Calum Davies is a Conservative councillor in Cardiff and a candidate for the Senedd in May.

A great deal has been written about Reform UK’s potential electoral performance in May’s devolved elections, but what do they actually stand for? There is much cause for concern.

Reform’s rise has come too quickly for its own good.

Polling suggests it will be the second largest party in both the Welsh and Scottish parliaments in two months’ time, and the most popular (and unpopular) party in the wider country. This has required a rapid and large scale-up not just in terms of its operations, but its philosophy. With so many new people and a general anti-establishment message, the party is courting a range of views from a variety of political hinterlands. This leads to intellectual inconsistency and a vibes-over-policy mindset.

This is quite handy for campaigning, being all things to all people, but it sows the seeds for an early demise as voters are led to believe they are for one thing when they are not. Once unravelled, it would be a particularly devastating charge for Reform who explicitly position themselves as more trustworthy than the traditional parties who they (not unfairly) claim have a poor record of keeping promises and delivering results.

The tightrope has been walked over the last two years as its more libertarian, tax-cutting desires clash with its more interventionist, statist approach. Only one can win and voters deserve to know which. Such an obvious misstep was its fluid position on the two-child benefit cap which, at the last vote, led to its MPs voting in different directions. A party confident in its guiding values would not have made a mistake like this.

Indeed, what does it tell us about their values? It has been suggested to me more than once that I defect to Reform – but what would I be joining? I know both the triumphs and shortcomings of the Conservative Party. It is imperfect, but I know where I stand. Can the Reform member say the same without reverting to the general lines of the anti-establishment protest voter?

What concerns me, in particular in these elections, is how Reform’s self-defining image as a party that is against so much and for so little will impact on the most important faultline of all.

In January, a piece in The Times highlighted Reform’s ambivalence towards the Union under its new Scottish leader, Lord Offord. One might think a party often caricatured as an English nationalist one and led by an ex-Tory would not be flirting with Scottish independence. Yet, Offord claimed, “rational nationalists” could find common ground with “moderate unionists,” and they could “deal with the constitution later”. He was not “ruling [a referendum] out in the future” when a decision on independence could be based on “strength, not just emotion”.

Those of us who place the preservation of the United Kingdom and recognise the dangers of enabling separatist rhetoric know that there is no such thing as a “rational nationalist” and understand that all their actions are designed to lead to an end goal. Reform may want to win pro-independence voters, but it should be through persuasion of the merits of their agenda (for what it is), not by humouring that of the separatist. It should oppose another referendum.

Something similar is happening in Wales too. The Welsh Conservatives produced a great montage of Reform figures, including Nigel Farage and his new Welsh frontman, saying they want more devolution and more powers in Cardiff Bay. Have they not learnt the lesson of the British Conservative Government who did that and the Welsh Labour Government who abused those powers, all in turn servicing Plaid Cymru’s nationalist agenda time and time again? They claim to hate the world Blair made, yet here they are building on his legacy, not demolishing it.

Reform supports the expansion of the Senedd from 60 to 96 members at a cost of £120m. On both enlarging and empowering the Senedd, Reform is on the same page as Labour, Plaid, the Lib Dems, and the Greens. Only the Welsh Conservatives have opposed this expansion from the start and want to reverse it. As a candidate, I have spoken with many people who are considering Reform believing they are anti-establishment. Once they are made aware of this enabling agenda, they reconsider and will look at the Conservatives again.

Reform councillors are not even living up to some of the party’s supposedly reliable positions, with their sole Cardiff councillor failing to back my motion to close the illegal migrant hotel in the city. If Reform councillors cannot back even this, then what can we expect of them?

It is this ongoing inability to pick a lane – as well as the feuds with Farage – that inspired the founding of Advance UK and Restore. It is noticeable that the Lowe outfit is established on the basis that Reform is too mainstream. Whilst this has mainly centred on immigration, given its closeness to establishment policy in Wales and Scotland, it does give credence to an emerging pattern – that Reform is not a radical break from the norm. It is just another flawed political party destined to repeat the mistakes all others make. Its new branding, but politics as usual.

However, Reform’s youth coupled with its sudden popularity is a recipe for these mistakes to become catastrophes. With less than two months until the Senedd election, Reform has announced no candidates. It is not just to avoid scrutiny – it has a serious problem in finding quality people to stand. My fear is a large group of Reform MSs will be elected but will fall under the spell of the devocratic establishment and go native, which correlates with its devocratic calls for more powers and politicians in Cardiff Bay. We need serious anti-establishment politicians to challenge the devolved system of government that has failed Wales for three decades, not easily bored rabble-rousers who don’t recognise the dangerous of separatism.

I assert that Reform is actually to the political left of the Conservatives. Faragists may talk in more forceful terms, but Kemi Badenoch’s policy programme does outflank Farage from the right. The Conservatives are notching up a lot of wins and doing much of the legwork of the Opposition but, frustratingly, the scars of government run deep, and other are the beneficiaries.

Convincing evidence of this is the volume of Conservative defectors, another source of anger for those who choose Restore but also those within Reform. Its Scottish and Welsh leader as well as all its MSPs and MSs are ex-Tories. Most Reform MPs used to be Conservative MPs. Whilst I consider Robert Jenrick and Danny Kruger to be losses to our party (in terms of their ability, not loyalty), Reform have also done us a favour in taking off our hands the mediocre and the mad.

Reform just being an outfit for the dregs of the Conservatives was further compounded at the launch of its Welsh manifesto earlier this month – a blatant rip-off of the Welsh Conservative programme of the last decade. Seriously, there was little difference in its contents – other than Reform’s suggestion to put tolls on the M4 relief road. Not sure how much traffic that will relieve.

With less than seven weeks to go until polling day, much remains uncertain. What we do need to know is for what does Reform actually stand and can it be trusted to protect the Union?

Donald Trump has called off his strikes on Iran’s energy sites for the next five days.

The US president said the US and Iran have had “very good and productive conversations” regarding a “complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East”.

He added, “I have instructed the Department of War to postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five-day period”, depending on the success of ongoing discussions.

Trump had claimed only over the weekend that Iran had just 48 hours to open the major oil shipping lane, the Strait of Hormuz, or the US would “obliterate” its power plants.

That escalation came hours after two Iranian missiles struck southern Israel, injuring more than 100 people on Sunday.

His bizarre warning meant Iran had only until 11.44pm (GMT) tonight to respond.

Iran had threatened to “completely destroy” key military sites across the region in retaliation.

Here’s the president’s TruthSocial post in full:

I AM PLEASE TO REPORT THAT THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE COUNTRY OF IRAN, HAVE HAD, OVER THE LAST TWO DAYS, VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST. BASED ON THE TENOR AND TONE OF THESE IN DEPTH, DETAILED, AND CONSTRUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS, WITCH WILL CONTINUE THROUGHOUT THE WEEK, I HAVE INSTRUCTED THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR TO POSTPONE ANY AND ALL MILITARY STRIKES AGAINST IRANIAN POWER PLANTS AND ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE FOR A FIVE DAY PERIOD, SUBJECT TO THE SUCCESS OF THE ONGOING MEETINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!

This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates or follow HuffPost UK on X at @HuffPostUK or on Facebook.

8 min read30 min

Angela Hicks knows what people think about Weston-super-Mare – her parents once ran hotels in the seaside town near Bristol.

The businesswoman saw its postcard charm curdle into ugly deprivation, until by 2009 the town was home to around 11 per cent of the UK’s drug rehabilitation places.

But today, although still struggling to cling on to declining numbers of tourists, Hicks detects a small but growing renaissance as so-called ‘digital nomads’ start new ventures in the town.

The House recently visited The Hive, a business support centre on the edge of Weston that has become a focal point for the town’s small-business community. More than 25 entrepreneurs gathered there for a roundtable hosted by the Startup Coalition and the town’s Labour MP, Daniel Aldridge. Arriving at the centre’s car park, young founders stepping out of Range Rovers and Porsches seemed a far cry from the stereotypical image of Weston as a town of pensioners on mobility scooters.

It was the first roundtable of its kind in the constituency, with businesses including a technology company designing electronics and firmware, a cybersecurity and IT consultancy, a firm that designs and builds conversational AI systems and chatbots, and many more.

Hicks, who runs The Hive, says more startups are now betting on Weston as the place to set up. The centre brings together two not-for-profit organisations offering free, impartial business support and office space for micro-businesses, supporting tech startups alongside health, wellness and hospitality brands. Success stories include an R&D firm outfit now working with GCHQ and the Ministry of Defence.

“It’s a very different dynamic now,” Hicks says. “Over the last 10 to 15 years, a lot of people, because of house prices, have moved down here.”

She traces the rise in entrepreneurship to changes in working patterns since the start of the Covid pandemic in 2020, when large numbers of people realised their jobs could be done from anywhere with a laptop. Across the UK, coastal towns saw a surge in interest. By March 2021, Rightmove data showed Cornwall had overtaken London as the most searched-for area on its website, while fewer than half of London homebuyers were looking to stay put.

Weston is not alone in seeing its demographics and economy change rapidly. Along the southern coastline in Eastbourne, Liberal Democrat MP Josh Babarinde argues that coastal stereotypes are being challenged. “People have associated seaside towns with being sleepy,” he says. “Those stereotypes are being busted by new energy and innovation.” He has backed co-working spaces and a digital festival he describes as the largest in the South East.

But evidence suggests this revival is uneven across the country. Research by Venture Forward in 2024, which analysed data from more than half a million online microbusinesses, found strong growth in southern coastal areas such as Suffolk, Bournemouth, East Devon, the Isle of Wight and St Austell and Newquay. However, northern coastal towns, including Blackpool South, Scarborough and Whitby, showed far slower growth.

Proximity to large, booming cities matters, with many successful southern coastal towns benefiting from gaining residents priced out of London or Bristol.

Back in Weston, roundtable attendees compare notes on why they chose the town. Mike Turner, 34, left school at 16 and set up an IT support business that later evolved into software development. He describes Weston as a “natural fit” for his company, thanks to lower housing costs, proximity to Bristol and an unexpected niche which he was able to tap into: addiction treatment software for the many rehabilitation centres that once clustered in the town.

Neil Criddle, 42, set up his financial and business consultancy after losing his job during the pandemic. “It makes sense to be based in Weston from an office perspective because it’s cheaper,” he says. “And the talent, in my opinion, is probably just as good.”

Hazel McPherson, founder of an information and cybersecurity consultancy, wanted to challenge the assumption that serious tech conversations must happen in major cities. “My business model is cybersecurity, and very often we have to go to places like Bristol or London,” she says. “But that is money and time which small business owners can’t really afford.”

Her response was to create CSIDES, the UK’s first cybersecurity event built by and for a coastal community. “Why don’t we do it in Weston? Why don’t we do it on the pier?” she recalls. “We wanted to prove that it was possible to do it in Weston or a coastal community and raise the profile of the town.”

One of the challenges we have is convincing them and getting them to recognise that they can spend their money in the town rather than just get back on the motorway and go up to Bristol

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More than 300 people attended the inaugural event last year. Still, McPherson worries that Weston risks becoming a dormitory town, where people live but spend their working lives and money elsewhere. “We’ve got an awful lot of housing springing up… as that grows, is that going to become just another suburb of Bristol?”

However, if there was one point of agreement among founders at the roundtable, it was that starting and running a business has become harder in recent years. Entrepreneurs cited rising National Insurance contributions, increases to the minimum wage and expanding digital tax reporting requirements, which have pushed up accountancy costs for sole traders and small firms.

Turner also sees the town’s social challenges through his work with a Somerset mental health charity. “Lots of the issues are around employment, and a lack of understanding of what to do about education,” he says.

Talent remains a concern. Despite diversification, Weston still struggles to retain enough young people with the skills new businesses need. Yet the benefits of a small coastal town are clear. “The best thing about being in Weston is probably that there is quite a nice little business community here,” Turner says. “We all work with each other.”

Labour MP Aldridge agrees that opportunities in the town since he grew up there have “absolutely been transformed”, with thousands of professionals moving in over the past decade. “But one of the challenges we have is convincing them and getting them to recognise that they can spend their money in the town rather than just get back on the motorway and go up to Bristol,” he says. “But we are seeing that change.”

Most of Weston’s growth has come from organisations with up to four employees, as remote working has enabled people to work from anywhere on their laptop. However, this then limits these businesses’ ability to grow.

“They could have way more office space,” Aldridge argues. “One of the things that I will knock on the door of No 11 for is investment in those office blocks. We do not have the scale-up infrastructure in the same way.”

One workaround has been the use of empty retail units as flexible workspaces. “Locals didn’t particularly like it at first,” Aldridge admits. “But I think locals are starting to see it as really positive, because those people are spending the day there. They’re buying their lunches in town.”

Transport connectivity remains a constraint for the town’s businesses. Cheaper housing attracts commuters from Bristol, but congested roads underline the need for transport investment.

The economic and political stakes are high for the mission of spreading this growth more evenly across the country. Coastal constituencies have become fertile ground for Reform UK, with four of the five seats won by the party in the 2024 general election located along the coast.

Ministers appear alert to the risk. In September 2025, the government announced a £1.1bn coastal investment package, backed by the private sector and academia, aimed at boosting jobs and skills in maritime and tech-aligned sectors, including clean energy and innovation.

For Aldridge and other Labour MPs, regenerating coastal economies is central to pushing back against populist politics.

Coastal tech startups will not, on their own, undo decades of deprivation. They face real challenges: weak infrastructure, limited finance, talent shortages and the risk that new wealth is imported but not embedded locally.

But in Weston-super-Mare and towns like it – from Margate to Eastbourne to the Isle of Wight – these ventures are starting to offer something that has long been missing: a reason to stay, to invest and to imagine a future beyond a fading tourism industry.

French judge Nicolas Guillou, who serves on the International Criminal Court (ICC), has told a French TV station how he is financially paralysed because the US sanctioned him last year for doing his job. That job? To issue a war crimes arrest warrant for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.

Guillou’s predicament was explained by human rights law expert Ramy Abdul:

French judge Nicolas Gouyou, who issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu at the ICC:

• Visa and Mastercard have blocked all my cards
• I cannot make any purchases
• I am a judge, yet treated like a criminal
• Judges, lawyers, and politicians are being intimidated
• A… pic.twitter.com/vJdVGfa8X9

— Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده (@RamAbdu) March 22, 2026

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A transcript of the video is shown below:

I discovered that almost all payment methods, in fact, in France today, well they are American.

Your credit card no longer works.

Well, it was disconnected because in fact, the only cards we have in France are Visa and MasterCard.

I can no longer order on Amazon, I can no longer book an Airbnb. I tried, for example, to book a hotel on Booking.com.

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I understand that the transaction is blocked.

I made a transaction with Expedia.

I received an email that says: My transaction is cancelled. It’s very painful on a daily basis.

We go back thirty years. This is the Time Machine. In fact, we are returning to the pre-digital world.

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Another example. The judge is therefore in the Netherlands, he orders a frame in Brittany. Except that since it is by UPS, it will never be delivered.

So, faced with this grotesque situation of a judge on the same blacklist as the worst terrorists and drug traffickers in the world, the President of the [French] Republic wrote this letter to ask for the lifting of sanctions.

If prosecutors are afraid to prosecute, if lawyers are afraid to defend, if judges are afraid to judge, if parliamentarians are afraid to vote on laws, if ministers are afraid to apply them, there is no more democracy.

This means that we will act exclusively out of fear.

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Guillou is unfortunately not unique. His ICC colleague, Canadian judge Kimberley Prost, and United Nations human rights specialist Francesca Albanese have also been hit with sanctions which, as Prost said last year, are supposed to be restricted to terrorists and organised crime bosses.

Israel and the US are mafioso terror states.

Featured image via the Canary

The West is attempting to manufacture consent for a ground invasion of Iran, just like it did with Iraq in 2001.

From supporting Israel’s genocide in Palestine, to funding the arms industry, it is clear that the West has only one goal for the Middle East: unrelenting destabilisation founded on neo-colonialism.

This is no different to Iraq in 2003. At the time, journalists failed to challenge the US government’s narratives about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein’s links to al-Qaeda. Essentially, this failure is what created public support for the US to invade Iraq.

Iran war: how does the manufacture of consent work?

Manufacturing consent describes how a ‘free media’ – one without government censorship or fear of prison for journalists, and staffed by people who genuinely see themselves as holding power to account – still ends up producing systemic propaganda with a single, consistent message.

This can be inadvertent or intentional, and is usually done by letting the accounts of Western governments go unchallenged,

For example, in Gaza, instead of challenging statements from the Israeli government and military, or the US government, Western journalists just print the statements. They may as well be stenographers for state-run media.

Similarly, outlets like the BBC, Sky News, ITV, and Reuters frame Israeli attacks as ‘Palestinians killed’. They do this without mentioning who or what killed them. Did Darth Vader kill them?

Alternatively, when reporting on Palestinian deaths, they use the line ‘according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry’. This casts doubt on how many Palestinians Israel actually murdered.

Now, Israelis are dying from Iranian attacks. However, Western media do not report the deaths ‘according to the Likud-run Health Ministry’. They are presented as unquestioned facts. The tiny differences in language go a long way in shaping public opinion.

Additionally, the Israeli government has continuously told the world that it only targets Hamas in Gaza, despite carpet bombing the whole strip into oblivion. Western media have not challenged that narrative. This means that now Israel is getting away with the same lines about Hezbollah and the Iranian ‘regime’.

Media monopoly

Three companies control 90% of the UK’s newspaper circulation. These three companies are all owned by the ultra-wealthy.

And one man – Rupert Murdoch – owns around one-third of British newspapers. However, he also owns over 50% of Australian news outlets and some of the biggest news organisations in the US.

Murdoch is a staunch Zionist.

Benjamin Netanyahu once said:

Rupert Murdoch became a close friend to both me and Israel. He was always a staunch supporter of Israel and viewed it as the foundation stone of the free world in the Middle East. Israel has not had a better friend.

So, of course, when a billionaire and friend of Netanyahu, who also happens to be mentioned in the Epstein files, controls so much of the West’s media, how can we expect anything but a system which unequivocally supports the bullshit that comes out of our leaders’ mouths?

Deigo Garcia

Now, we have a situation where the Wall Street Journal have published an article stating that Iran fired two intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) at Diego Garcia, a UK/US base in the indian ocean.

Of course, it is typical of a corporate, Zionist-owned media outlet to put out that headline and then use a paywall to prevent people from reading who the actual sources are behind the claims.

Importantly, Iranian officials have denied that Iran was behind the attacks. Even NATO has said it “cannot confirm” Israel’s claim that the missiles were Iranian.

Yet, despite this, almost every news outlet between the UK and Mars published the same story, with no additional evidence, verification, or proof.

In the original article, the ‘sources’ are ‘multiple US officials’ – who are, of course, unnamed.

The article then quotes Iran Watch, which is part of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.

It claims that:

Iran has operational missiles that can reach 2,500 miles. Israel’s Alma Research and Education Centre put the top range for Iranian missiles at around 1,900 miles, but said there are reports of their weapons being developed with longer ranges. 

In 2015, Middle East Eye wrote:

WINEP is part of a vibrant “Iran watch” industry. Many of this industry’s players whipped up fear about Saddam Hussein’s non-existent chemical and biological weapons before the invasion of Iraq. Without displaying any signs of embarrassment about their past blunders, they are now posing as experts on the “threat” from neighbouring Iran.

The founder is Gary Milhollin. He is one of the same ‘experts’ who warned about Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

In 2002, he said:

every Western intelligence service believes Saddam Hussein possessed a mass destruction arsenal.

So now, the Wall Street Journal has chosen to repeat the unverified claims of a man who we know lied about weapons of mass destruction. And they’ve done it behind a paywall, knowing most people will not be able to access the whole article. I don’t think I need to say anymore.

Editorial oversight?

The media has learnt no lessons in over 20 years. Outlets on both sides of the Atlantic have spent two and a half years whitewashing Israel’s crimes and ultimately created the exact conditions the terrorist state needed to further its Greater Israel project and invade both Lebanon and Iran.

Is the editorial oversight coming from Israel itself? Were the headlines promised to Israel 3000 years ago? Or are most Western journalists just lazy and publishing information without checking sources?

There is no surprise that in the last 24 hours, Israel has suddenly lifted its media censorship. And there can only be one reason for it – using the destruction in the videos as a tool to manufacture consent for whatever hell they’re planning next.

There is no justification for genocide, and every single time they repeat Israel’s claims, they further obscure and justify Israel’s and the US’s war crimes, and repeat the travesties of the Iraq war. 

Featured image via The Independent/YouTube

Amy Leversidge, General Secretary of the British Airlines Pilots’ Association (BALPA)

Every flight is a promise of something new. A deal struck, a market opened, a well-de­served holiday. Britain’s avia­tion sector is expanding, and the government’s ambition is for it to expand still further. More connections. More opportunity. More of what aviation, at its best, has always delivered.

Amy Leversidge, General Secretary of the British Airline Pilots’ Association (BALPA), does not dispute any of that. What she wants parliamentarians to understand, however, is a problem hiding in plain sight: the profession that will power that future is, for many, simply out of reach.

Leversidge, who took over as General Secretary in January 2024, has a clear-eyed view of how pilot training in the UK currently works, and how badly it needs to change.

The problem begins with cost. Becoming a commercial airline pilot requires complet­ing a demanding training programme that can cost well over £100,000. Doctors, solicitors and civil engineers all face significant training costs, but have mechanisms to pay that sum back over years. For pilots, no such mechanism exists. Applicants must find the money themselves, largely in full and upfront.

An aspiring pilot has no access to the student loan system and high street banks have withdrawn career development loans for pilot training. What remains are a couple of airline-funded cadet schemes, massively oversubscribed.

“The largest cadet scheme gets 100 applications for every place. That is not a queue of people who should all be pilots, but among them are people who absolutely should be,” Leversidge says. “Unfortunately, there will be many great potential pilots among the 99 per cent who fail to secure a place on a cadet scheme, but they will be out of options, at the end of the road. They are simply priced out of being a pilot. Right now, we are forcing too many to take their talents elsewhere.”

If the sector that connects us to the world can’t draw on the full range of talent in this country, both growth and opportunity suffer

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Some assume this is a problem of standards, that the profession is rightly exclusive. Leversidge addresses this directly.

“When you are six or seven miles up in the air, you need absolute confidence in the pilots flying the plane. The training to become a commercial airline pilot is demanding and exacting, as it should be. Every pilot in the sky today has earned their licence, that must never change. The only hurdle we want to remove is the six-figure paywall.”

 “Aspiring pilots must have the skills, strengths, talent and determination to train and work as a pilot and have enthusiasm for aviation,” Leversidge continued. “Let’s not keep on that list of demands that they also need to have access to over £100,000 for their training. We don’t want to lose potential talent from our profession, and decision-mak­ers shouldn’t want that either, given the core air transport sector’s £14bn annual contribution to the UK economy.”

It hasn’t always been this way. Cadet schemes were once far more common­place. Banks lent money for pilot training. There were routes in for able, ambitious people who needed a little help to pay their way. Those routes have narrowed dramatically, leaving the profession accessible largely only to those who can self-fund.

“This isn’t a pathway, it’s a paywall,” Leversidge asserts.

The timing of this matters. Airport expansion will substantially increase demand for pilots in the years ahead. At the same time, the number of BALPA members reaching the mandatory pilot retirement age of 65 will double by 2030. With the vast majority of UK commercial airline pilots holding BALPA member­ship, that seems a reliable measure of the looming wave of retirements.

“I want MPs and peers to understand the scale of the opportunity we are missing,” Leversidge says. “The ambition the government has for aviation and the contribution it can make to greater economic growth in the future requires a skilled aviation workforce to deliver it. We need to be working together – BALPA, industry, the government – to ensure we are training the right number of pilots for the future, and that those training spots are secured on talent alone.”

A solution is ready and waiting. An apprenticeship for pilots has been designed, developed, and approved. It would allow airlines to train pilots through the apprenticeship system, making the profession accessible in the same way apprenticeships have broadened access across other skilled sectors. Some refine­ments will be needed to make it work for industry and pilots alike, and those conversations are happening, confirms Leversidge.

“The apprenticeship could genuinely prove a breakthrough, and we back it,” Leversidge says, “but BALPA is not wedded to one particular mechanism. Pilots are practical people, and BALPA just wants something that works. Whether that is the apprenticeship, access to student loans, more airline-funded schemes, or a return of bank lending, we are open-minded.”

The apprenticeship is currently on pause, though the aviation minister has stated to parliament that restarting it is a cross-government priority. “We know the goodwill is there,” Leversidge acknowledges, “but goodwill needs to turn into action, and soon.”

This issue cuts across two of the govern­ment’s central priorities: economic growth and widening opportunity. Aviation is one of the UK’s most powerful drivers of growth, but its ability to deliver that growth relies on a steady supply of skilled pilots. Right now, talented young people are being priced out of that profession altogether. Leversidge sums it up, “If the sector that connects us to the world can’t draw on the full range of talent in this country, both growth and opportunity suffer. That should worry everyone in parliament.”

“We are not asking for anything that doesn’t already exist for other profes­sions,” Leversidge makes clear. “We are asking to be treated the same.”

Aviation is full of promises, to the businesses that depend on it, the fami­lies it connects, the young people who dream of a career at its heart. Pilots stitch the world together, and BALPA believes that the profession deserves a funding system that reflects that. “Keeping those promises depends on whether we are willing to open the doors that funding reform would unlock,” says Leversidge, “and that is a choice that parliament and government can help make happen.”

For more information please email Stuart Bonar, Head of Public Affairs, at [email protected].

4 min read5 min

In my current roles as Chair of the National Building Safety Regulator and strategic safety advisor to Transport for London, I continue to have a direct involvement in construction, public, and workplace safety. The restoration and renewal of Parliament is therefore a matter of particular interest.

As we approach a critical decision about how to repair and preserve this magnificent building for the nation, I offer a perspective shaped by decades of experience in safety and risk management, including as a frontline firefighter.

The first point to acknowledge is my newfound understanding of why the building is such a difficult place to leave, even temporarily. Its history and role in our democracy render the decision before us both practical and, for some, existential in nature.

After a career responding to major incidents and addressing the aftermath of tragedies both large and small, I am convinced of the case for choosing a full decant of Parliament during restoration. Safety in ageing buildings never stands still and without significant further intervention, the risks escalate alongside the decaying fabric.

The cost of merely maintaining the status quo and remaining compliant with safety legislation could easily exceed the current annual expenditure of approximately £70 million. Especially if phase one works do not commence and a rational restoration choice is not made.

It is understandable that people compare this project to renovating a home while still living there. But that comparison is simply not reliable. This major restoration requires a large workforce, complex procurement and contracting models, and materials far beyond domestic scale. The standards for a heritage building that is also a heavily used workplace are significantly higher than a family home.

Parliamentarians insisting on robust change control and an accurate budget for the delivery process is both necessary and justified. Based on my experience of some of the largest infrastructure projects, this is set to be among the most complex and large-scale work sites in Europe – making such controls essential.

Furthermore, the work required to bring Westminster up to even basic legal compliance with building regulations is considerably more challenging and expensive than starting from a vacant plot.

Some have argued that if the Palace were truly unsafe, it would have been closed already, thereby casting doubt on the safety case for a decant. This oversimplifies how proportionate regulation operates in a heritage building of this size and occupancy. Regulation involves making almost daily informed decisions by weighing risks and accounting for the building’s ongoing deterioration. It also fails to factor in the increased risk during any chosen renovation programme.

As London’s Fire Commissioner, I oversaw the safety of 20,000 listed buildings. Westminster was the highest risk of all, due to its current state of repair and high occupancy – and all despite it being exceptionally well managed.

The fire loading in the Palace – the amount of combustible material – is extraordinary. Almost no other building in London compares; and its art, architectural features, and collections are priceless. On top of that, it is populated daily by thousands of staff and visitors, including disabled people and others who require additional support to evacuate.

In the event of a major incident, the London Fire Brigade would face difficult choices. Depending on the time of day the safe evacuation of many, many people would almost certainly take precedence over the preservation of the building. Just think about the scale and complexity of that task.

Compounding the fire loading risks are ageing electrical and other utility systems, ongoing hot cutting work as part of maintenance, frequent fire incidents, and access and layout challenges. Its continued safe operation is only made possible by regularly updated fire plans, engineering solutions such as sprinklers and mist sprays, and the outstanding daily work of dedicated safety professionals.

All these challenges come before the arrival of one of the largest renovation projects in the world, which will introduce additional access challenges for firefighting. My extensive experience of safety on construction sites leads me to the firm conclusion that I would not wish to remain on site when major works gets fully underway.

Some will likely disagree or view my concerns as excessive. As a professional firefighter who joined the London Fire Brigade out of a willingness to take risks rather than avoid them, my perspective is grounded in what I’ve experienced rather than caution for its own sake.

Sadly, things can and do go wrong – even in buildings or systems long considered safe enough. I have witnessed too many tragedies and counted out too many bodies to believe the unthinkable cannot happen.

In that spirit, I urge all colleagues across the Palace to make the rational decision: begin enabling works now, regardless of which final option is chosen, and make way gracefully for the renovations to proceed when the time comes.