Politics
PM Sacks Top Civil Servant In Foreign Office Amid Mandelson Row
Keir Starmer sacked the top civil servant in the Foreign Office last night after the row over Peter Mandelson appointment returned.
Hours after it was revealed that the ex-Labour peer failed security vetting but still got the top job as the UK’s ambassador to Washington, the prime minister fired Olly Robbins.
According to the BBC and the Times, Starmer was “furious” after the Guardian reported that the Foreign Office had defied advice from the vetting process and appointed Mandelson anyway.
No.10 insists neither Starmer nor his ministers were aware of this detail until this week.
It read: “Neither the Prime Minister, nor any Government Minister, was aware that Peter Mandelson was granted Developed Vetting against the advice of UK Security Vetting until earlier this week.”
It remains unclear why Mandelson failed the vetting and if Robbins was the person who decided to override security advice.
Mandelson worked as the ambassador to Washington between February and September 2025 before he was fired as the depth of his relationship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein was revealed.
He has denied any wrongdoing in connection to the disgraced financier.
Mandelson is currently being investigated by police on suspicion passing market-sensitive information to Epstein when he was a minister under New Labour.
The Conservatives, Reform UK and the Greens have all called for the prime minister to resign.
They accuse him of misleading MPs when he told them in September that “due process had been followed” when it came to hiring the former ambassador to Washington.
According to the Ministerial Code, ministers who knowingly mislead parliament are expected to stand down.
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Former London Fire Commissioner Lord Roe is said to have made significant improvements to the way the Building Safety Regulator works (Collage by Antonello Sticca)
8 min read
The Building Safety Regulator is under new leadership. Will it succeed in fixing a broken system? Noah Vickers reports
England’s Building Safety Regulator did not get off to the best of starts. Created under the last government’s Building Safety Act of 2022, the BSR was designed to prevent a tragedy like the Grenfell Tower fire from ever happening again.
As well as overseeing the remediation of existing buildings, all new-build developments which qualify as ‘higher-risk’ at the planning stage are referred to the regulator for approval, and if they fail to pass muster, are sent back for changes to be made. The definition of ‘higher-risk’ means any block of flats taller than 18 metres, or seven storeys, comes under the BSR’s purview.
But soon after the regulator’s establishment, it quickly struggled with the volume of applications it was receiving, and delays mounted – while developers complained about opaque processes and poor communication.
In December 2025, the House of Lords’ Industry and Regulators Committee published a scathing report warning that the BSR’s “unacceptable” delays were having “a worrying impact on the delivery of new housing”.
The committee’s inquiry had opened in June, but by the time they published their report six months later, evidence had already begun to emerge that the BSR was getting its act together under new leadership. Experts across the construction sector tell The House that the regulator has made significant progress in how it deals with applications, while cautioning that there remains some work to be done.
The BSR grants approval for new buildings at three ‘gateways’. Gateway 1 comes before planning permission, where the local council is required to seek the BSR’s views on any higher-risk building. At Gateway 2, the BSR reviews the design before construction can begin, and at Gateway 3, the building is assessed again at the post-construction, pre-occupation phase.
Gateway 2 had become especially notorious in the last couple of years as a key “bottleneck” for new high-rise housing projects. While a Gateway 2 decision is meant to be issued within 12 weeks, by the summer of 2025, the average waiting time for approval had grown to just over 51 weeks.
In June 2025, former London fire commissioner Andy Roe – now Lord Roe – was appointed as the BSR’s chair. He was joined by his former deputy commissioner Charlie Pugsley, who took up the role of chief executive, and John Palmer, a former Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) official, who was made operations director.
“Those three individuals have just transformed the engagement of the BSR with industry and other key stakeholders in a really professional way,” says Neil Jefferson, CEO of the Home Builders Federation. “The people we see now who represent the BSR have instilled more confidence in the industry overall.”
The new personnel arrived just months before the BSR in January moved from being part of the Health and Safety Executive to becoming a standalone, arms-length body under MHCLG. It will eventually merge into a ‘single construction regulator’ to cover all aspects of the built environment, as recommended by the Grenfell Inquiry.
It was a bit of a black box before, and under Andy’s leadership that’s definitely changed
But beyond those administrative changes, improvements in the regulator’s communication style with developers and contractors have been welcomed across the sector.
“They’re talking to us much more sensibly and constructively, and not being quite as hands-off,” says Ian McDermott, chair of the G15 group of London housing associations.
“It was a bit of a black box before, and under Andy’s leadership that’s definitely changed. There’s much more engagement. We are talking through problems in a way that we simply didn’t do before, but there’s still quite a lot of work to be done.”
Median waiting times for Gateway 2 decisions are still taking longer than 12 weeks, though are substantially down from where they were, with the latest data showing approval taking 22 weeks and rejection taking 17 weeks. A backlog of legacy cases has however been largely cleared and a rising proportion of applications are being approved. In the 12 weeks to 30 March, the approval rate for validated applications climbed to 61 per cent, up from 33 per cent in the 12 weeks to 25 February.
Labour MP Mike Reader, who just six months ago helped lead a Westminster Hall debate warning that the BSR was “widely regarded as actively hindering the construction of new homes”, says he is “really impressed with how quickly it’s been turned around”.
But he warns: “There will be some cultural work needed still within the BSR. You don’t [suddenly] achieve cultural change in an organisation, in the mindsets of people from ‘Computer says no’ to ‘Not quite there, but this is how we can help you improve’ – that will still come… It’s not there yet, is what I’ve heard.”
It’s a concern echoed by Stephanie Pollitt, programme director for housing at BusinessLDN, who says that efforts now need to be taken to ensure that Gateway 3 does not become a new pinch-point over the coming months.
The frustration at Gateway 2 was partly due to a lack of clarity and transparency over what constituted a good application for validation, she says, adding: “I think we need to learn from those mistakes and make sure that doesn’t fall foul at Gateway 3 as well.”
Jefferson agrees: “The level of resource that’s in the BSR at the moment is wholly focused on Gateway 2, so when we get the first developments at Gateway 3 coming through, there are some concerns that there could be delays in getting buildings signed off on site, which creates cashflow problems for developers in many ways.
“I think there’s more confidence under the new leadership that we can tackle Gateway 3 together than there would have been previously, so that’s definitely a positive, but we’ve got a lot of learning to do together on Gateway 3.”
Ensuring that the regulator is properly resourced presents another challenge. The government had pledged to hire 100 additional staff into the BSR by the end of 2025, but minister Samantha Dixon has revealed that while 115 new posts were “approved”, only 83 new staff members have been “onboarded”.
Boosting the regulator’s workflow may also require other improvements beyond manpower alone.
“The BSR was set up with inadequate IT systems for document management – it was just completely overrun,” says Jefferson. “I wouldn’t say that that’s necessarily been solved yet, but it’s certainly been recognised as an issue.”
Andy and his team are receiving applications from developers which are timed to come in before the levy hits
Jefferson warns too that Roe’s work to improve the BSR could soon be put at risk by the government’s plan to introduce the Building Safety Levy in October. The levy, which was delayed from October last year, will be charged on all new residential developments of 10 or more units, with the funds used to help pay for cladding remediation and other safety repairs.
“We would welcome a further delay because of the economic conditions for development at the moment. It’s really unwelcome that this is coming in,” says Jefferson, who points out that the government already has £2.6bn in its Building Safety Fund to spend.
“It means that Andy and his team are receiving applications from developers which are timed to come in before the levy hits. Those applicants will be looking for acceptance of those projects before October, which will create a spike in his workload and make it difficult for him to prioritise his work.”
Anthony Breach, policy director at the Centre for Cities think tank, meanwhile says questions may still need to be asked about whether the 18m height limit should be increased – potentially to 30m or 50m – to reduce the scope of the BSR’s work and speed up developments.
In its Phase 2 report, the Grenfell Inquiry concluded: “We do not think that to define a building as ‘higher risk’ by reference only to its height is satisfactory, being essentially arbitrary in nature,” and recommended that the definition be reviewed. After a review last year, the BSR found there was “insufficient evidence” to change the definition, which was supported by MHCLG.
“The 18m threshold is very low, it doesn’t really have any basis in fire safety,” says Breach. “The result is, the mid-rise buildings that the government – separately, in its economic strategy – is stressing as very important to improve housing affordability, transport efficiency, the productivity of the national economy, that type of building is now just much more difficult, expensive, risky to build than it would be in a system where the BSR’s scope was defined more clearly on fire risk.”
A BSR spokesperson said the regulator has introduced a new system of account managers to enable “regular dialogue between applicants and the BSR” as well as a new “complex case category of application”, saying this is “quite clearly the opposite of a ‘computer says no’ approach”. The recent move to become a non-departmental public body will also see “investment in our technology and in our people’s skills”, they said.
They added: “We are continuing to work with the sector to build upon the existing guidance to provide further clarity around what a good [application] looks like which will help reduce invalidations and rejections.
“We have seen some high quality applications pass quickly through the system and are encouraging developers to share best practice. New-build approval rates are increasing month on month and we have a shared objective with the sector to drive up approval rates.”
MHCLG, meanwhile confirmed that having already delayed the Building Safety Levy by a year to give developers time to prepare for it, “no further changes” are now planned to its implementation.
A BBC Radio 4 presenter hit out at a senior minister after he insisted that Keir Starmer did not mislead parliament over Peter Mandelson’s security vetting.
It emerged on Thursday that the ex-Labour peer failed an intense vetting process but was still appointed as the UK’s ambassador to Washington last year.
Mandelson was sacked in September 2025 after the depth of his relationship with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein emerged.
Reform UK, the Conservatives and the Greens are now calling for Starmer to resign, claiming he misled parliament when he previously claimed “due process” was followed over Mandelson’s appointment.
No.10 has blamed the Foreign Office for overruling the security advice and giving Mandelson vetted status, claiming ministers were unaware that the ex-Labour peer had failed vetting.
Starmer also sacked the top civil servant in the Foreign Office, Olly Robbins, on Thursday night.
Chief secretary to the prime minister Darren Jones was sent out to bat for the government on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme this morning – and took a verbal lashing from presenter Justin Webb.
Webb said it was “not credible” Robbins would have taken a decision “this momentous” to overrule the advice without mentioning it to the foreign secretary or the prime minister.
But Jones replied, “I find this whole situation astonishing as well,” insisting that he had already suspended the right for the Foreign Office and other organisations to use that exemption.
Webb said it would have been “normal” for the prime minister – who was previously the UK’s director for public prosecutions – to check that he was correct when he told MPs that “due process” was followed in hiring Mandelson.
Jones said the PM only became aware of that fact on Tuesday evening of this week and insisted that Starmer has not misled MPs.
“Come on, Mr Jones, he gave a misleading impression!” Webb replied. “He said at the Commons, ‘full due process was followed at this appointment, as with all our ambassadors’.
“Technically that’s true, but he was giving a misleading impression, wasn’t he? Albeit he didn’t know it himself.
“In those circumstances, he’s meant to go back to the Commons and ’fess up.”
Jones refuted that claim, but Webb hit back: “In that statement in Hastings, he was absolutely clear, wasn’t he, that this had happened. The vetting procedure had been properly done.
“That the vetting procedure, because Lord Mandelson had subsequently been appointed and then had to be fired, the vetting procedure itself was at fault.”
But Jones insisted this was a “failure of the state” that this process was allowed to happen in the way that it did, distancing Starmer’s responsibility.
Webb said: “Number one it’s his job to get a grip of things, number two, he just seems incredibly incurious about things that are important.”
“That is not the case,” Jones insisted. “The Foreign Office did pass the developed vetting status in vetting Peter Mandelson.”
The presenter gave a short laugh, and said: “But the point is did he recommend Mandelson passed it? This all sounds very legalistic and very loyal and I think to most people listening it is simply a fact of have you got a grip or have you not got a grip?
“Are you saying things that are true or things that turn out to be false?
“On both those things – on the grip and on the true or false thing – Sir Keir fails.”
Jones rejected that description and once again blamed the Foreign Office, and said the process was “flabbergasting”.
Webb then asked why Starmer did not tell the Commons on Wednesday before PMQs about the problems with Mandelson’s vetting.
Jones said he asked the cabinet secretary to give him a “detailed list” of the facts before going to MPs.
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Victoria Beckham has spoken out for the first time about her family’s estrangement from her eldest son Brooklyn Peltz Beckham.
Speaking to The Wall Street Journal in an interview published on Thursday, the former Spice Girls performer was asked about her family’s ongoing public rift with her eldest child.
Without saying Brooklyn’s name, the fashion designer replied: “We love our children so much.”
She continued: “We’ve always tried to be the best parents that we can be. And you know, we’ve been in the public eye for more than 30 years right now, and all we’ve ever tried to do is protect our children and love our children.
“And, you know, that’s all I really want to say about it.”
Victoria and her husband Sir David Beckham share four children – 27-year-old Brooklyn, 23-year-old Romeo, 21-year-old Cruz and 14-year-old Harper.
Back in January, Brooklyn made headlines the world over with a series of candid Instagram stories, in which he accused his parents of “trying to endlessly ruin” his relationship with his wife, Nicola Peltz Beckham.
Brooklyn took aim at his parents for what he called their ongoing attempts to forcefully try to control “narratives in the press about our family”.
He also alleged that his mum “hijacked” his first dance with Nicola during their 2022 wedding ceremony.
“I have been silent for years and have made every attempt to keep these matters private,” Brooklyn wrote at the time.
“Unfortunately, my parents and their team have continued to go to the press, leaving me with no choice but to speak for myself and tell the truth about only some of the lies that have been printed.”
He added: “I do not want to reconcile with my family. I’m not being controlled, I’m standing up for myself for the first time in my life.”
While Sir David has not addressed his son’s comments directly, he did make some well-timed comments during an appearance on Squawk Box in January, the day after Brooklyn’s posts, telling the show’s hosts that “children are allowed to make mistakes”.
Jeff Spicer/BFC via Getty Images
“They make mistakes. Children are allowed to make mistakes. That’s how they learn. So, that’s what I try to teach my kids,” he said. “You have to sometimes let them make those mistakes.”
During the interview, the football icon also spoke about how “dangerous” social media can be.
“I’ve always spoke about social media and the power of social media, for the good and for the bad,” he said.
“The bad, we’ve talked about, what kids can access these days and it can be dangerous. But what I’ve found personally, especially with my kids as well, use it for the right reasons.”
In a move that seems indicative of the Trump administration’s increasingly fractured relationship with the Vatican, Pete Hegseth appeared to mistake lines from a classic crime film for Scripture during a public appearance this week.
The defense secretary delivered a prayer during a livestreamed worship service at the Pentagon on Wednesday. “They call it CSAR 25:17, which I think is meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17,” he said in his introduction of the prayer he’d been given.
However, viewers quickly noticed his words more closely echoed one of Samuel L. Jackson’s monologues from 1994’s “Pulp Fiction” than the biblical verse he’d referenced.
“The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men,” Hegseth said in part. “Blessed is he who, in the name of camaraderie and duty, shepherds the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother, and you will know my call sign is Sandy 1 when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”
Watch Pete Hegseth’s prayer service below. His reference to Ezekiel 25:17 begins around the 6:56 mark.
In “Pulp Fiction,” Jackson portrays hit man Jules Winnfield, who offers a similar declaration before shooting a man to death.
“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men,” he says. “Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and goodwill, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon thee. And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.”
Hegseth said the prayer was recited by the “Sandy 1” combat search and rescue (CSAR) mission in Iran, and to be fair, Pulp Fiction writer-director Quentin Tarantino reportedly drew from a scene in the 1973 Japanese film Bodyguard Kiba as the basis for Jackson’s monologue.
The actual Ezekiel 25:17 passage as it appears in the King James Bible is significantly shorter than both Hegseth’s and Jackson’s, reading simply: “And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.”
Hegseth has yet to address the discourse publicly. The Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, issued a statement on X Thursday acknowledging the CSAR prayer and Hegseth’s words were “obviously inspired by dialogue” in Pulp Fiction, but that both the prayer and the film scene were “reflections of the verse Ezekiel 25:17, as Secretary Hegseth clearly said in his remarks at the prayer service.”
“Anyone saying the Secretary misquoted Ezekiel 25:17 is peddling fake news and ignorant of reality,” he added.
Still, videos comparing Hegseth’s prayer to Jackson’s monologue went viral online and, as of Thursday, had drawn a fair number of snarky responses.
“When our leaders mix up God and a movie, in trying to suggest that God is behind them, that suggests the muddle we’re all in,” New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof wrote on X.
Journalist and author James North quipped: “The Old Testament’s ‘Book of Tarantino.’”
Hegseth’s prayer gaffe comes amid rising tensions between the Trump administration, including President Donald Trump himself, and high-ranking Catholic leaders.
On Sunday, the president deemed Pope Leo XIV “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” in a post on his Truth Social platform after the pontiff criticized both the Iran war and the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.
That same day, Trump drew further outrage when he shared what appeared to be an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ ― or, at the very least, a Christ-like figure ― on Truth Social.
Though the president argued the image was intended to depict him as a doctor, he or his team quietly deleted it after public figures on both sides of the political aisle condemned it as “blasphemous.”
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President Donald Trump delivered a bizarre answer after Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo asked him about his “hoarse” voice during an interview on Wednesday.
“I’ve been screaming at Iranians all day, yes. A little bit of laryngitis because of my scream. I’ve been screaming at the Iranians…” the president responded after Bartiromo questioned if “all day” negotiations with China were the reason for his change in voice.
Bartiromo then pressed the president, asking if it was “the Iran leadership” that he had been yelling at, but Trump kept rolling.
“You know why?” he continued. “Because that’s the only thing they understand. They don’t understand being nice. They understand the way I have to do business.”
“I treat all people differently,” Trump added, in the clip that was captured by Mediaite.
Trump has been asked about his voice before, in November of last year. He attributed it to shouting during trade talks.
“I feel great. I was shouting at people because they were stupid about something having to do with trade and a country, and I straightened it out,” a raspy-sounding Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. He didn’t specify the country. “But I blew my stack at these people.”
Tucker Carlson went to town on President Donald Trump over his explanation for the AI-generated image he posted of himself looking like Jesus Christ.
During Wednesday’s episode of the Tucker Carlson Show, he described Trump’s post as “disruptive.”
“It’s Donald Trump, president of the United States, dressed as Jesus, healing a man. You can see the healing power coming off of his right hand,” the political commentator said.
Trump, who Carlson described as a “famously irreligious man,” tried to explain his way out of the controversy after he received widespread criticism, even from his own base.
“So, he sent that out and then withdrew it, deleted the tweet from the internet after an outcry, but was asked about it, and he said, ‘Yeah, I sent that’ … And he said, ’I sent it out, but it wasn’t me as Jesus,’ though obviously it is. [Trump said] ‘it was me as a doctor because I heal people.’”
When asked about it a day later, Trump denied even posting the image.
“He said, ‘No, no, I didn’t have anything to do with that. I didn’t send it out,’” Carlson added. “Which wasn’t exactly an answer to the question.”
Carlson then took issue with Trump reposting a doctored photo of Jesus “caressing” him.
“That’s unmistakably Jesus, the Christian Messiah, the man God at the center of Christianity, with his arm around Donald Trump, basically saying, ‘You go, Trump. I’m on your side.’”
So what do Trump’s posts mean, Carlson asked, before answering his own question.
“It’s mockery. He’s mocking Jesus. He’s making fun of Christianity. The central figure of the religion is being held up for mockery,” he said.
Carlson also blasted Trump for threatening war crimes and dropping an F-bomb in another Truth Social post on Easter Sunday.
“And then he seemed to make fun of Islam. ‘Praise Allah,’ he said. So in one short statement of about 110 words, he seemed to give the finger to the world’s two largest religions, Christianity and Islam,” Carlson said.
A week later, Carlson noted, Trump again behaved offensively towards religion.
“Also on Sunday, the Christian holy day, he attacked the pope, the leader of the world’s largest religion and largest Christian denomination, and attacked him personally and said basically, he’s only pope because of me,” Carlson said.
This prompted Carlson to wonder if the US is a “Christian nation.” And if it is fundamentally a Christian nation, what does Trump’s mockery of religion say about the future of America?
“Donald Trump is not the first president to give the finger to Jesus, hardly. But he is the first president to do it in public,” Carlson said.
Watch Carlson’s remarks on “The Tucker Carlson Show” below:
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Like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the war in Iran has exposed the folly of Britain’s energy and climate policy.
Since 2008, we have been sold a utopian dream of the benefits of green energy. In July 2009, Ed Miliband, then the secretary of state for energy and climate change, said decarbonisation would ‘create a more secure, more prosperous low-carbon Britain’. In 2010, new prime minister David Cameron said he wanted the ‘greenest government ever’ so that we might ‘have our share of the industries of the future’. In 2015, Lib Dem MP Ed Davey said that renewables were central to our ‘global leadership on climate change’. In 2019, prime minister Theresa May, who put Net Zero into law that same year, said the UK was ‘leading the world on climate change’ and that others should ‘follow our example’.
That idealistic story is now unravelling. The UK not only has the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world, but is actively deterring businesses such as OpenAI from investing here. Despite abundant offshore and onshore hydrocarbons, our dependence on imported gas has grown, and global annual carbon emissions continue to rise.
More than a mere policy failure, the UK’s green energy drive has been an ethical disaster. For more than two decades, we have failed to ask the vital question: what is energy policy for? Faced with a cross-party climate consensus, we never debated how decarbonisation should be weighed against other legitimate goods such as affordability, security, sovereignty, industrial depth and democratic consent. Instead, one objective was elevated above all the others. The trade-offs were brushed under the carpet.
Isaiah Berlin, one of the 20th century’s most important liberal political philosophers, offers a useful way of understanding what went wrong. In Does Political Theory Still Exist?, he argued that politics exists because a plurality of legitimate conceptions of the ‘good life’ can conflict. The alternative is monism: the belief that one supreme, unifying goal can take precedent over the rest. In that sort of system, with the goal of policymaking decided in advance, ‘the only unsolved problems will be more or less technical’, wrote Berlin.
For Berlin, a defender of value pluralism and political liberty, monism was the enemy of politics. He suggested that in more extreme cases, monism can drift towards crisis politics, where certain situations are cast as ‘critical emergencies’. And in a state of emergency, any means can be justified in the name of averting a putative disaster or threat. This serves as an apt description of contemporary British climate politics.
Indeed, no one has articulated this more clearly than Ed Miliband himself. In his 2022 post-pandemic manifesto, Go Big: 20 Bold Solutions to Fix Our World, Miliband set out his own monist logic. In his view, the ‘climate disaster’ is ‘the ultimate challenge for politics’. There is ‘no route to a renewed social contract that does not involve putting the climate threat front and centre’. The transition ‘demands we rethink and remake our societies’ and requires us to abandon our ‘300-year model of economic growth’ to do so. In a 2025 interview with The Rest Is Politics, Miliband dismissed sceptics as guilty of ‘defeatism’ and spoke in strikingly deterministic terms about Net Zero’s inevitability.
This is not ordinary policymaking. It is a totalising political vision in which every issue must be interpreted through a climate lens: jobs, fairness, housing, transport, ownership, industry, diet and more. All are made subordinate to the goal of decarbonisation. Worse still, this is not mere rhetoric. The Climate Change Act, the 2019 Net Zero amendment, carbon budgets and the influential role of the Climate Change Committee have turned decarbonisation from a policy goal into a statutory governing obligation. This shift has transformed the purpose of the British state itself, moving it away from maximising security and economic prosperity, and towards the long-term re-engineering of society in the service of a global emissions agenda.
Between 2010 and 2015, the coalition government reordered the system to favour intermittent renewables over firm power and domestic hydrocarbons. Rupert Darwall, a senior fellow at the National Centre for Energy Analytics and a long-time critic of Britain’s green agenda, shows how the coalition’s Electricity Market Reform plan and its so-called Contracts for Difference regime meant that the state supplanted the market in allocating capital ‘between different generating technologies’. The result was not merely more wind and solar, but also the premature phasing out of reliable coal and gas, greater dependence on imports (especially of liquefied natural gas) and a sharp rise in whole-system costs. Indeed, Net Zero policies are now adding about £17 billion a year to the cost of living – a figure which, in Andrew Montford’s analysis for Net Zero Watch, is heading towards £30 billion by 2035.
The consequences are impossible to hide. But the damage runs even deeper than bills or the risks of blackout. Rian Whitton, an analyst and leading industrial strategist, argues that high energy costs and decarbonisation policy have hollowed out the ‘foundational industrial economy’ on which hard national power depends, including steel, petrochemicals and ammonia production. He warns that our industrial base will ‘almost certainly have shrunk further by the time of the next General Election’. The prospect of finding Britain in a weaker industrial position after the outbreak of the Ukraine war, the largest land war in Europe since 1945, should terrify us all.
This is a real indictment of Net Zero and the cross-party consensus that protected it. Affordability has been subordinated and lied about, security treated as the preoccupation of cranks, and industrialisation viewed as a relic from a grubbier age. Britain’s mistake was not that it cared about climate change or the environment. We all do. It was that it allowed environmental concerns to colonise the entire field of politics. It is time to return to first principles and ask the questions that need asking – before it’s too late.
Maurice Cousins is campaign director for Net Zero Watch. Follow him on X: @MDC12345678.
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Politics Home | Keir Starmer Sacks Foreign Office Permanent Secretary Over Mandelson Vetting Row
2 min read
The most senior civil servant in the Foreign Office is leaving his role over the Lord Mandelson vetting row.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper have lost confidence in Olly Robbins, who will be standing down as the department’s permanent secretary as a result, PoliticsHome understands.
His departure comes after The Guardian reported on Thursday that Mandelson was appointed the UK ambassador to the US in 2024 despite failing his security vetting.
No 10 later released a statement saying that the Foreign Office was responsible for the vetting process and went ahead with appointing Mandelson to the job in Washington despite the failure, without telling the Prime Minister or any other minister.
Downing Street added that Starmer had been first made aware earlier this week.
The Prime Minister is expected to make a statement to the House of Commons on Monday to correct previous statements he has made about the process by which Mandelson was appointed.
He is expected to tell MPs that he did not unknowingly mislead Parliament when he said that due process had been followed in the appointment.
Starmer sacked Mandelson as the UK ambassador to Washington in September amid controversy over his links to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The Prime Minister’s decision to appoint the former cabinet minister to the senior diplomatic position despite being aware of his relationship with Epstein has come under intense scrutiny.
In February, Morgan McSweeney resigned as Starmer’s chief of staff over the episode.
Mandelson, who was a key figure in the New Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, is currently being investigated by the police over allegations that he leaked confidential government documents to Epstein while in office.
More follows…
Zionism — Since October 7, British citizens across the UK have increasingly woken up to the long-term ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians at the hand of their murderous settler colonialist occupier, Zionist Israel. For many, the live-streamed mass violence and widespread terror shared on social media became a call to action. As a result, it became a call to action which I, like many others, felt deeply. This sparked a strong sense of social responsibility to act.
My journey has led me to finding a journalism career that I am thoroughly passionate about. This empowers me to hold the powerful to account without fear or favour. Let me make this clear to my critics: I have no interest in swooning over powerful people on pedestals. I fight for power in the hands of ordinary people — and I will challenge corruption in our domestic politics wherever it appears.
I am also fiercely and unapologetically anti-Zionist, and surprisingly, this appears to have put me at odds with both the Greens and Your Party. Nevertheless, I do not back down to bullies. Working to stop Zionism is more than worth taking full responsibility for.
In fact, it is political parties themselves which must be made to do better.
Zionism and the Green Party
Zionism is an undeniable issue in the Green Party. I witnessed it in my own time as a candidate in the ’24 General Election. In that election, Zionists within the ranks manipulated myself and my local party to withdraw my own candidacy. They did so by informing that I did not have support from the Green’s following an investigation into antisemitism allegations churned out by the Murdoch hate rags and right-wing press.
After that, due to no longer trusting the party, I ended my membership, started working with Assemble and became an independent.
Since then, I have learned this was a blatant lie as I had been cleared of any and all antisemitism by the party’s GPRC and GPeX. In reality, an unelected Zionist bureaucrat just didn’t like that an anti-Zionist might represent the Green Party. So they subverted process to block it.
That lack of appetite for anti-Zionism is still going strong despite public appearances. Moreover, we only need to look to the filibustered “Zionism is Racism” motion at their recent spring conference. This will have undoubtedly come from pro-Zionist shills in the party.
Auschwitz survivor: “…just as the Nazis taught me in Germany”
"In Israeli schools, racism against Palestinians is taught, and students are indoctrinated about the state, blood, and soil, just as the Nazis taught me in Germany. Zionism is a nationalist, racist, and colonialist ideology…"
—An Auschwitz survivor Jew Hajo Meyer pic.twitter.com/icwKx6tkY6
— The Resonance (@Partisan_12) November 11, 2025
Justifying further the understanding that Zionism is indeed racism is the very fact that racism itself has been reported by minoritised Greens. Going further, it appears a mixture of racism and Zionism are being deployed specifically to shut down anti-Zionist members. This can only ring alarm bells for pro-Palestinian activists across the country. In particular, those who actually learned from the malicious faux-antisemitism crisis under Corbyn’s Labour.
Unlike Polanski apparently, who appears set to oversee a continuation of bogus antisemitism allegations as we reported recently on the deeply concerning letter sent by Green member, Hamza Egal. Even worse, we appear to be witnessing a mix of racism and islamophobia amidst the attacks which conveniently fall on anti-Zionist members.
Zionism is not ‘complex’ or ‘nuanced’
Deputy leader Mothin Ali has beautifully shown no difficulty in recognising the scourge of Zionism. Refreshingly, he has gone further and offered a place of safety for those affected by pro-Israel, pro-genocide smear campaigns:
Thanks for highlighting this Tony. — Mothin Ali (@MothinAli) April 14, 2026
If anyone has been affected by the unfair smears, please do reach out https://t.co/H6CMaaUq0q
This exposes a deeply concerning lack of principled leadership. It is made more evident by Polanski’s ‘nuanced take’ on the colonialist political ideology of Zionism:
Green Party leader Zack Polanski answers question on motion E3 Zionism is racism and the Green Party conference. #green #greenparty #conference #update #answer pic.twitter.com/aIZehnear1
— Ani Says (@ani_says1) April 1, 2026
Polanski should be made to take a clear and consistent stance against all forms of racism, including Zionism which must be seen as anti-Palestinian racism. Otherwise, if he fails to do so, it risks allowing these toxic and abusive attitudes to take root within the Green Party. Furthermore, it can weaken its ability to stand up to fascism.
Zionism and Your Party
Your Party has positioned itself as the anti-war, anti-imperialism, anti-Zionist party many times — after all, it was largely formed by the Independent MPs in Corbyn’s alliance in Parliament. Needless to say, most calls for a strong anti-Zionist stance have come from MP Zarah Sultana’s dogged and principled insistence. However, as is often the way with Corbyn, he has been reluctant to be as transparent about his own held position.
Instead, his supporters tout that “he will free the Palestinian people”, whilst the leader himself can’t find it within himself to answer one simple, crucial question: is he actually anti-Zionist?
The blatant discomfort on show from Corbyn at the time speaks volumes. In turn, it raises alarm bells as to whether he really can be the bulwark that we need to actually try to turn the tide of tyranny facing us all. After all, we all know how he weathers under concerted pressure from rogue forces. He capitulated and oversaw a purge of anti-Zionist socialists under the guise of antisemitism.
On the other hand, at a meeting in London in November, Corbyn seemed more than capable of saying he firmly opposed Zionism. He also appeared to recognise the scale of death, devastation and destruction that it inevitably delivers:
The whole Zionist project was about expanding Israel forevermore, which is exactly what [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is doing with the Greater Israel project. So, yes — absolute opposition to Zionism, and absolute solidarity with the people of Palestine.
And now we have the genocide, and it is a genocide in Gaza. We in Your Party are absolutely in solidarity with the people of Palestine, and will be guided by them on the policies we develop and the direction we take going forward.
Corbyn appears to be back for another purge
Coincidentally, this ‘socialist’ party which claims to oppose all forms of oppression has been seen to purge socialist groups for supposedly not aligning with its values. In stark contrast, the ruling clique have shown far more openness to former Tories and social conservatives. Subsequently, we’ve seen emboldened bigotry on display enraging socialist members in the movement and bringing the party’s socialist credentials under further scrutiny.
That contradiction is glaring — and it’s fuelling serious doubts among socialists about whether Jeremy Corbyn can provide the clear, principled leadership they’re demanding.
Moreover, many do not appear to believe so. In fact, resignations soon followed the purge of socialists from anti-war groups like Counterfire. Corbyn even managed to entirely alienate his Scottish members. Those members have now resigned en-masse and committed to building a socialist party that they can trust.
The decision of the leadership of Your Party to exclude members of left groups who have been committed to building the organisation is a mistake which will weaken the left, but has been predictable given events of the past year, argues Michael Lavalettehttps://t.co/ci4NbKQkOV
— Counterfire (@counterfireorg) April 14, 2026
Your Party – Goodbye Scotland
Solidarity with members and former members of Your Party Scotland After months of bureaucratic provocations, the withholding of data, funds and support for the Holyrood election in May, Your Party has suffered a mass resignation in Scotland. pic.twitter.com/6dzrOJSzM6
— Democratic Socialists (@DemSocsYP) April 14, 2026
Clarify your positions and damn well be effective
This miserable debacle has certainly taught us one thing for certain. Pedestalled leaders are not the hope for the people. Clearly, the real hope for change and repair can only come from ordinary people who feel its very urgency.
This failure of leadership in YP has devastated members. Nevertheless, rather than give up, their socialist, anti-oppression resolve has only strengthened in conviction. That conviction has the power to develop into a truly historic moment for the UK. No longer looking to privileged leaders who break their promises, ordinary people are now working towards a party of their own that actually answers to its members.
Green’s should learn from the disappointing experience of YP members and demand clarification on Polanski’s ‘nuanced’ position on Zionism. After all, being hoodwinked is exactly the MO of establishment politicians, Corbyn very clearly has, Polanski may be no different.
We have to face facts: There is no time to waste in being fooled by self-interested, self-important leaders who believe their own hype.
Featured image via RevolutionaryCommunist
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