Stewart Harper is President of the National Conservative Convention, a member of the Board of the Conservative Party, and chaired the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester in October 2025.

Chairing last year’s Party Conference in Manchester was a personal honour, with many highlights not least of which was the closing speech from our Party Leader.  Every person I have spoken to since then talked about that speech being a turning point.

Across the four days we demonstrated something very important: that when our members come together, we renew not just our message, but our confidence. Our ideas were sharpened, our energy was restored, and the Party reconnected the people who make it work day in, day out.

Since our time in Manchester, Kemi Badenoch and the Shadow Cabinet have continued to work together – to hold the government to account and demonstrate that it is only the Conservative Party who are developing credible and deliverable plans to get Britain working again.

We are continuing that in Harrogate.

But the truth is, we can’t succeed unless the strengths demonstrated in Manchester percolate throughout the Party.  Put it simply, as I said in my opening speech at Conference – Kemi, and the Shadow Cabinet, cannot do it alone. The momentum we have built together must not be kept in a box until the Party Conference comes around again. So this March, Spring Conference returns – this year at the Harrogate Convention Centre – and every Party Member should join us.

Here’s why: Spring Conference brings together activists, councillors, candidates and volunteers from across the country for a weekend focused on ideas, skills and connection.  Not sitting still, determining what we might do in three years’ time, but actively developing ourselves and our movement in that renewal – the fruits of which are already visible.

Delivered in partnership with the Campaign Academy and the Conservative Councillors’ Association, the programme is designed to be practical and engaging. And unapologetically optimistic about the Party’s future. And it’s an opportunity to socialise together too – including with a members’ dinner on Saturday night – meeting up with friends and colleagues from across the country.

 So, will you join us in Harrogate?

 Our Spring Conference offers members a valuable opportunity to hear directly from senior figures within the Party, including the most senior members of the Shadow Cabinet, and to gain first-hand insight into a growing and evolving renewal programme. It is a chance for every Party Member to engage – not through headlines or soundbites, but through thoughtful discussion and shared experience.

 Alongside the political content, Spring Conference is firmly focused on delivery.

Development sessions that are designed to “level up” your local campaigns, equipping you with practical skills that you can take back. From campaigning and organisation, to leadership and development, the emphasis is on empowering ourselves to win in May – and to win well.

From crafting your message, establishing an electoral strategy, harnessing the opportunities to use AI in campaigns, having persuasive conversations with voters (or communicating persuasive messages in writing), and ensuring that our supporters get to the polling station (or return their postal vote) in time for the hard work to count.

We’ve brought together a strong range of speakers – both from our own professional team and volunteers, and also from the Leadership Institute.  Based in the US, but working around the world, the Leadership Institute is renowned for equipping grassroots activists and emerging leaders with practical, hands-on skills in campaigning, communications and organisation-building, bringing proven, high-energy training methods to our conference.  We’ve been working in partnership with them for some time, including in developing our own Campaign Leadership Programme which was reviewed in a recent article on this site.  By learning from the best in the world, we can continue the renewal our Party needs.

Of course, there will be some who say that they can’t afford to take time away from their campaigning – and I sympathise.  But equally, we have to recognise that investment of time in development is as important as (or perhaps more important) than continuing the approaches already tried and tested.

For those who have elections in 2027 and 2028, in particular, it is essential that we put the work in now.  For as former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who joined us in Manchester, is fond of saying: “You can’t fatten the pig on market day.”

But no Party Conference is all work – one of its great strengths is its atmosphere.  We saw that in Manchester, and I am sure the same will be true in Harrogate. Yes, having lived in Yorkshire for more than 20 years I know I’m biased – but Harrogate is worth visiting in itself. Harrogate offers the perfect blend of elegant spa-town charm, Yorkshire hospitality and some pretty decent venues, making it an inspiring and welcoming place to come together.

With a full programme of social events, the weekend offers opportunities to relax, network and reconnect with members from across the country. It’s where campaign tips are swapped over coffee, friendships are formed over dinner, and the shared sense of purpose that binds the Party together is most visible.

Spring Conference is about enjoying being part of the Conservative and Unionist Party, and remembering why that matters for our country.

We have a great programme of social events planned, and I know that when people leave Harrogate they will do so with a renewed determination to do all we can in the service of our aims.

Places at Spring Conference are limited, with some events already sold out. If Manchester showed what our members can achieve together, Harrogate offers the chance to build on that success – sooner rather than later – and to ensure that it is not just on the national stage we show our best side, but in every election battle in the coming years.

Spring Conference 2026 is not just another date in the diary – for someone else and not for you. It’s an opportunity for Party Members to learn, connect, and to be ready to shape what comes next.

Join us from 6 to 8 March – tickets are available from www.conservatives.com/spring-conference/

The Saudis have castigated ‘heir to the throne’ William for his Epstein-linked uncle during his visit to Saudi Arabia this week. Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy with an appalling human rights record, but it is still able to look down on the UK and US establishment’s cosiness with murderous paedophiles.

Saudi media challenged the royal in Riyadh, with a reporter demanding to know whether the Windsors have “done enough around the Andrew and Epstein issue”. He ignored the question and walked off. That’ll be a ‘no’, then.

The US justice department’s latest, intentionally-chaotic release of Epstein files show further disturbing images of Andrew with anonymised girls. They also show Andrew leaking confidential information and Epstein trafficking another young woman to the UK for him. Mountbatten-Windsor paid now-deceased Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre around £12m in an out-of-court settlement. This was funded by the monarchy and therefore by UK taxpayers.

Mountbatten-Windsor was stripped of all titles in December 2025. The public has repeatedly challenged his brother Charles in recent weeks for his failure to take more serious action against him. Charles has now said he will ‘support’ the police investigation.

It remains to be seen how exactly the royal family intends to make any sort of amends to the victims and survivors shoved into the spotlight during this debacle.

Featured image via FCDO

Glasgow, January 2026: A candlelit vigil for Iranian protestors | Image by: Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert / Alamy

4 min read7 min

It’s no secret that the situation in Iran is dire. What’s more difficult to determine is an accurate picture of precisely what is going on. We know that the protests that began towards the end of December spread fast and wide, on a scale not seen before in the catalogue of protests that have erupted intermittently, and been quashed violently, since the start of the millennium. This time, it was not only dissatisfaction with social issues but the virtual collapse of the economy which drove even the bazaaries – or shopkeepers – onto the streets in droves.

That the current regime has lost any sense of moral authority over the vast majority of Iranians is clear. Yet the Islamic Republic persists in power through a combination of breathtaking brutality and lack of a suitable alternative. This regime is undoubtedly in its final death throes – the violence demonstrates a desperate struggle to survive another day at any cost – but it’s impossible to say how long it will be before the final breath; will it be quick or long and drawn out? Either way it’s likely to be painful. 

And what then? The real question is what will follow once the Islamic Republic collapses. There is no credible opposition around which others will coalesce, only factions and groups, each with their own agendas (some, incidentally, just as dangerous as the status quo). Whatever happens, it must be the Iranian people who decide their fate and build for themselves a better future. Certainly, the support of the international community is essential, but a new government imposed by, say, America, with a puppet leader will not do. That way lies the ongoing cycle of dissatisfaction and corruption, with a people beholden to the whim of external powers, ultimately involved, not because of altruism but for their own self-interest. 

A new government imposed by, say, America, with a puppet leader will not do

Right now, foreign media are banned from entering the country and the internet shutdown has virtually cut Iran off from the rest of the world. At best there are sporadic reports; brief spells during which news leaks out and families here, desperate with worry, get snatches of information. I’m trying to stay in touch with a few people, but my WhatsApp messages remain, sometimes for days, showing one tick only – unseen and unread at the other end.

Reportedly, there are anything between a few thousand and 30,000 dead; no one disputes that many of them are young people. Whatever the precise number, it’s too many. And there are countless more injured or in prison. The people I’m in contact with tell me terrorist groups were rampaging the streets, killing and beheading government officials, while the regime didn’t distinguish between them and innocent protesters, clamping down with unprecedented violence. 

There are rumours that medical staff treating the injured have been executed. One message I received a few days ago said, “As far as I know, everyone who helped the wounded has either been arrested or killed.” Another, that though “some medical staff were killed in the clashes”, reports of their “execution” is exaggerated. Unsurprisingly, the protests are getting weaker – I’m told they’re now restricted to rooftop chants at night-time – and so, while the country is gripped by “a great sorrow”, inevitably the media are losing interest. I suspect it will only be a matter of time before the cycles of protest and violence repeat themselves.

Meanwhile, the US is amassing troops, threatening to attack Iran, at the same time, holding conversations, hoping to reach some kind of resolution. The future is uncertain and people continue living under violent oppression, unimaginable fear and the catastrophic effects of a failed economy. And these are a proud people – the product of a once great and ancient civilisation; ordinary people longing for freedom, justice, the opportunity to live their lives to the full. They are my countryfolk and I weep for them; they deserve better, much better.

Lord Bishop of Chelmsford is a Lords Spiritual peer

The Canary has revealed how during a 12-month period, water companies leached £22.4m from customers’ Universal Credit via the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

However, in obtaining the figure, we also discovered that the DWP has no record of what each company has been seizing from welfare claimants. When already vulnerable benefits claimants are in debt to water companies, the DWP will then allow these privatised water companies to deduct benefits from desperate claimants.

Apparently it needs saying: water is not a luxury

DWP doesn’t know the scale of water companies’ Universal Credit deductions

The Canary submitted freedom of information (FOI) requests to the department for regional and parliamentary constituency data on water deductions. In order to comply with the request, it appeared that the DWP had to collate this data from its records. In other words, until the Canary queried the proportion of third party deductions the water industry had made, it was not information the DWP had already calculated.

What’s more, through a series of further FOIs, the DWP admitted to the Canary that it doesn’t know how much each water company has deducted individually.

The DWP said that this was because:

data on deduction requests from specific organisations or the date a deduction request was made is not readily available for Universal Credit.

As such, it told the Canary that to “explore the available datasets” and “collate the relevant data” would take it over the cost limits in the FOI Act. But the admission ultimately underscored how the DWP has made no efforts to assess the scale of individual companies clawing back aggressive arrears through the benefits system.

What water companies took £22.4m in Universal Credit?

The Canary also attempted to find out how this divided up for water versus sewerage services. But in response to a further FOI, the DWP said that:

The Universal Credit deductions data does not state the name of a water company owed money, or reason for the debt, and as the water arrears data is not broken down, we cannot determine whether any deduction is for water supply or sewerage.

Unfortunately, outside official statistics, it’s really difficult to get a read on individual water company deductions.

The first reason for this is that water supplier coverage overlaps in some constituencies. So, while we can use obtainable data showing coverage by constituency, companies don’t actually always supply water services to all postcodes within these electoral boundaries.

It’s also not the case constituencies always have the same sewerage providers to their water suppliers. In other words, the deduction could come from either company administering these services. That further complicates calculating what each company is deducting.

However, under the Universal Credit priority order, the water supplier makes deductions first for any arrears. The company providing wastewater services can only start taking deductions once the water debt is cleared.

Because it comes first in the order of priority, it’s probable that the lion’s share of these deductions is for water supply services. Ultimately though, it’s not possible to establish from the data available how much is for water, and how much for sewerage arrears.

Water companies won’t say, naturally

The Canary contacted 13 of the largest water and sewerage companies. We asked them directly to provide figures on their Universal Credit deductions. Predictably, not a single company offered this information. By and large, despite a few initially responding that they would look into this, water firms ignored our query. Only two companies eventually came back to confirm that they were not willing to supply these figures.

A spokesperson for Pennon Group, South West Water’s parent company, responded saying that:

The information you have requested is commercially sensitive but all Universal Credit deductions are managed in line with DWP guidelines.

Meanwhile, Dwr Cymru came back with a similar dismissal:

We’re unable to provide specific figures for Universal Credit deductions received by Dŵr Cymru for 2024 and 2025 as this information is commercially sensitive.

However, we can confirm that deductions are managed in line with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) guidelines, including the Fair Repayment Rate and deduction cap changes, which aim to ensure affordability for customers.

Our focus remains on supporting customers in financial difficulty with affordable payment arrangements.

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In both instances then, water firms leaned on the claim it’s “commercially sensitive” information to refuse the data.

In reality, it’s nonsense for them to suggest this. For one, water companies already publish data about their ‘bad debt’. As just one example, they will include financial information on County Court Judgements (CCJ) against their customers in annual reports.

More likely, firms fear the reputational fallout of the public learning just how much they’re hammering their poorest customers.

The DWP should turn its attention to the real fraudsters

The Labour government continues to justify brutal disability benefit cuts and dystopian surveillance with nonsense rhetoric around the so-called ‘benefits bill’. Yet, the DWP couldn’t put figures to the welfare it’s funnelling into the pockets of privatised water firms.

Perhaps it’s time the DWP turned its attention to the corporate criminal water corporations draining the welfare system for profits they neither need, nor deserve.

Featured image via the author

The changes are intended to make the planning system simpler and clearer, and for the most part are a welcome addition to the Government’s drive to facilitate more housebuilding and infrastructure development. However, the omission of some crucial wording relating to mineral planning could unintentionally undermine these ambitions.

Guidance on ‘facilitating the sustainable use of minerals’ can be found on page 49 of the draft text, and is rightly included under the broad heading of ‘delivering homes and supporting growth’, with a presumption in favour of sustainable development applied to mineral extraction outside of settlements.

This is welcome, and the right thing to do for the Government’s ambitions. The mineral products sector is the largest supplier to the UK construction sector, producing 400 million tonnes of essential materials and products for construction uses every year, including almost 200 million tonnes of indigenous crushed rock, sand, and gravel extracted from quarries across the country. In doing so, the sector directly employs nearly 90,000 highly skilled, permanent jobs, often in rural locations.

However, in the apparent pursuit of brevity, the Government has eliminated some important references to well-established policy principles that are in the current NPPF.

Maintaining a sufficient supply of minerals to provide the infrastructure, buildings, energy and goods that the country needs is no longer described as “essential” in the draft text. The need for mineral planning authorities to plan for a “steady and adequate supply” of aggregates is also gone.

The word ‘essential’ is an important and accurate description, and puts meat on the bones of the ‘substantial weight’ to be given to the benefits of mineral extraction.  It is also a counterweight to the tendency of council planning committees to reject appropriate applications for new mineral extraction, often leading to appeals, which are costly and time-consuming for all involved. This is often seen as discouraging businesses from investing in applications for new extraction altogether.

This is particularly important when the updated NPPF includes specific references to ‘critical and growth minerals’, such as rare earths. Downplaying the essentiality of ‘other’ minerals like crushed rock, sand, and gravel which are not included in that category implies, wrongly, that they are not essential for growth and risks making the planning system more adverse for them.

Likewise, the words ‘steady and adequate’ are more than just a turn of phrase which can be cut if the overall gist remains. They have been an accepted principle in mineral planning for decades, and have been cited in decisions and local plans to justify allocating sites for, and permitting in a timely manner, new mineral extraction and ensuring that the supply of materials is not disrupted.

It has arguably never been more important to preserve these explicit references in the NPPF. Already, a combination of unnecessary cost, delay, uncertainty, and bureaucracy in the planning system has driven a decline in permitted aggregates reserves, despite sluggish sales due to low construction levels.

For every 100 tonnes of crushed rock the industry sells, it only obtains permission to extract a new 33 tonnes. The figure for sand and gravel is 61 tonnes, but the existing level of sand and gravel reserves is already much lower, and individual sites are shorter lived.

If the Government’s planning reforms are successful in driving more construction activity, but there is no corresponding uptick in new quarry permissions, this squeeze on supply will intensify and, in the medium term, could hamper the Government’s ability to deliver the houses and infrastructure this country needs.

While there are some positive steps in the updated NPPF which should help facilitate more mineral extraction, the Government should take the simple step of reinstating the “essential” and “steady and adequate” wording to make sure its own work is not undone.

But that should be a first step. The Government can do even more to ensure the updated NPPF supports the mineral products sector to continue supplying, on a long-term, sustainable basis, the foundations for the construction boom ministers want to see.

For example, the draft text already includes a very positive line requiring that particular importance be given to ‘facilitating the exploration and extraction or processing of critical and growth minerals’ when assessing the benefits of mineral development. This should be extended to all minerals of national and local importance, including construction aggregates and industrial minerals, rather than being reserved for that specific category.

Secondly, the draft text currently only expects that spatial development strategies (SDSs) make provision for mineral supply ‘where appropriate’. This caveat should be deleted, and SDSs should not be able to opt out of planning for the supply of minerals to enable the growth and development they exist to drive. Those authorities that don’t have mineral resources within their areas will be wholly dependent on the supply of minerals from elsewhere to meet their ambitions.

Just as the Government’s planning reform drive is far from over, there is more that can be done beyond the updated NPPF to put mineral planning on a clearer, more consistent, and more sustainable footing. But ministers should start by simply correcting the backwards steps currently in the draft document, and taking a couple more steps forward.

5 min read15 min

The revelation that the Prime Minister appointed Mandelson as US ambassador despite being aware of his links to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein has triggered the most perilous period of his premiership so far. In the last few days, he has lost his chief of staff and director of communications, while on Monday, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar told him to resign.

The Mandelson affair has caused anger and frustration among Labour women in particular.

Labour had 190 women MPs elected at the 2024 general election, the largest number ever returned to the House of Commons by a single political party.

However, many women in the party believe that recent revelations over how Mandelson was appointed typify a deep-rooted misogyny within Labour, with former special adviser Baroness Ayesha Hazarika describing last week’s events as “shameful” for her party. 

“I have never known rage and fury and devastation, particularly for female MPs, peers, councillors, party members, as I have over this last week,” she told Sky News at the weekend.

“This is a story about male power and a boys’ club… I’m afraid we have also seen a microcosm of that in politics, particularly Labour politics this week.”

The Starmer administration has faced accusations of being a boys’ club long before the Mandelson affair. Female Labour MPs, such as former transport secretary Louise Haigh, have complained about anonymous briefings targeting women in cabinet. At the same time, Downing Street has been accused of overlooking women to give senior jobs to men. 

Seemingly recognising the strength of feeling, the Prime Minister is set to address the Women’s PLP on Wednesday afternoon.

PoliticsHome understands that Starmer has been having meetings with women across the party in recent days to listen to their concerns.

“I do think this is a real opportunity to make progress on misogyny in politics,” one Labour woman MP who preferred to remain anonymous told PoliticsHome.

Following the recent resignations of Morgan McSweeney and Tim Allan as Starmer’s chief of staff and director of communications, respectively, and the expected resignation of Chris Wormald as head of the civil service in the coming weeks, the Prime Minister’s latest government reset is seen as an opportunity to address this perceived problem.

At the time of writing, Home Office permanent secretary Dame Antonia Romeo is expected to replace Wormald as the first female cabinet secretary.

Many Labour women would like to see Steph Driver return to Downing Street to lead the communications operation.

“It depends [on] who gets appointed as to whether the bully boys club improves,” the same MP quoted above added.

She continued: “The women in the PLP have made the right call on each [u-turn] and have privately expressed their concerns at each and every opportunity, and haven’t been to the press. And we have been seen as disloyal for doing so.”

The MP said putting experienced women “in the real positions of power” where they are “listened to” would help the government show it is properly tackling the Mandelson scandal.

Speaking to the wider PLP on Monday night, Starmer pledged to take a more inclusive approach to government, with No 10 having regularly been accused of paying too little attention to the views of backbench MPs in the 18 months it has been in power.

The soft-left Tribune group has called for a cabinet reshuffle to ensure the PM’s senior team better reflects the parliamentary party.

Speaking to PoliticsHome, Labour MP Florence Eshalomi said that moving forward, there “needs to be regular engagement and listening when female parliamentarians raise concerns”, adding “the mistakes of that boys’ network” had been exposed. 

Referring to Mandelson’s history within the party, Eshalomi asked: “Would a woman who had been sacked twice still get appointed, still get an important job? As women, we are not afforded that.”

Speaking before the Women’s PLP meeting on Wednesday, Eshalomi said she would go along with “an open mind to listen to what [Starmer] has to say.”

Labour MP Emily Darlington, who is a campaigner for equality for women in Parliament, told PoliticsHome that the Epstein case had revealed “a culture around the rich and powerful men that get protected”, adding, “the closed men’s spaces in politics continue”. 

“It controls who is promoted, who is put in place, and who has power within those networks. We are seeing those two scenarios, both of those things coming together.”

Labour women are also frustrated because the Mandelson scandal and subsequent debate about a boys’ club come at the same time as the government is bringing out a strategy for tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG).

“In terms of the trust of women and girls up and down the country, we want them to believe us when we say it is a key priority for the government. It will fall on us as women parliamentarians to repair that [trust], said Eshalomi, the MP for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green.

Darlingon, the MP for Milton Keynes Central, said she wanted to see the PM and the government talk about VAWG more going forward.

“I would love to see him [Starmer] talking about this more, and this would be a good thing to come out of this scandal, especially for the victims of the biggest grooming and trafficking scandal of our age,” she told PoliticsHome.