With the excellent news of Allocation Round 7’s bumper budget allocation, delivering 8.4GW of contracts for new offshore wind turbines in Britain’s waters, attention is now turning to how the supply chain can be turbocharged to get them built.

Meeting the government’s ambitious 2030 offshore wind deployment targets of 43-50GW will require up to 12 million tonnes of steel, 9-12 million tonnes of concrete, and vast amounts of copper, aluminium and rare earth elements.¹ The government is already pulling levers to help the supply chain scale up to meet this demand; Great British Energy has announced £300m in capital grant funding to build UK manufacturing capacity for key constrained components in offshore wind and enabling electricity networks sectors.

But delivering these targets sustainably demands more than just new turbines – it requires a coherent strategy for the end-of-life management, reuse and recycling of wind turbine compo­nents. Effective circularity in wind supply chains can unlock economic, environmental and strategic benefits that support the government’s broader industrial and net-zero objectives.

The UK’s earliest commercial wind turbines are now approach­ing the end of their expected operational lifespans, creating an urgent need to prepare for the decommissioning challenge, which will only increase over the coming years.

Embedding circular economy principles – reducing, reusing and recycling – across the wind sector preserves finite resources, reduces carbon emissions, and strengthens supply-chain resilience. It also aligns with UK industrial growth priorities by stimulating new manufacturing and recycling businesses. For example, emerging partnerships like the ‘Re-Rewind’ initiative are exploring how to create the UK’s first circular supply chain for rare earth magnets, a critical material in turbine genera­tors, reducing dependence on imports and supporting future turbine manufacturing.

A series of collaborative initiatives highlights the sector’s commitment to these goals. The ‘Regulations to Ensure Sustainable Circular Use at End-of-Life for Wind’ (RESCUE) project, led by ORE Catapult alongside the University of Leeds, University of the West of England, University of Birmingham, EMR and Ionic Technologies, aims to identify regulatory barriers and opportunities to establish a robust end-of-life materials network.

The early discovery phase of RESCUE revealed that current waste and resource regulations risk stifling innovation needed for reuse, repair and recy­cling. The implementation phase seeks to address these barriers through collaborative governance, capacity building and regulatory sandboxes that pilot circular solutions.

Complementing this work, the University of Leeds policy briefing on enhancing resilience and circular economy in wind supply chains highlights that the existing policy landscape – spanning over 170 regulations, standards and planning frame­works – remains fragmented.

For Parliament, supporting circular wind strategies is not merely environmental stewardship. It is strategic industrial policy – strengthening UK supply chains, mitigating mate­rial risks, and ensuring that as turbines are built, they are also responsibly retired and recycled, contributing directly to the Clean Power 2030 agenda.

On Monday 16^th March, ORE Catapult will be hosting a Parliamentary Reception in the Terrace Pavilion to launch its latest RESCUE report. Please join us to hear more about how circularity in offshore wind will not only benefit our energy security and clean power targets, but also boost regional growth in key coastal constituencies.

 For more information about our reception, please email [email protected].

 Reference

1. https://circulareconomy.leeds.ac.uk/enhancing-resilience-and-circular-economy-in-uk-wind-supply-chains/

On Monday, though, the Journal reported that multiple other figures in Trump’s orbit are now walking around in presidentially purchased Florsheims — which retail for about $145.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung, White House deputy chief of staff James Blair and speechwriter Ross Worthington have all been on the receiving end of Trump’s shoe giving, the Journal reported.

Outside of the White House, Fox News’ Sean Hannity and Sen. Lindsey Graham (Republican, South Carolina) are also walking the walk in Trump-approved shoes, it added.

“All the boys have them,” a female White House official told the Journal.

“It’s hysterical because everybody’s afraid not to wear them,” another told the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper.

At one point, “Vance lifted his leg in the air to show the president the pair he was wearing,” said Times reporter Katie Rogers.

Last year, Vance recalled Trump chastising him and Rubio for their “shitty shoes” and then making a crude gag about penis size.

Donald Trump on Tuesday took some time out from waging war on Iran to renew hostilities with traditional US ally Canada, referring to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney as the country’s “future governor” — a remark that drew criticism on social media, where users called it juvenile and more.

The president made the dig on his Truth Social platform midway through a post that was otherwise about working with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (Democrat) to address the spread of invasive Asian carp in the Great Lakes.

“I’ll be asking other Governors to join into this fight, including those of Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, New York and, of course, the future Governor of Canada, Mark Carney, who I know will be happy to contribute to this worthy cause,” Trump wrote.

Trump ended the post with a predictable boast:

“Separately, I am also working to save The Great Salt Lake, in Utah, which, in a short period of time, if nothing is done, will have no water. This is on top of everything else I am doing. Only ‘TRUMP’ CAN DO IT!”

Trump has previously mocked Carney with the “governor” title, similar to how he taunted Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, during the initial stages of his second term amid talk of the United States somehow taking control of its northern neighbour.

Carney, however, has repeatedly pushed back on such suggestions, insisting Canada will remain independent despite Trump’s tariffs and unusual warnings, such as his claim that China could somehow force Canada to stop playing hockey.

“Canada doesn’t live because of the United States,” Carney said in January, adding: “Canada thrives because we are Canadian.”

Critics on X, many with Canadian flags on their profiles, slammed Trump for the post:

We hope you love the products we recommend! All of them were independently selected by our editors. Just so you know, HuffPost UK may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page if you decide to shop from them. Oh, and FYI – prices are accurate and items in stock as of time of publication.

If you’re looking to give your wardrobe a spring refresh, you’re in luck, because M&S is packing some absolute doozies this season.

Now, it feels like there are buys in every new collection that have been specifically designed to sabotage my savings goals.

I’ve flirted with temptation and filtered through all the womenswear that’s just arrived to find the cream of the crop, so you don’t have to.

But you’d better move fast, because some of the best pieces are already starting to sell out…

Sir Keir Starmer has tried using a simple explanation for the Mandelson affair: he didn’t know.

The Prime Minister has repeatedly insisted he was unaware of the “depth” of Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein when he appointed him Britain’s ambassador to Washington. Mandelson, he says, misled him. Officials failed him. New information has since come to light which would have stopped the appointment “had I known it at the time”.

In Parliament on 10 September 2025, Starmer was categorical. “Full due process was followed during this appointment, as it is with all ambassadors,” he told MPs.

The documents released yesterday show that claim just wasn’t true.

Let’s go through it. Mandelson was a controversial appointment from the very beginning – and even if one had somehow missed his other dodgy departures from British politics, the Cabinet Office attempted to ensure the Prime Minister was properly briefed. A two-page due diligence report was placed on Starmer’s desk warning him of the “reputational risks” from Mandelson’s association with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Officials noted a JPMorgan report describing the two men as “particularly close”. They recorded that Mandelson’s contact with Epstein continued after the financier had been convicted of child sex offences. They also flagged reports that Mandelson had stayed at Epstein’s house while he was in jail.

The Prime Minister could not miss it. Surely this was evidence enough not to go through with the appointment? And yet he did.

Starmer’s defence since Mandelson’s messy dismissal has been that the former ambassador misrepresented the relationship with Epstein. In February, the Prime Minister said the former US ambassador had “portrayed Epstein as someone he barely knew. And when that became clear and it was not true, I sacked him.”

But the papers released today show that officials had already outlined the essential facts before the appointment was made. The warning lights were flashing well in advance.

Not just that. Jonathan Powell, Starmer’s own National Security Adviser, described the appointment process at the time as “weirdly rushed” and “unusual”. He raised his concerns with Morgan McSweeney, then Starmer’s chief of staff. Starmer, the documents show, may have had “political conversations around this”.

Philip Barton too, then the permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, had his “reservations about the appointment”. Both were overruled.

What followed was hardly a forensic examination of the candidate from the former director of public prosecutions.

In response to the due diligence document raising reputational concerns, Mandelson was asked just three questions by McSweeney. He answered them. His responses were accepted at face value.

There is, throughout this process, an extraordinary lack of curiosity from those responsible for testing the appointment, with so few appearing to raise their concerns.

David Lammy told the press that he had opposed Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador. The official record suggests otherwise. A letter from Barton notes “the Foreign Secretary, who agrees with the recommendation”. At the time, that Foreign Secretary was Lammy.

Then there is the question of process – the very thing Starmer assured Parliament had been properly followed.

Emails indicate Mandelson was offered a “higher tiers” briefing on 6 January, granting access to highly classified Foreign Office material. But his developed vetting – the formal security clearance required for such access – was not completed until 29 January.

In other words, Starmer ordered such a speedy appointment that Mandelson was briefed on sensitive information before the vetting process had finished. That is a clear departure from the normal procedures.

For a role as sensitive as ambassador to the United States, it marks an unusually casual approach to risk.

After being dismissed, Mandelson said his “chief concern” was returning from Washington with “maximum dignity”. He initially sought £547,201 in severance – the value for his four-year contract. He eventually received £75,000.

Quite why he received anything at all given the circumstances of his dismissal is unclear. As Tory MPs Mims Davies and Alicia Kearns pushed for any such payment to be reveal, they were continually batted away – even though officials noted that there was “no prohibition” on publishing the terms.

One message released in the documents hints at the reasoning. Without “a positive indication”, officials warned, there was a “potential” that Mandelson might go public with some of his claims. Which claims those might be remain unclear.

In the release of summaries and internal correspondence came the Prime Minister’s box note – comments from private office and special advisers on a paper or submission, that has a box for the Prime Minister to leave his thoughts – left empty.

As shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Alex Burghart wrote on Twitter: “I’ve worked in No10 – Spads and Private Secretary provide comments AND we’d expect the PM to write in his view. All that has been left out – why?”

The absence matters because the Mandelson affair ultimately turns on judgement, the Prime Minister’s to be precise.

Labour would prefer it to be seen as a failure of process: a misleading figure, incomplete information, and a government system that did not function as intended.

But the documents suggest something much simpler. The warnings were there. Senior officials raised concerns. The due diligence report spelt out the reputational risks in plain English.

The real question is not what the Prime Minister didn’t know.

It is why, having been told what he did know, he went ahead anyway.

Callum McGoldrick is investigations campaign manager at the Taxpayers’ Alliance.

As fashionable as it is to write off the last government’s time in office as a disaster, we shouldn’t be too hasty in dismissing some of its more successful policies. Particularly as these are the ones Labour have been quickest to undo. 

The most glaring example of this is education. Michael Gove’s reforms of the system included taking control away from local authorities through the academy model, promoting exams over coursework and incentivising schools to focus on more traditional subjects. Between the 2009 baseline and the 2022 PISA results, England rose from 27th to 11th in the world for mathematics, and from 25th to 13th for reading.

Under Bridget Phillipson, Labour is removing the traditional subject focus in favour of creative arts and sports, scrapping single word Ofsted judgements for a softer system and scaling back the autonomy of academies. This is before even mentioning the dismantling of private schools. The Conservative legacy on education policy is being shredded.

Then there is welfare. Sir Iain Duncan Smith drove a massive overhaul to the benefits system through Universal Credit (UC) during the coalition years. Removing many of the cliff-edges of the old system for those starting to get into work, UC did mean that those that worked would earn more. Although it came in later, the Two-Child Limit restricted those on UC from receiving further taxpayer funding for having more than two children. Employment increased, and benefits spending was brought under control, at least until the pandemic undid much of the work.

Labour were elected with a promise to ‘make work pay’ with a whole host of benefit reforms. The early days of their government even saw tentative statements indicating a reduction in at least the growth rate of overall welfare spending. In a surprise to no one, the plans collapsed. The Two-Child Limit will be scrapped from next month, the standard allowance will be raised and they are reducing the amount the government can deduct from UC for debt deductions from 25 per cent to 15 per cent, further burdening those in work who must subsidise the debts of those out of work. The unwinding of this success in welfare started under the last government, but it has been accelerated since.

This brings us to fuel duty, surely one of the major Conservative successes in tax policy. From 1993, the duty had risen by 3 per cent above the inflation, later increased to 6 per cent in 1997. In this time, Britain went from having some of the lowest fuel costs in the world to among the highest. By 2000, over 80 per cent of the cost of petrol was tax alone.

Following huge protests in 2000, Gordon Brown cut fuel duty by 2p in 2001 on specific types of petrol and diesel while largely avoiding further rises until 2008. Alistair Darling increased the duty by 2p in 2009 while legislating for a schedule of aggressive tax hikes. A 1p per litre increase in April 2010, another 1p in October 2010, and a commitment to raise duty by 1p above inflation every single year from 2010 to 2014.

The 2010 election saw George Osborne become Chancellor. While he followed through with Darling’s scheduled increases in his first year in office, after petrol prices hit record highs in 2011, the Conservatives brought in a freeze. Since that freeze, no chancellor had increased fuel duty. In 2022 there was even an emergency 5p per litre cut in response to the Ukraine crisis which has further stayed in place to the present day. Had the old system stayed in place, motorists would be paying £19 billion more per year with a rate of over £1 per litre, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies. From some of the highest rates in Europe, the Conservative government successfully brought us down to only slightly above average.

The prime minister insisted this week at PMQs that fuel duty has not increased under Labour. This was gaslighting. The freeze is set to end in September in order to pay for the benefits bill, bloated public sector and various other squanderings of taxpayers money.

Our latest research note at the TaxPayers’ Alliance shows just and how much it could undo some of the work of the past 15 years. Even with a decade and a half of freezes Britain already still has the fourth highest duty on diesel and the tenth highest duty on petrol when compared with EU member states. We pay 3p more per litre more than the EU average on petrol and 12p per litre more on diesel. If the 5p cut alone is removed, this gap would widen to 8p per litre above the EU average for petrol and 14p per litre above the EU average for diesel.

The Conservatives in opposition are demanding an extension to this cut. And rightly so. As well as protecting motorists and the wider economy, it is one of the rare bright spots in tax policy from the last government that is left to defend.