea resisted interest from Manchester City and Liverpool after Colwill’s excellent loan spell at Brighton and emerged as one of the club’s truly untouchable figures last season. The 23-year-old started 35 of Chelsea’s 38 Premier League matches, finishing the 90 in each of them and scored the goal that secured their return to the Champions League on the final day of the season against Nottingham Forest.

While Trevoh Chalobah has had a fine season, they have missed a natural left-footer at the back. Wesley Fofana’s form has wavered while Tosin Adarabioyo cannot be considered a long-term solution.

Colwill was back in what Liam Rosenior described as ‘partial training’ ahead of the first leg against PSG last week.

Chelsea have not provided a clear timeline for when their defender will play again but there is an growing expectation he could play before the end of the season.

‘I’m hopeful,’ Rosenior said last month. ‘I’m hopeful because he’s an outstanding player. Again, no time frames.

‘You have to take these long-term injuries day by day. And also, it’s not about when he comes back, it’s about him staying fit when he is back.’

Behind the scenes, the hard work has been underway for months. Explaining the process the club’s medical staff and Colwill have undertaken, Stephen Smith, CEO and founder of Kitman Labs which specialises in injury welfare, explained the most important goal will be getting the player’s training levels back to where they were pre-injury before he is exposed to first-team football.

‘There will be an enormous, very gradual build up to his return to play,’ Smith said. ‘The plan in place for a return from an injury like this is extremely detailed. With an ACL, what you don’t want is an anterior translation where the top part of the leg slides forward on the bottom half of the leg because that is what essentially severs the ACL.

‘So you need your hamstring muscles to be incredibly strong. They will have done lots of work on jumping and landing because when you get into that landing position, that is where that translation or sliding occurs.

‘They will be doing lots of strengthening work on how you land from a jump, they will also be doing a lot of changes in direction and how you decelerate.

‘Obviously they will want him up to speed but how you slow down will be monitored. All his movement patterns will graduate from very low velocity to very fast speeds, moving from very controlled situations to very uncontrolled, chaotic situations.

‘This is a process that will have been building for months. They will be looking closely at his numbers from a normal game week, looking hit those pre-injury baseline levels and replicating the type of demands placed upon a player in training and games, hopefully without any adverse reaction.’

Chelsea still have trophy hopes this season in the form of the FA Cup while they are in the thick of a battle for a top five finish with Manchester United, Aston Villa and Liverpool.

Rosenior will be hopeful his defender can have a role to play in the run-in but for Colwill, he will also have one eye firmly on the World Cup.

There is intense competition at centre-half and the Chelsea star will not have the opportunity to impress Thomas Tuchel in the upcoming international break.

But Smith believes there is ample opportunity for Colwill to end his injury hell with a trip State-side.

‘There is plenty of time and importantly, he won’t be going into the summer with the same level of fatigue compared to other players who gave played all season. So there are some pros and cons to where he is at right now.’

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Hudson Reid, 2, spent four weeks in hospital after a sickness bug developed into a “one in a billion” illness.

A mum has shared a warning after her toddler “nearly died” when a sickness bug caused a deadly stroke.

Hudson Reid was just two when he came down with what mum Amber Davidson, 29, thought was just a sickness bug after he was vomiting and “couldn’t keep fluids down”.

But when Amber spotted her tot’s arm was “stuck up”, his legs were “shooting out straight” and he was making “weird” noises she rushed Hudson to University Hospital Crosshouse A&E.

Amber says “within five minutes” Hudson had five doctors working on him trying to resuscitate her son after he lost consciousness on the drive to the hospital.

Despite a clear CT scan, Hudson remained unconscious for the next five days and an MRI revealed he had a “massive” blood clot and bleed on his brain which had caused a stroke.

He was rushed to Glasgow Children’s ICU the following day after a neurologist realised the clot was caused by a “one in a billion” dehydration from his sickness bug, causing his blood to thicken.

Little Hudson spent four weeks in hospital and was given blood transfusions and put on blood thinners and despite being told he’d never “walk, talk or move again” he was up walking within a week.

Now seven, Hudson is attending school and is not letting “anything phase him” despite his brain being damaged from the severity of his stroke.

Mum Amber says the effects of the stroke “impacts him a lot” through his movement – and he is prone to falling over often, as well as having speech issues, though says he lives a “pretty much a normal life”.

Amber, a self-employed beauty therapist, from Kilwinning, who originally spoke to Sell Us Your Story, said: “He’s a complete miracle.

“Even the doctors are blown away with him he’s proved everyone wrong.

“I first noticed his arm that day.

“He was making a noise, not a cry but just a weird noise.

“I videoed him and sent it to my mother-in-law to see if she had any idea what was happening and because I know it’s common for kids to have seizures so thought it might be that.

“I phoned the doctors and said I think he’s having a seizure.

“They said they’d get a doctor to phone me back.

“Before they phoned me I just looked at him and took him to the hospital.

“Within five minutes there were five doctors working on him.

“They were trying to resuscitate him – he was dying in front of us.”

Hudson came down ill in September 2021 and when Amber spotted the unusual symptoms she sent a video to her mother-in-law and rang her GP for advise – and Amber says they said they would get a doctor to call her back.

A worried Amber took her son to A&E – believing he might be having a seizure – but CT scans came back clear.

He was admitted to the ward unconscious and did not wake for five days and every time he tried to fell into a seizure.

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An MRI the following day confirmed he had a blood clot and bleed on the brain.

Amber said: “The hospital told us there was nothing else they could do and that he was an unwell wee boy.

“The last hope was sending the videos I took to a professor in Glasgow – he’s a neurologist and says it was a one in a billion chance Hudson had dehydration from his sickness bug that caused his blood to thicken and caused the bleed on his brain.

“Hudson was rushed to Glasgow Children’s and was in the ICU having blood transfusions, blood thinners, everything to do with strokes.

“We were told Hudson wouldn’t walk, talk or move again.

“Within a week he was up and about.

“He still has a wee speech impediment and brain damage but he’s here, alive, walking and talking.”

Hudson spent four weeks in hospital recovering and had to be fed through an NG tube for six months as he was nil by mouth due to the stroke affecting movement in his mouth.

Now, Hudson sees occupational therapists every six months, a dietician once a month and has speech and language therapy once a week.

He also visits hospital twice a year for check-ups and has regular blood tests and heart scans.

Amber said: “His movement is great but he does fall a lot and as he progresses is the point we’ll see how brain damaged he is going to be.

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“We’re now at the point where other kids are progressing and Hudson is not and his brain damage is more apparent.

“We’re just taking it day by day just to see how he’s going to react.

“It’s just a waiting game.

“He’s such a sweet loving wee boy and has a heart of gold.

“He doesn’t let anything phase him.”

Amber wants to raise awareness of strokes in children from sickness bugs, and admits she didn’t know the signs to look out for.

“I think it’s the stigma that strokes happen to older people,” she says.

“Obviously there’s a lot of awareness of strokes with the Face, Arms, Speech thing but I didn’t think a two-year-old would be able to have a stroke which is why in my mind I never even thought that.

“Even now when I tell people my two-year-old has had a stroke they say ‘no way’ or ‘I didn’t know a stroke could happen to child that age’.

“At the time the adrenaline takes over and you go into mum mode.

“I feel like I was probably doubting myself or thinking ‘am I overreacting?’ before I took him to the hospital.

“I had no awareness of how severe the situation was.

“It was only a few months after I thought ‘that actually happened, Hudson actually went through that’ but at the time I was just in mum mode and survival”.

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A British postal worker has died while on holiday in Tenerife after a “freak wave” reportedly knocked her into rocks during a morning swim.

Rose Buck, 56, was enjoying a break in Costa Adeje when the incident occurred on 25 February.

Her daughter, Chantelle Buck-Forrest, 39, said that her mother, a “strong swimmer”, had gone to the beach after finding the hotel pool closed.

The area, known as the ‘blue lagoon’, is typically calm. However, Ms Buck-Forrest said that an unexpected wave “flung” her mum against the rocks, rendering her unconscious and fracturing her C2 vertebra.

Someone on the beach quickly noticed the unfolding tragedy and alerted lifeguards. Ms Buck was reportedly submerged for five minutes, and it took a further 13 minutes for rescuers to resuscitate her.

Her family rushed to Tenerife to be by her side. However, doctors made the difficult decision to turn off her ventilator on 6 March, citing extensive brain damage that made recovery impossible.

Ms Buck died in hospital in Tenerife on 8 March.

Tenerife was hit by a 4.1 magnitude earthquake on 25 February, which Ms Buck-Forrest believes was likely what caused the freak wave.

Ms Buck-Forrest, who lives in Bradford, West Yorkshire, said: “I’m absolutely devastated, I couldn’t stop crying. “It’s been horrendous.

“She’s a really strong swimmer, swimming is actually her sanctuary.”

She said the ‘blue lagoon’ is quite protected from waves and “all kinds of people swim in it”.

“She was swimming the perimeter of the lagoon and it was just one freak wave that’s taken her.

“There was reported an earthquake a couple of hours after what happened so I am guessing this earthquake has caused this freak wave and it just flung her against the rocks.

“She’s suffered a really serious head injury which broke her C2 upon impact and she will have gone unconscious straight away and she was just taken by the sea.”

Ms Buck-Forrest, who is a children’s playcentre director, said it was heartwarming to hear all the tributes to her beloved mother.

“Everybody who has contacted me has said she is either one of the nicest people they know or the nicest person they’ve ever met,” she said.

“The amount of people far and wide, people who I didn’t even know knew her, it’s been mind blowing, she’s touched so many people’s lives.

“When we were sat having breakfast, my brother was just sat scrolling on Instagram, and he just said ‘oh my gosh it’s International Women’s Day today’, so she died on International Women’s Day which felt like homage to her.

“Although I feel like I’ve got this massive loss and I’m holding so much sorrow, I feel the same amount of love and support and honour in the other hand.

“The amount of people that have contacted me has opened my eyes to what a woman my mum is and I feel honoured to be her daughter.”

NASA astronomers struck it lucky after the Hubble Space Telescope observed a comet in the act of disintegrating completely by chance.

The event was one that scientists believed they were unlikely to witness in real time.

And it was even more extraordinary as researchers had intended to observe a different comet, but were forced to change plans due to technical constraints.

The findings were published on Wednesday in the journal Icarus.

‘Sometimes the best science happens by accident,’ John Noonan, a research professor in the Department of Physics at Auburn University in Alabama, said.

‘This comet got observed because our original comet was not viewable due to some new technical constraints after we won our proposal. We had to find a new target – and right when we observed it, it happened to break apart, which is the slimmest of slim chances.”

The object, known as Comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS), can be seen progressively breaking apart in a sequence of images taken between November 8 and 10 last year.

Initially appearing as four bright objects, the largest fragment then splits further, with pieces drifting away from one another.

Noonan, a co-investigator on the study, said he did not realise the significance immediately.

‘While I was taking an initial look at the data, I saw that there were four comets in those images when we only proposed to look at one,’ he said. ‘So we knew this was something really, really special.’

Scientists have long attempted to capture such an event using Hubble, but the unpredictability of comet break-ups has made this difficult.

‘The irony is now we’re just studying a regular comet and it crumbles in front of our eyes,’ said principal investigator Dennis Bodewits, also of Auburn University.

‘Comets are leftovers of the era of solar system formation, so they’re made of “old stuff”—the primordial materials that made our solar system.

‘But they are not pristine – they’ve been heated; they’ve been irradiated by the Sun and by cosmic rays.

‘So, when looking at a comet’s composition, the question we always have is, “Is this a primitive property or is this due to evolution?’”

‘By cracking open a comet, you can see the ancient material that has not been processed.’

Hubble observed the comet splitting into at least four pieces, each surrounded by a glowing cloud of gas and dust known as a coma. While ground-based telescopes saw only faint bright patches, Hubble’s high resolution allowed scientists to distinguish individual fragments clearly.

The observations were made shortly after the comet passed its closest point to the Sun – known as perihelion – when heating and stress are at their greatest. Scientists believe the comet began breaking up about eight days before Hubble captured the images.

However, the team has identified a puzzling delay between the break-up and the brightening detected from Earth.

One theory is that a layer of dust must first form over newly exposed ice before being blown away. Another possibility is that heat builds up beneath the surface before ejecting material into space.

‘Never before has Hubble caught a fragmenting comet this close to when it actually fell apart. Most of the time, it’s a few weeks to a month later. And in this case, we were able to see it just days after,’ said Noonan.

‘This is telling us something very important about the physics of what’s happening at the comet’s surface. We may be seeing the timescale it takes to form a substantial dust layer that can then be ejected by the gas.’

Early observations suggest the comet is chemically unusual, with significantly lower levels of carbon than typically seen. Further analysis using Hubble’s instruments is expected to reveal more about its composition and, potentially, the origins of the solar system.

Now reduced to a cluster of fragments about 250 million miles from Earth, the comet is travelling through the constellation Pisces and is expected to leave the solar system permanently.

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EXCLUSIVE: Beyond Paradise returns to BBC One on March 27 with Kris Marshall discussing major changes, including one character’s departure

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Kris Marshall, star of Beyond Paradise, has shared insights into his co-star’s departure from the BBC series. The spin-off from Death in Paradise is set to return on 27 March, with Humphrey and his team tackling a series of crimes in Shipton Abbott. However, one character will be conspicuously absent from the fourth series.

Detective Humphrey Goodman will face a distressing choice in the forthcoming series after being told he must release a member of his police station team. Additionally, Humphrey finds himself under new management after learning that his former superior, CS Charlie Woods (portrayed by Jade Harrison), has transferred to a different division.

Discussing his co-star’s departure and the necessity to dismiss a team member, Kris exclusively revealed to Reach PLC, “I mean, there always has to be some kind of challenge for Humphrey in terms of, because, like I said, you know, otherwise he just wanders around.

“I mean, it’s that paradox, isn’t it, about TV detectives, they’re sort of fish out of water, they don’t really like rules, and yet they exist in one of the most sort of institutional, authoritarian, hierarchies, the police force.

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“He hates any kind of authority, he hates rules, he hates being told what he has to do, and so it’s thrust upon him, and it literally comes knocking on his door as it does. You know, he really detests that, really dislikes it, and he doesn’t like the pressure,” reports the Express.

Discussing his character’s new superior, portrayed by Vincent Franklin, the Humphrey Goodman star continued, “And it’s held by the fact that, in terms of the storyline, you know, Vincent Franklin, who is just an absolute genius actor playing his sort of nemesis in this.

“It just adds to that sort of, and he does it with such beautiful greasiness. It’s sort of wonderful. It sort of adds to the pressure for Humphrey, and so it’s a real stress for Humphrey moving forward because he is a kind of, like, bury your head in the sand kind of guy, when it comes to things like that.

“Solving puzzles or crimes or, you know, he’s like a dog with a bone. But, you know, when it comes to sort of real life, he’s like, well, surely if I put my head over here, that will just go away.”

Sally Bretton, who portrays Martha Lloyd, Kris’s on-screen spouse, also revealed insights into Martha and Humphrey’s relationship, and where the current series begins. The actress explained that residing on a boat was never part of Martha and Humphrey’s original vision.

She revealed, “Martha starts reflecting on, ‘Was this a bit of an unexpected twist anyway? Going to live on the boat as it wasn’t really the plan originally’.

“And maybe now that they’re married and they want to focus a lot on settling a little bit more, and maybe it’s time to start having a look at a house, and I think they want to focus on each other and have all of the fun and everything that they always have done, but they’ve been knocked off center a lot.”

Beyond Paradise is set to return on 27 March at 8pm on BBC One.

When brewery and pub chain BrewDog invited customers to become shareholders through its “Equity for Punks” scheme, it appeared to represent a new model of capitalism. It invited beer enthusiasts to invest in the company and become small shareholders. This allowed the Scottish firm to present itself as a community built around rebellion, identity and participation.

For a time, the BrewDog model looked remarkably successful – the company was once valued at £2 billion. But after its sale to American cannabis and alcohol firm Tilray for just £33 million, it is clear that there is more to the story.

The real story here is not about one craft brewer. It is about a broader shift in modern capitalism, where companies increasingly use narratives to mobilise communities and raise capital. But at the same time, the institutional rules of finance still determine who gets what and when.

BrewDog raised substantial capital (said to be £75 million) from thousands of small investors who were already loyal to the brand. Instead of relying exclusively on banks, venture capital or institutional investors, the company mobilised its own community to fund growth. Customers became shareholders, while the firm strengthened its reputation as a disrupter within the industry.

Then came the bar closures, job losses and BrewDog’s sale to Tilray. These developments suggest that small investors from the Equity for Punks programme will see little financial return.

In general, supporters tend to see themselves as partners in an entrepreneurial journey. Yet legally they remain minority investors. And minority investors occupy a very specific position within the institutional architecture of capitalism.

The BrewDog story is a reminder that markets run on stories as well as money. The effect of this has been to blur the boundary between customer and investor.

We believe that people rarely invest only because of spreadsheets. Our research on entrepreneurship shows that economic behaviour is shaped by trust, narratives and shared identity as much as by financial indicators. And the American sociologist Mark Granovetter argued that markets are “embedded” in social networks, meaning that people invest in people – and in their stories.

This resonates with our broader research on how economic exchanges, including investments and purchases, are also often sustained through these factors. BrewDog’s Equity for Punks model captured this dynamic perfectly.

But there’s also a question around what it really means to be part of a community when the balance sheet starts to matter.

Cold beer, cold reality

Community narratives may mobilise people to invest their money, but a body of strict rules and regulations shapes the outcome. Three points here are particularly important.

First, while the equity-public model undoubtedly has appeal, it’s also true that companies operate within legal frameworks that determine ownership rights and the order in which creditors are repaid if the company is liquidated or sold.

Second, lenders and structured investors typically enjoy protections that small retail investors, like BrewDog’s punks, do not.

Third, corporate finance works through a hierarchy, so it should be recognised that this places creditors ahead of shareholders when companies face financial stress. Shareholders are last in line to recoup their money from a company – after lenders, tax authorities, employees and suppliers.

When customers invest in companies they admire, they often interpret their role differently from conventional shareholders. Under BrewDog’s Equity for Punks programme, thousands of customers bought small stakes in the company not just for potential financial returns.

This point resonates with our research on how businesses and communities interact. It shows that economic behaviour is often shaped by the rules, expectations and relationships that surround markets. In practice, this means that people do not make decisions based only on prices or profits.

None of this suggests bad faith on the part of companies like BrewDog. It simply reflects the fact that markets operate through institutions.

Episodes like the BrewDog one serve as a reminder of a basic feature of modern capitalism. That is, when financial pressure appears, institutional rules take over.

All that being said, community-driven investment models will probably become more common. Digital platforms make it easier than ever for firms to mobilise supporters around shared narratives and identities. But at the same time, the institutional rules that govern corporate finance have not evolved at the same pace as these new forms of participatory capitalism.

If modern capitalism increasingly invites people to invest not only their money but also their faith, the gap between narrative and institutional reality will become harder to ignore. Communities may power the stories that fuel entrepreneurship. But when the balance sheet tightens, it is still institutional rules that decide who gets paid.

BrewDog did not respond to a request to respond to the claims made in this article.

The Trump administration pulled the rug out from underneath US federal climate policy in February, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) overturned the landmark 2009 “endangerment finding”. Now, the official policy of the US government holds that greenhouse gases do not pose a risk to human health.

The move has opened a new frontier for Donald Trump to govern without being constrained by evidence or in a manner that represents the majority of Americans, who support pro-climate policies. It also follows a year in which the US president and his allies have hollowed out American climate leadership.

Since taking office, Trump and his allies have rolled back clean air standards for almost anything with a tailpipe or smokestack. In January 2026, they even instructed the EPA to stop estimating the value of lives saved in the agency’s cost-benefit analyses for new pollution rules. This could lead to looser controls on pollutants from industrial sites across the country.

As US climate leadership recedes into the rearview mirror, one question remains: will any nation – and China in particular – rush in to fill the gap? I wish there were a simple answer. But enthusiasm for climate leadership is backsliding, and not just from the US government.

Even as renewable energy installation continues worldwide, there are some signs of retreat. Across the world, companies are quietly shedding their net-zero targets. US car manufacturers Ford and General Motors also recently wrote off more than US$25 billion (£18.5 billion) of investment in electric vehicles because consumer demand has failed to match their forecasts.

It is no coincidence that this breakdown in the global climate consensus comes at a time when tensions are rising worldwide. The global order is reeling over Trump’s war in Iran and sabre-rattling over Greenland. Meanwhile, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has dragged into its fifth year without any clear prospect of peace.

Climate collaboration requires a belief that everyone is pitching in. When global institutions and norms look weak, national leaders worry about being the last honest participant in a deal that everyone else has abandoned. This is as true for countries as for human beings: nobody wants to feel like they’ve been duped.

However, there are some signs of hope. Demand for clean energy isn’t going away overnight. Renewable energy is often cheaper than fossil power, even without subsidies. A July 2025 report by the International Renewable Energy Agency found that nine in ten new renewable projects are on track to generate cheaper power than fossil fuel alternatives.

Just as important is the fact that citizens around the world continue to suffer from the effects of breathing polluted air, which the World Health Organization estimates causes 7 million deaths worldwide each year.

Even as climate concern falters, some of the world’s most populous cities, such as New Delhi in India, are under growing pressure to protect their residents’ health. They are likely to continue reducing their use of fossil fuels to heat homes, generate electricity and move people around.

Meanwhile, China is on a glide path to fill part of the void opened by America’s climate retreat. It already dominates certain clean energy technologies, holding a near-monopoly on battery, solar panel and fuel cell production. Chinese companies now manufacture more electric vehicles than every other nation combined.

Cementing its position as the new global climate leader would also earn China diplomatic “soft power,” especially among developing nations where Beijing can offer clean energy infrastructure plus the loans to finance it.

But, at the same time, China has shown a steady unwillingness to back strong political leadership on climate action. China’s leaders are bullish on renewable energy when it serves their economic interests. However, they are broadly resistant to the sort of strong international pressures that could stabilise global temperature rise.

It wasn’t until 2025 that China promised to actually reduce its emissions. And its recent commitments, which include a pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 10% below peak levels by 2035, fall well short of what analysts say will be necessary to keep global warming below 1.5°C.

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With US credibility rapidly eroding, the 21st century seems poised to slide deeper into a style of governance that is characterised less by rigorous analysis than by the whims of its leaders.

The silver lining is that demagoguery has a shelf life. Trump’s approval rating has fallen to second-term lows, with polls showing him at -17 points. The demand for clean air, cheap energy and competent governance doesn’t go away because one administration decides to ignore it.

One day Trump will eventually fade from the political landscape. Climate change will not.