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…

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.

John Oxley is a consultant, writer, and broadcaster. His SubStack is Joxley Writes.

In the 1870s, world attention was focused on conflict and shipping lanes. A Russian advance towards Constantinople threatened the Dardanelles and, with it, British access. Where now global affairs spawn memes, back then, the public engaged through music hall and pub songs. The threat of conflict spawned one of the most famous. As you monitored the situation, you’d have the GH McDermott refrain: “We don’t want to fight, but by Jingo if we do. We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too.” It became so widespread that Jingoism became a shorthand for an aggressive foreign policy.   

A century and a half later, and Britain’s position looks a little different. For sure, we do not want to fight. Public opinion remains against all but the most limited defensive action in Iran. More generally, we have become far more reluctant to incur casualties or deal out destruction. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan proved especially chastening and unpopular. Those conflicts feel particularly pertinent here, as the US leads the way with little apparent strategy or plan. For old Jingoism, however, that all seems moot. Unlike the late nineteenth century, we don’t have the ships, the men, or the money.  

Our funding for the armed forces has declined almost continuously since the end of the Second World War. Forces were scaled back during decolonisation and further cut as we realised the post-Cold War “peace dividend”. The Tories must accept the blame for further entrenching this through austerity. Spending on the armed forces was cut further, with troop numbers falling to the lowest levels since the Napoleonic Wars.  

It is not just the men (or these days, personnel) that we lack. Numerous military observers have raised alarms about equipment and capability gaps. Defence expects, and retired Generals have questioned, whether we could actually field our Nato commitments without logistical support from other nations. Behind these headline concerns lie broader problems with recruitment and retention, military housing and the terrible woes of our defence procurement processes. The hurried deployment of HMS Dragon has indicated the strain that exists between our defensive ambitions and our capabilities.  

We are also quickly learning that this is the more important part of the refrain. We may not wish to choose war, but we may not have a choice. The events of the last fortnight have shown how our interests can be drawn into conflicts that we have no role in starting. So does the continued threat of Russian aggression in Eastern Europe. We must be ready to respond when our enemies target us or our allies. Equally, if our ability to deter our adversaries is to remain effective, it must be credible. None of this can happen without a proper financial commitment to our military.  

Our politicians have partly acknowledged this. Defence spending is set to rise, gradually, to 3.5 per cent of GDP by the mid-2030s. Questions remain, however, over whether that is fast enough or big enough, and how it will translate into the capabilities needed to meet the challenges of the next decade. But there is a broader political problem too, about how that sits with the wider demands of the state and the economy. Politicians and voters like long-term plans like this. It sounds good, but it defers decisions about the consequences. They can’t be put off forever.  

Decades of reducing military spending have allowed the money to move elsewhere. Left-wing governments have tended to transfer it into social spending, right-wing ones into tax cuts. Boosting military spending once again means reversing one or both of these (or else ever more borrowing). Properly equipping our military will require reductions in other public services or higher levies.  

The current government has failed to articulate this or the realities that lie behind it. The world is becoming increasingly fractious. The United States is, at best, demanding that we and other European powers pay more of our own way. At worst, it is becoming an unreliable ally in defending our continent. This all requires a stark rethinking of how we defend ourselves, the bill, and the consequences. Yet rarely is this spelt out to the British public.  

Such reticence will undermine the political will to increase defence funding. If the voters are going to accept the costs of rearmament, the positive case needs to be made. This includes bluntly explaining the risks that those of us who obsessively monitor the news are already aware of. It also requires setting out why our military power matters. Strength and security are not about expeditionary wars and messes of our own making like Iraq. Twice in the last half-decade, energy prices have spiked because of foreign wars. Maintaining peace is vital to protecting our economy from threats like inflation.  

For the Conservatives, it gives us a chance to speak about the sort of state we want to build. While it may not be the time for public mea culpae, we need to be intellectually honest that we have let down our armed forces in the past and that we can’t now cut our way to security. The armed forces are central to our state. If we are to prioritise security, it comes at the expense of things we’d otherwise choose to do, whether that is spending or tax cuts. As we look for a credible programme, we must make those choices and advocate for them. Otherwise, we repeat the government’s problems, picking a target without a plan for how to get there or building political consent for it.  

Times have moved on from the jingoism of the music hall sing-along. Britain is not an imperial power. We are unlikely to ever launch a war of our own choosing or sail out to police the relations of two distant countries. We still, however, have interests to defend. We want to influence our allies and strengthen our ability to deter the most serious threats we face. As a country, we still need the ships, the men, and the money.  

That programme, whatever form it takes, must ultimately rest on something more durable than targets and timelines. It requires a political party willing to look the public in the eye and explain the world as it is and to make the honest case for what serious defence of our interests costs. Not just in numbers, but with the implications for where the money comes from – either with achievable cuts elsewhere, or higher taxation. For the Conservatives, embracing that argument is not just a matter of national security. It is the clearest possible signal that we are once again a party serious enough to govern. The refrain needs updating. We still need to prove we mean it. 

Chase Blount studies at the University of Bath. She is the Deputy Chair of Torfaen Conservatives and is Chair of Libertarian Conservatives UK.

While everyone was distracted as they eagerly awaited the Gorton and Denton by-election results, I was standing around a small counting table in a polling station for Two Locks, a Welsh Cwmbran Community Council ward. Of which I was a candidate.

I thought to myself that the Reform lot were slightly too confident as they rushed to the front with their clipboards, haul of Reform merchandise, and big smiles plastered from one ear to another. But it was evident from the moment the counters tipped the ballot papers out onto the table that they had every reason to count their chickens before they hatched. I struggled to see any ballots with a mark in the Conservative box; even more worrying, I saw many in the Labour and Plaid Cymru boxes.

No way that Reform would win this, I told myself, especially since the only reason this by-election was being held: the Reform councillor, David Thomas, failed to show up to a single meeting in six months, therefore triggering grounds for vacation by the council group. Not only did he take his voters for granted, but he also cost the taxpayers around £10,000! Imagine the potholes that could be filled with that sum! How wrong was I, though? Reform won by a landslide; the results were as follows:

• Plaid Cymru: 94 (16 per cent)
• Conservatives: 22 (4 per cent)
• Liberal Democrats: 76 (13 per cent)
• Labour: 102 (17 per cent)
• Reform: 290 (50 per cent)

It was humiliating! Not only were we all trounced by the party that caused this mess, but I received fewer votes than the Liberal Democrat candidate, who received 4.6% of the Torfaen parliamentary vote in 2024. Luckily, deposits aren’t a thing in these elections – otherwise I would not be getting it back!

Despite coming in last place, I left the count feeling happier than when I walked in. This is because it made me think about the benefits I gained from even being a candidate for the first time. To which there are many.

At the start, putting your name forward is a huge step, especially since I hadn’t done it before. Conversing with members of the party’s local association about my intentions and willingness to stand led to my selection as the party’s candidate. This is a huge accomplishment in itself, as it’s a statement to have the backing of a whole mainstream party and the backing of its local figures. You learn that you yourself can actually participate in one of the core pillars of Britain, its democracy, and as a younger member, it’s great to know that people of all ages can be considered, based on merit and capabilities.

Once I was the party’s nominee, it was time for bureaucracy! This in itself was such an educational process, learning what forms were necessary to fill in, even on such a local level, giving me the insight for a future run. I decided to fill these in as soon as I could to get it out of the way, allowing me to move on to more exciting parts of the campaign. After handing them in, I started work on probably my second favourite part of the campaign, designing my election graphics.

When working on my leaflet, it was great being able to base my policy priorities on what I’ve heard from residents themselves, knowing what was important to them even on a local level. I made a plain, straightforward plan: Fixing the Roads, Cleaning up the Streets, and Local Representation, things I believe above anything else are achievable, and will make a real, direct difference to the constituents day to day lives. Although there was a lot of messing around with fonts, colour schemes, and image placement, it was an invaluable opportunity for me to be able to learn more about what my neighbours and fellow residents thought in my local area. It’s also priceless to see your face for the first time on a leaflet, knowing that people across the ward will get to learn more about your goals and who you are, increasing your name recognition for future opportunities to give back to the community through public service.

There were 1,500 houses in this ward, and the aim was to get a leaflet through every single one of those doors. We achieved this swiftly thanks to the help of the local team, our friendly neighbouring team in Monmouthshire, and even a member who travelled all the way from Swansea to campaign! This dedication from all those helpers was not only warming, but it was also reassuring and telling that, whatever people like to say about the party: we’re still alive, we’re still kicking, and we’re not going anywhere.

Before, on the doorsteps, I was never able to talk to residents about myself, what I planned, and what I would do to address their concerns, instead I had to be incredibly precise with how I answered since I couldn’t talk for myself, rather I would have to talk for the candidate themself and what they would do. With this, there isn’t much freedom as there was being the candidate themself. Any questions asked about, you, you will naturally know and you can think for yourself rather than for others. This is why, no matter how much fun campaigning for others can be, campaigning for your own campaign is even more joyful.

At the end of the campaign, after seeing how pushed aside local issues were in this race, and the earthquake of a swing that Reform caused, even when every main party in Wales was standing, the main thing I’ve learnt is that unfortunately in most scenarios, national politics always seems to trump local politics as the deciding factors in British elections. It’s not impossible to win a campaign solely on a local basis, but it’s incredibly difficult, and takes a lot of time, something that I didn’t have fighting a by-election. My advice to any Conservatives who are considering standing but are worried that they may not receive the best results… just do it. Because even if in the worst case scenario, you come last, you will still gain an invaluable experience, and you will still ensure that the people of Britain have a choice in their elections.