While you scrape together the money for your energy bill, one MP has been quietly stuffing his pockets with cash from a billionaire’s social media platform.

Restore Britain MP Rupert Lowe has trousered more than £72,000 from X since being elected in 2024. In April alone, he banked over £10,000. That’s more in one month just from X than many of us earn over months.

Think about that. While ordinary people work themselves into the ground, this politician gets paid simply for posting online.

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Click bait

How does it work? Since US billionaire Elon Musk bought the platform, X pays users based on engagement. The more likes, reposts and replies you rack up, the more you earn. And Lowe knows exactly how to play the game.

His posts are packed with provocative language designed to get people riled up. The angrier the response, the fatter his payout. Outrage pays, and Lowe has turned it into a nice little earner.

It helps to have friends in high places. Musk, who has more than 240 million followers, has repeatedly amplified Lowe’s posts. Last June he cheered on Lowe’s breakaway party with a string of Union Jack emojis. Just last Sunday he did it again, sharing one of Lowe’s posts with the caption “Restore Britain”.

So a foreign billionaire boosts the politician, the politician rakes in the cash, and the rest of us are left footing the bill for everything else. Is this what passes for serving the public these days?

Not in it for the money?

Lowe insists he isn’t in it for the money. He told PoliticsHome: “If I were in politics to make money, I wouldn’t donate my entire net MP salary to charity in my constituency. Would I?”

“This is the most expensive job I’ve ever had. Trust me - if I wanted financial gain, I wouldn’t be doing this.”

Make of that what you will. But the numbers don’t lie. Lowe has earned more from the platform than Nigel Farage, Richard Tice and Lee Anderson combined. Farage managed £19,866. Tice and Anderson trail far behind. Lowe leaves the lot of them in the dust.

The system rewards division

And here’s the thing. This isn’t just one greedy MP. It’s a system that rewards division. The platform pushes the loudest, angriest voices to the top, while the quiet majority who just want to get on with their lives are drowned out. The more heat you generate, the more cash lands in your account.

So while you’re told there’s no money for clean air, decent healthcare or affordable energy, there’s apparently plenty sloshing around for politicians who shout the loudest online.

And don’t think this is about one party or one side. Politicians of every stripe have spotted the same trick. Others earn from the platform too, dressing it up as donations to good causes. But the game is the same. Say something inflammatory, watch the engagement roll in, collect the cheque.

The truth is they’re all feeding from the same trough. While we argue among ourselves, the people at the top keep cashing in.

That’s the real scandal here. Not just one greedy MP, but a system that rewards division and pays the powerful to keep us at each other’s throats.

We deserve better than this. We deserve politicians who serve us, not their own bank balances. It’s time we stopped being pitted against one another and started standing together. Because the only people who win when we’re divided are the ones already laughing all the way to the bank.

Picture the World Cup. The beautiful game on the biggest stage. Billions watching. And players collapsing in heat that human beings were never meant to work in.

That’s not scaremongering. That’s the warning now coming from professional footballers themselves.

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Open letter to FIFA

More than 60 players from around the world have signed an open letter to FIFA demanding urgent action on heat stress ahead of this summer’s tournament in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Among them are dozens of British players from across the football pyramid, including Chuba Akpom of Ipswich Town, Jordan Rhodes, who earned 15 caps for Scotland, former Norwich City and Wycombe manager Russell Martin, and players from clubs including Oxford United, Derby County, Stevenage, Colchester United and many more.

These aren’t fringe voices. These are people who have spent their lives on pitches, in training grounds, in the heat.

And they know what it does to you.

Impact of heat

“It can make you feel light-headed, dizzy, experience fatigue, muscle cramps and worse,” the letter states. “You can run less and it becomes impossible to play with the same intensity as with more average temperatures.”

Think about that the next time you watch a World Cup final. Those aren’t peak athletes underperforming. Those are human beings being asked to compete in conditions that are increasingly dangerous, on a planet that is getting hotter year by year.

The players are backing a call from medical experts for FIFA to update its heat-stress protocols before the tournament kicks off. That’s the minimum. A basic duty of care. You’d expect it for workers in any other field. Why should footballers be any different?

Stop taking money from polluters

But the letter goes further. Because the players understand something that the executives in their air-conditioned boardrooms apparently don’t: you cannot tackle the symptoms while you’re funding the cause.

The signatories call on FIFA to drop its fossil fuel sponsors. Full stop. The polluters who have pumped filth into our air for decades, who have lobbied governments to delay action, who have raked in record profits while ordinary people sweat and suffer. FIFA is taking their money. And that makes football part of the problem.

“It would be a missed opportunity,” the players write, “if a sport so impacted by the climate crisis doesn’t take its responsibility in addressing it.”

They’re right. Football has form on this. The game has taken stands on racism, on gender equality, on inclusion. Those fights weren’t easy. But they were right. This one is too.

A lighter environmental footprint

The players also call for a smaller, more regional football calendar. Less burden on players already stretched to breaking point by an overcrowded schedule. And, they point out, it would also reduce the sport’s impact on the environment. What’s good for the players is good for the planet.

British footballers are putting their names to this. Ordinary professionals from League One, League Two, non-league. Not just the superstars. Real people who love the game and want it to survive and flourish.

The question is whether FIFA and its backers in the fossil fuel industry will listen. Or whether they’ll carry on counting their money while the pitch gets hotter.

We all love football. We all want to see it thrive. But we can’t keep looking the other way while the people who run it take cash from the very polluters making our world less safe, less healthy, less fair.

It’s time FIFA picked a side.

You have felt it at the checkout. You have felt it at the petrol pump. You have felt it when your energy bill landed on the mat. Now an official report confirms what millions of us already knew in our bones. When extreme weather hits Britain, it is the people with the least who get clobbered the hardest.

The Climate Change Committee’s new assessment is a 500-page wake-up call. Its most explosive finding? The poorest neighbourhoods in this country are over seven times more likely to be highly vulnerable to dangerous overheating than the wealthiest. They are over ten times more likely to be highly vulnerable to flooding.

Same country. Same storms. Wildly different odds.

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A two-tier Britain

The report calls it a “protection gap”. We call it what it is. A stitch-up.

When the floodwaters rise in your street, the well-off cash in their insurance and rebuild. Many low-income families cannot get insurance at all, or face premiums they have no hope of paying. The report warns that by 2050 many homes in flood-risk areas “may not be able to access insurance due to lack of coverage or high premiums”, and that this “impacts those with low incomes the most”.

When the next heatwave bakes our cities, the comfortable retreat behind air conditioning. Pensioners on fixed incomes swelter in poorly built flats. The report projects heat-related deaths could rise from up to 3,000 a year today to as many as 10,000 a year by 2050. The dead will not be evenly spread across the postcodes.

When the power grid buckles and the lights go out, who picks up the tab? The report spells it out. The cost will eventually be passed onto households, again often impacting those on low incomes the most.

Your dinner is in the firing line

It gets worse. Forty per cent of the food on your plate is imported. When climate shocks hit the countries that grow it, prices rocket here. Extreme heat across Europe in 2022 pushed food prices up that was felt by many.

The report is brutally honest about what comes next. Crop failures abroad will lead to higher food prices, “hitting those on low incomes the hardest”. Ordinary families. Pensioners. Single parents. Working people who already cannot stretch the budget to the end of the month.

Who is responsible?

The committee’s Chair, Baroness Brown, writes that “what governments have been doing on adaptation clearly isn’t working”. She concludes that “whether or not to prepare for the changing climate is now solely a political choice”.

Not an accident. Not an act of God. A choice.

For years, the polluters have been raking it in while ordinary people pick up the bill. Their cronies in government have dithered, delayed and pretended this was somebody else’s problem. Meanwhile your roof leaks. Your bills climb. Your high street floods. Your kids’ school overheats. Your insurance gets cancelled.

The good news

Here is the part they will not put on the front page. We already know what works. Better cooling in homes. Proper flood defences. A secure water supply. Targeting the homes most at risk could cut heat deaths by more than half. Every pound spent on flood resilience saves five. Every pound on heatwave plans saves up to thirty.

This is not rocket science. It is a question of will.

For too long we have been told that protecting ordinary people from the chaos the polluters have caused is too expensive, too complicated, too political. The truth is the opposite. Doing nothing is the expensive option, and the bill always lands on the same doormats.

It is time to stop paying for their mess. It is time for fair protection, fair prices and a fair future. Together, we can demand it.

Forget keeping the lights on in your living room. The real energy hogs are the cavernous warehouses stuffed with whirring computer chips that now devour a staggering 5.9% of Britain’s electricity supply.

That’s the eye-watering finding from new research by the International Data Center Association, which reveals that AI-driven data centres are gobbling up power at an alarming rate. Globally, their energy consumption has surged 15% in just two years. Annual investment in these digital fortresses is approaching $1 trillion. That’s nearly 1% of the entire world economy poured into server farms.

And here in Britain, we’re feeling the squeeze.

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A grid under siege

In early 2025, the UK government reckoned data centres were using 2.5% of our electricity. That figure has more than doubled. The queue to plug new data centres into the national grid has ballooned by an astonishing 460% in the first half of last year alone.

Developers are now waiting years to connect. And the government predicts data centre electricity use will quadruple by 2030.

So who pays when demand outstrips supply? You do. Through higher bills, through strain on infrastructure, and potentially through dirtier air.

The polluters’ back door

Here’s the bit the tech evangelists don’t want you thinking about. When demand for power explodes this fast, something has to give. And there’s a very real danger that something will be Britain’s progress on clean energy.

Greenpeace UK has sounded the alarm, warning that an “unchecked AI boom” risks becoming “a new lifeline for fossil fuels”.

Doug Parr, the group’s chief scientist, didn’t mince his words. “Before being swept along by the enthusiasm of tech billionaires whose profits depend on this expansion, we should pause and ask ourselves whether it’s worth the price.”

He’s right. Because every gigawatt those server farms swallow is a gigawatt that could be powering homes, hospitals and schools with clean, affordable energy. Instead, the polluters are licking their lips at the prospect of fresh demand keeping their dirty industries alive.

Parr called for “more transparency about the amount of water and energy used by data centres, proper environmental impact assessments, and a ban on new polluting plants being built to power AI.”

Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? You’d think our politicians would jump at it.

Whose AI is it anyway?

But there’s a bigger question lurking behind the meter readings. Who actually benefits from all this?

AI is being sold to us as a revolution that will transform our lives. Yet the profits are flowing in one direction only: upwards. The same handful of Silicon Valley giants and their cronies are quietly building an empire on the back of OUR power grid, OUR water supplies, and OUR communities.

The IDCA itself warns that “significant community and political pushback starts to occur in nations once their datacentre footprints have reached the 5% consumption level of national grids.” Britain has already crossed that line.

Worse still, the research found that 13% of US data centre consumption comes from “zombie” services. Apps nobody uses, running on machines nobody switched off, burning electricity nobody needs. Over 3GW of pure waste.

Time to take back the power

Ordinary people didn’t ask for any of this. We weren’t consulted when our grid was carved up to feed the appetites of a few tech moguls. We won’t be sent a thank-you card when our bills go up.

The technology might be new, but the story is as old as time. The elites grab the gains. The rest of us pick up the tab.

That has to change. AI should serve all of us, not just the chosen few. And it must never come at the cost of the clean air, clean energy and clean water that ordinary families deserve.

It’s time to pull the plug on this stitch-up.

Britain is in the grip of a renting nightmare. A staggering 2.4 million households across the UK are now paying rents they simply cannot afford, according to a new report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).

That’s nearly half, 45 per cent, of every family renting privately. And the rot is spreading fast: an extra 250,000 households have been dragged into unaffordable rents since 2023.

Two and a half million households. Working families. Pensioners. Young people just trying to get a start. All handing over more and more of their hard-earned pay just to keep a roof over their heads.

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Hungry in plain sight

The human cost is staggering. More than one in five renting households with sky-high housing costs are now skipping meals or shrinking their food portions just to make ends meet. Hunger. In one of the richest countries on earth. In 2026.

Almost one in ten private renters are forking out more than 70 per cent of their take-home pay on rent. What’s left for food? For heating? For the kids? Nothing.

And it’s about to get worse. Another 340,000 households will be tipped into unaffordable rents by the end of the decade without intervention. The war in Iran is pushing inflation up, and mortgage rates are rising, the perfect storm for landlords to pass the pain onto tenants.

Working families squeezed dry

Don’t believe the lie that this is just about people on benefits. Three-quarters of working-age renters with crippling housing costs live in households where at least one adult is in work. The report makes clear that significant numbers of households in trouble receive no direct housing support through the benefit system.

Dr Maya Singer Hobbs, senior research fellow at IPPR, pulled no punches. “Millions of renters are being pushed to the brink by a housing market that simply isn’t working for them,” she said. “This is no longer a marginal issue affecting a small group, it is a mainstream cost-of-living crisis hitting working households across the country.”

The market won’t fix this

The same old voices will tell you the market will sort itself out. Just build more houses, they say. Wait for supply and demand to work their magic.

But rents shot up by 9.1 per cent in a single year to March 2024. Wages haven’t kept pace since 2023. As Dr Singer Hobbs warned: “The current system leaves renters exposed to global shocks and rising costs they have no power to control.”

The rental market isn’t free and fair. It’s rigged. Moving costs thousands. Landlords hold all the cards.

Time to fight back

The IPPR has a plan. They’re calling for a “double-locked” rent system that ties rent increases to the lower of wages or inflation. Landlords still get a fair return. Tenants get protection from being fleeced.

Had this policy been in place since 2020, rents would now be at least 7 per cent lower, saving the average renting household £850 a year in England and £1,700 a year in London.

London’s Deputy Mayor for Housing, Tom Copley, is on board. “The evidence clearly shows that Londoners would overwhelmingly back new plans to put a cap on rent increases,” he said, urging ministers to devolve the power to cap rents to City Hall.

It’s not pie in the sky. France, Ireland, Spain and Scotland are all acting. And 75 per cent of UK adults back rent controls.

The government has the tools. It has public support. What it needs is the guts to act. Whose side are they on?

It’s the cruellest joke of the cost-of-living crisis. The less you’ve got, the more they take.

Skip a boiler repair this winter because you can’t stretch to it? Brace yourself for a £50,000 nightmare down the line.

That’s the bleak warning from new research by CompareNI.com, which surveyed 800 householders and found that nearly half of UK homeowners (47%) are now putting off vital maintenance jobs. Leaks. Damp. Dodgy wiring. Cracked walls. All being left to fester because families simply cannot afford to fix them.

And here’s the kicker: small problems become big problems. A dripping pipe today is a collapsed ceiling tomorrow.

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Squeezed until the pips squeak

Read the numbers and weep. Almost a third of people (29%) are leaving broken boilers unfixed. Nearly one in five (18%) are turning a blind eye to mould and mildew. Some 14% are ignoring structural defects in their own homes. Another 11% are crossing their fingers over dodgy electrics.

These aren’t lazy homeowners. These are families being stretched to breaking point.

When asked why repairs get delayed, 27% blamed the soaring cost of materials. Another 20% said tradespeople were just too expensive.

So what do people do? They roll up their sleeves and have a go themselves. A whopping 61% have attempted DIY fixes rather than hire a professional. And here’s where the trap snaps shut. Some 39% had no idea their botched DIY job could invalidate their home insurance. So when the ceiling caves in, the insurer waves them away. The bill? All theirs.

Heads they win, tails you lose.

A country held together with gaffer tape

This isn’t just about houses. This is about people.

We are a country where ordinary people are forced to gamble with their own safety to keep food on the table. One in four householders (25%) admit they’re worried that delaying repairs could put their family at risk. One in eight (13%) have stayed in a property knowing a repair issue could be dangerous.

Children are sleeping in mouldy bedrooms that can trigger asthma and respiratory illness. Families are living with electrical faults that can spark fires. Pensioners are shivering through winters with broken boilers, knowing full well that tampering with a gas appliance can mean carbon monoxide poisoning or worse.

Why? Because the cost of living has spiralled out of control while wages have flatlined.

Ian Wilson, home insurance expert and Managing Director at CompareNI.com, put it bluntly: “Many homeowners are having to make tough choices right now as household budgets continue to be squeezed by rising food and energy costs, so when faced with unwelcome home repairs, it is understandable that these can get pushed down the list of priorities”.

Tough choices. Between heating and eating. Between fixing the roof and feeding the kids.

Who’s getting rich while we get screwed?

Make no mistake: this crisis didn’t fall from the sky. It was built. Brick by brick. Bill by bill.

While families patch up leaks with buckets and prayers, the polluters and the elites who run our energy system are raking in record profits. Your sky-high gas bill is their bonus. Your damp wall is their dividend. Your cracked ceiling is their share buyback.

They have rigged the game so that the people with the least pay the most. Delay a £200 repair, end up with a £20,000 bill. Try to fix it yourself, lose your insurance. Call a tradesperson, can’t afford the quote.

Every door slams shut. Except the one marked “pay up”.

Time to fix the country

Britain shouldn’t be a place where ordinary families are one leak away from ruin. We deserve warm, safe, dry homes. We deserve clean energy that doesn’t bankrupt us. We deserve a country that works for the many, not the polluting few.

The roof is leaking. The walls are cracking. The whole house is shifting on its foundations.

It’s time we stopped patching things up and started rebuilding. Together.

Because if we don’t fix the country, the country will fall in on us.

Picture, for a moment, the kind of bloke Nigel Farage says he stands up for. He drives a knackered estate car. He worries about the gas bill. He queues for the bus in the rain. He gets the train home from work and hopes it’s on time. He breathes the same air the rest of us do and pays the same prices we do.

Now picture the man himself. Between 30 January and 27 April this year, Nigel Farage was associated with at least 57 private jet flights, using eleven different aircraft, on 24 separate days. That is according to a confirmed flight log compiled from Farage’s own social media posts and public ADS-B aircraft tracking data.

Eleven jets. Fifty-seven flights. In not much over three months.

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The roll call

Here is the fleet that has been ferrying the people’s champion around in the first months of this year. A Bombardier Challenger 604. A Hawker 850XP. A Cessna Citation Excel. A Cessna Citation XLS+. An Embraer Phenom 300. A Dassault Falcon 8X. A Pilatus PC-12. The aircraft are operated by an alphabet soup of charter companies—Volare, Voluxis, Luxaviation, Ortac, Silver Aviation, Black Panther Aviation—and registered in places like Guernsey and the Isle of Man.

This is not someone who occasionally finds himself on a private jet because no other option was available. This is a settled, routine, jet-shaped lifestyle.

The 35-mile question

One stretch in the log stands out. Between London Biggin Hill and Farnborough airfield, a distance of around 35 miles as the crow flies, jets in the log made the hop seven times in four months.

Thirty-five miles. The kind of distance you could cover on a leisurely Sunday cycle. On the M25 in normal traffic, in about an hour.

The compilers of the log describe these short hops as “repositioning flights for Nigel Farage”: that is, jets being moved into place to ferry the great man around the country. Whether you agree with that label or not, the question stands: what kind of person leaves a trail of 35-mile private jet hops behind them?

It is not the bloke at the bus stop. It is not the family in the food bank queue. It is not the pensioner choosing between heating and eating.

And the headline acts

If the short hops are the warm-up, the main programme is no less eye-watering.

The same log records jet flights to Cardiff, Manchester, Leeds Bradford, Liverpool, Newcastle, Birmingham, Glasgow, Aberdeen: every single one of which is reachable by perfectly functional trains.

There is a Bristol-to-Luton round trip on the same day, a route a Megabus could handle.

These flight numbers do not include those put on by dodgy donors to brown-nose the elites in Davos or do social media stunts in the Chagos Islands, nor the helicopter rides that are apparently essential to Farage’s existence.

Who pays for the dirty air?

Here is the bit that should make your blood boil, gently and over a cup of tea.

Private aviation is the most polluting way to travel a human being has ever invented. The fumes do not stay politely up in the clouds. They drift down. Into the lungs of the kids walking to school near the airfield. Into the chests of the pensioners on their morning walks. Into the air the rest of us have no choice but to breathe.

The bill for that pollution does not land on Nigel Farage’s desk. It lands on yours, in dirtier air and a sicker country.

Eleven jets. Fifty-seven flights. Twenty-four days.

Our Fair Future believes in something simple. Clean air for everyone, paid for fairly by everyone. Not a separate sky for the polluters and their cheerleaders, and a polluted one for the rest of us to choke on.

Three million households across Britain are now skipping meals to keep food on the table for the rest of the week.

Let that sink in. Three million.

That is the staggering verdict from consumer champion Which?, whose latest Consumer Insight Tracker paints a grim picture of a country buckling under a cost-of-living squeeze that simply will not let up.

Confidence in the economy has plunged to minus 62 this month. You have to go back to the darkest days of 2022 to find a number that bleak. A whopping 71% of UK adults reckon things are about to get worse. Just 9% believe they will get better.

And who can blame them?

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Skipping meals to make ends meet

The numbers are nothing short of shameful. A full 85% of British adults are now worried sick about food prices. Two thirds of households have changed how they shop or eat in just the last month, scrambling to make the weekly shop stretch a little further.

People are buying cheaper products. They are loading their trolleys with supermarket own-brand basics. They are stockpiling whatever happens to be on offer.

And when even that is not enough? They go without. One in seven households is now cutting out certain foods entirely. One in ten, equivalent to three million homes, is skipping meals altogether.

This is Britain in 2026. A country where parents quietly push their plate aside so the kids can eat.

Pumps, bills and broken family ties

It is not just the supermarket aisle where ordinary people are being clobbered. Fuel prices are tightening the noose too, with 83% of adults now worried about what it costs to fill up the tank, up from 71% in February.

The result? Families are seeing less of each other. A third have cut back on leisure trips. Nearly a quarter are planning every journey down to the last mile. And one in eight say they are visiting friends and family less often than they used to.

Think about that. The cost of living is not just emptying our fridges. It is fraying the bonds that hold our communities together.

In the month to 10 April alone, an estimated 15 million households made cutbacks just to cover the essentials. Some dipped into savings. Some flogged their possessions. Some borrowed from loved ones who can barely spare it themselves. And 7.7% missed a bill, loan or credit card payment entirely.

Whose side is the government on?

Here is the question nobody in Westminster wants to answer: how did we get here?

While ordinary families ration meals and skip seeing the grandkids to save on petrol, the polluters and their cronies in government carry on raking it in. Energy giants post record profits. Supermarket bosses pocket eye-watering bonuses. And the politicians who are supposed to stand up for us shrug their shoulders and tell us to tighten our belts another notch.

Which? is calling for urgent action through its newly launched Cost of Living Manifesto, including a long-overdue reform of the Healthy Start food scheme, whose value has failed to keep pace with rocketing food inflation.

Rocio Concha, Which? director of policy and advocacy, did not mince her words: “Many are already making difficult choices, such as skipping meals. Without meaningful interventions the number of people taking drastic measures is likely to increase”.

She is right. But manifestos and ministerial reviews will not feed a hungry child tonight.

Ordinary working people deserve clean air, clean energy, good food and a fair shot at a decent life. Not crumbs from the table of those who have spent decades hollowing out our country.

It is time we came together and demanded better. Because nobody is coming to save us.

It is on us.

The British public has delivered its verdict. And it is brutal news for the fossil fuel barons clinging to our energy system like barnacles on a sinking ship.

Fresh polling from YouGov shows ordinary Britons want clean energy, and they want it now. A whopping 72 to 73 per cent of us are backing more electricity from tidal and solar power. Two thirds want more offshore wind or hydro. Even onshore wind, the punching bag of every pro-pollution columnist going, is backed by a clear majority of 55 per cent.

And the dirty stuff? A measly 14 to 22 per cent want more fossil fuels.

Let that sink in. When asked which single power source they most want ramped up, just 6 per cent of Britons picked gas or coal. Six. Per. Cent. You could fit the entire pro-coal lobby into a Wetherspoons on a Tuesday lunchtime.

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By contrast, 58 per cent of Britons say wind, solar or tidal energy is the form of power generation they support most for the country’s future needs.

This is not a fringe view. This is not the opinion of pink-haired protesters glueing themselves to the M25. This is the settled, common-sense position of the British public. Clean. Cheap. Homegrown. Ours.

So why on earth are we still being held hostage by polluters and their cronies in government?

A nation united, a Westminster asleep

The polling, marking 40 years since the Chernobyl disaster, also looked at nuclear. Britons back the use of nuclear power by 51 per cent to 29 per cent, with 37 per cent wanting more of our electricity to come from it. Fine. A reasonable debate to have.

But what’s striking is how every clean source, nuclear included, leaves fossil fuels eating dust.

And here is the kicker. The same poll found that even Reform UK voters, the supposed bogeymen of the green movement, are firmly in the clean energy camp. Asked which source they support most for Britain’s future needs, 29 per cent of Reform voters picked wind, solar or wave power. Just 15 per cent picked gas or coal.

The myth that “ordinary people” want to burn more oil and gas is exactly that. A myth. A lie peddled by columnists on the payroll of polluters and politicians who take their donations.

Working people in Leeds, retirees in Manchester, designers in London, property developers in Exeter. We disagree about plenty. But on this we are united. Give us the clean stuff. Give us the cheap stuff. Give us energy that doesn’t choke our kids or cook our planet.

Whose side are they on?

So the question must be asked. If the British people want clean energy by overwhelming margins, who exactly are our politicians serving when they hand out fresh oil and gas licences? When they water down clean power targets? When they let energy bills balloon while gas giants post record profits?

The answer is obvious. The polluters. Their shareholders. Their lobbyists. Their friends in the press.

It is not the bloke in the warehouse. It is not the nan worrying about her grandkids. It is not the council worker in Bristol or the product manager in Birmingham. It is not you. It is not us.

The British people want clean air, clean energy and a fair future. The numbers prove it beyond any doubt.

It is time our politicians caught up. Or got out of the way.

Because make no mistake. The country has decided. And we are not turning back.

Tea towels, seaside windbreaks, a Greggs sausage roll. A London black cab, Nelson’s coat and the Magna Carta. These are some of the everyday treasures that have made the cut in a nationwide campaign to reclaim St George’s Day from the shouters and the dividers.

A Very English Chat has asked the English public a simple question: what five objects tell the story of your England? More than 3,000 suggestions later, the answers have been stitched together into a “pocket museum” called The Story of England 2026 in 50 Objects, launching today.

And it turns out that when you actually ask people, you get a very different picture from the one served up by the usual culture warriors.

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What’s in the pocket museum?

Marmite made the list. So did the Pearly King’s jacket, the Windrush suitcase, Shakespeare and the humble pie and mash shop plate. Up and down the country, towns and cities have their own local line-ups: Newcastle Brown Ale and the Angel of the North in the Toon, Henderson’s Relish in Sheffield, Yorkshire Tea and the flat cap in God’s own county.

The message is clear. England is not a slogan. It’s a mosaic made up of millions of small, ordinary things that ordinary people actually love.

The campaign, backed by the Jo Cox Foundation’s More in Common Network, has pulled together a genuinely broad coalition, from former Conservative Minister Sir Sajid Javid to folk hero Billy Bragg and environmental campaigner Caroline Lucas. You won’t often see that line-up in a photograph. And that’s the whole point.

Sir Sajid said: “St George’s Day is a great day to celebrate what we all have in common. When people talk about what they value, what they trust, and what they share, it becomes easier to build understanding. I’m glad my suggestions of the local bobby and war memorials made the final cut.”

Billy Bragg struck a similar note, saying St George’s Day “should be a day for celebrating the positive things we have in common. A day for recognising the sense of community that comes from the identity and values that we share in this place called England. Through listening to each other, we can find that common ground from which to resist hateful division.”

Caroline Lucas added: “With the UK more divided than ever, by bringing individuals and communities together to share their own reflections on national identity, we can discover far more compelling and inclusive stories of who we are and who we can be.”

Why it matters

For too long the national conversation has been hijacked. On one side, flag-waving finger-pointers telling you who doesn’t belong. On the other, lecturers telling you that loving your country is a bit embarrassing. No wonder so many of us have switched off.

But the truth is most of us agree on far more than we disagree on. We want a country where our kids can breathe clean air, drink clean water and grow up healthy. We want fair wages, decent homes and streets that feel safe. We want to look out for our neighbours. None of that belongs to the left or the right. It belongs to all of us.

That is the England worth celebrating. Not the one carved up by politicians and pundits who profit from keeping us at each other’s throats, but the one you see every day at the bus stop, the school gates, the corner shop and the seaside.

So this St George’s Day, grab five objects. Sit down with a friend, a neighbour, a stranger. Have a very English chat. You might be surprised how much common ground you find.

Breathing dirty air is making people in the UK fall seriously ill years earlier than they should, a major new study has found.

Researchers tracked the health of nearly 400,000 people over up to 15 years, looking at when they first developed any of 78 different illnesses. Their conclusion is alarming: for some conditions, people are getting sick more than two years too soon, simply because of the air they breathe.

“Our study demonstrates that air pollution is not just a risk factor for falling ill”, said the lead researcher of the study, Prof Hualiang Lin. “It acts as a silent accelerator that robs individuals of their healthiest years”.

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Staggering damage

The scale of the damage is staggering. If the UK had met World Health Organization air quality guidelines, the 360,000 people in the study could have avoided a combined 539,000 years of illness. That is more than a year of healthy life handed back to the average person.

And the illnesses involved are not minor. The research found dirty air is linked to earlier onset of high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma and thyroid problems. More shockingly, it is also associated with earlier development of serious neurological and psychiatric conditions, including dementia, Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia.

“The most striking finding was the sheer breadth and severity of the impact”, Prof Hualiang Lin said. “We found that air pollutants were significantly associated with the accelerated onset of different chronic diseases, spanning almost every major organ system. We were particularly surprised by the high sensitivity of neurological and psychiatric disorders”.

By cutting particle pollution alone, the onset of schizophrenia, bone fractures, high blood pressure and diabetes could each be delayed by at least six months on average.

Polluters acting with impunity

This is not some distant, abstract threat. It is happening now, in our towns and cities, to ordinary people who have done nothing wrong. The polluters are not just harming the environment. They are taking years of good health from working people, parents and grandparents across the country.

Dr Amy Ronaldson of King’s College London, who has studied the same group of people in earlier research, said the new findings go further than anything seen before.

“Our earlier work highlighted that people exposed to higher levels of air pollution were more likely to develop multiple chronic conditions”, she said. “This new study goes further by suggesting that pollution may also accelerate the onset of many diseases”.

She added: “That means more illness, earlier in life, concentrated in the communities already most exposed to poor air quality. Reducing air pollution has to be part of any serious strategy to reduce health inequalities, ease pressure on the NHS, and improve population health”.

The NHS is already on its knees. Our GPs are overwhelmed. Our hospitals are stretched to breaking point. And all the while, the polluters continue to pump filth into the air that ordinary people breathe every day, with little accountability and even less urgency from those in power.

Clean air is not a luxury. It is a basic right. And right now, that right is being stolen from us, one lost year of healthy life at a time.

Britain is bleeding people. Not the super-rich packing up for Monaco, but ordinary working families, graduates and pensioners who have simply had enough. They are looking at the bills, looking at their wages, and heading for the door.

New figures make for grim reading. Emigration jumped by over 6% in 2025. Last year, 252,000 Brits left the UK while only 143,000, returned. We are losing more than we are gaining. And the reasons are not complicated.

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Priced out

61% of Brits planning to move overseas blame Britain’s cost-of-living crisis, while a full half point to the economy. These are not people chasing adventure. They are people chasing a decent life. The kind of life that used to be possible here.

So where are they going? Amsterdam is leading the charge, pulling in an average of 9,000 annual “move to” searches. Singapore, New York, Sydney, Paris and Berlin all feature heavily too. The pattern is clear. Brits are scanning the globe for somewhere that actually works for ordinary people.

Asad Mirza, Logistics Specialist at Cargo Force, puts it plainly: “What we’re seeing is a mix of lifestyle-led and opportunity-led destinations, with cities like Amsterdam and Singapore offering a balance of career prospects, quality of life, and international connectivity”.

Gen Z exodus

But perhaps the most troubling part of this story is who is leaving. It is not just the over-50s dreaming of sunshine. It is young people. It is the next generation. And they are going earlier than ever before.

A new report from The TEFL Academy, dubbed The Great Gen Z Exodus, reveals a major shift in life planning, with people in their 20s increasingly choosing to build careers abroad rather than waiting until their 30s.

The numbers are stark. In June 2025, departures among those aged 20 to 29 reached 130,000 to 140,000, significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels of around 92,000 to 95,000 in 2018. Around 195,000 Brits under 35 emigrated in the past year, meaning younger adults now account for the vast majority of those leaving the country.

Why? Ask them and they will tell you straight. Among respondents aged 18 to 34, more than 86% agreed that UK wages do not reflect the cost of living, while around 79% said they feel constant financial pressure living in the UK. Confidence in long-term UK prospects averages just 2.44 out of 5.

According to the British Council, 72% of UK adults aged 18 to 30 say they would consider living and working abroad, while 63% believe their standard of living is worse than that of their parents’ generation.

Running toward opportunity

Read that again. Nearly two-thirds of young Brits think they are worse off than their parents. That is not a blip. That is a failure. A failure of those in power to protect the people they are supposed to serve.

Rhyan O’Sullivan, Managing Director at The TEFL Academy, says: “Young Britons aren’t running away from the UK, they’re running toward opportunity”. He is right. But we should be angry that opportunity is something they have to run toward rather than find at home.

This is what happens when the polluters and extractors and their cronies in government put profit before people. Ordinary Brits, young and old, are left to pick up the bill while those at the top pocket the rewards. Enough is enough: no one should have to leave the country they love just to live a decent life.

Forget flatshares with strangers who steal your milk. A growing number of young women in London have found a very different kind of housemate: nuns.

At the Religious of Mary Immaculate Hostel in South Kensington, young women of all faiths and none are renting rooms in a convent and loving every minute of it. Daily Mail journalist Mimi Yates visited the hostel for a TikTok that quickly went viral, describing it as “a low-cost solution to a very modern problem”.

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Sisters are doing it for themselves

The rules are simple. Only women can live there. Men are welcome in the communal areas but banned from the bedrooms. There’s a curfew on weekdays and weekends. And breakfast is provided every morning.

Sounds strict? The residents don’t seem to mind. One woman called Sophia described it as “cosy, safe, full of friends”. Another resident, Karen, is training to be a burlesque dancer. The sisters have watched her perform and clapped along.

The nuns even organise weekly movie nights. It’s less silent retreat, more student halls run by the kindest people you’ve ever met.

The harsh reality for young people

But behind the charm of convent living lies a much harder truth. Young women aren’t moving in with nuns because it’s quirky. They’re doing it because they can’t afford to live anywhere else.

The numbers are brutal. Young adults aged 18 to 25 are now handing over half their wages just to keep a roof over their heads, according to a 2025 UK Rental Affordability report. In London, the average rent hit £2,273 a month by early 2026. A one-bedroom flat? That’ll set you back £1,620 a month on average.

Think about that. If you’re earning the average salary for a young person in your twenties, roughly £31,000, you’re spending much of what you earn after tax just on rent. There’s precious little left for food, bills or anything resembling a life.

And it’s not just a London problem. Across the country, the average renter spent 41% of their take-home pay on rent in 2025, up from 36% the year before. That is not sustainable. That is a crisis.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of Britons under 40 don’t own a home, with just 22.5% of those aged 25-34 owning property. More than four in ten adults under 40 have given up on owning a home in the next decade. Record numbers of twentysomethings are moving back in with their parents because the alternative is financial ruin.

Failure in the housing market

This is what happens when the people in charge let the housing market run wild for decades. When they build homes for profit instead of people. When they let landlords squeeze every last penny out of renters who have nowhere else to turn.

The nuns of South Kensington are doing something wonderful. They’re offering safety, community and dignity at a price young women can actually afford. But the fact that a 19th-century religious order is picking up the slack for a 21st-century government tells you everything you need to know about where we are.

Young people deserve better than choosing between a convent and a cupboard. It’s time to demand a fair future for everyone.

Remember when the Prime Minister promised to cut your energy bills by £300 a year? Well, forget that. Thanks to the chaos in global oil and gas markets, your bills could jump by £288 come July. That’s not a cut. That’s a slap in the face.

A new report from the New Economics Foundation warns that this energy shock could be even worse than the crisis we lived through in 2022. And this time, our economy is in a much weaker position to deal with it. At worst, we’re looking at soaring inflation, falling demand and even recession.

So how did we get here? Because the UK is still hooked on imported gas. Every time there’s a conflict overseas, we pay the price. Ordinary families and small businesses are left picking up the tab.

The report lays out what the government needs to do right now. And honestly, none of it is rocket science.

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Give every household a fair deal on energy

The centrepiece proposal is simple: guarantee every home a basic amount of cheap energy to cover the essentials. Heating water, keeping two rooms warm, running a fridge and a washing machine. That’s not luxury. That’s survival. The Foundation calls this an “essential energy guarantee”.

The clever part? It’s funded by taxing the very companies profiting from this crisis. The report estimates the policy would cost £4.5 billion, which sits comfortably within the projected £5.6 billion in tax revenues from UK oil and gas production. In other words, make the polluters pay.

This isn’t some radical experiment either. Countries like Japan, South Korea and India already do this. After the 2022 crisis, Austria, Greece, Poland and the Netherlands all introduced similar protections. We’re actually behind the curve.

On top of that, the report calls for removing all policy costs from energy bills and shifting them to taxation. That alone would knock £106 off your annual bill and stop the poorest households from paying a disproportionate share.

Stop the Bank of England from making things worse

Here’s something that should make your blood boil. Last time energy prices spiked, the Bank of England hiked interest rates. The report is blunt: it did little to help consumers or the wider economy. That’s because the inflation wasn’t caused by people spending too much. It was caused by global energy prices.

The report warns we cannot repeat this mistake. Hiking rates now would only take more money out of the economy at a time when consumers and businesses already have less to spend and invest because energy bills are eating up more of their outgoings.

Break free from gas for good

Some politicians will tell you the answer is more drilling in the North Sea. Don’t fall for it. The report is clear: there’s little gas left to extract, and even if there were, it wouldn’t lower your bills because gas continues to set the price for the entire UK energy market based on global prices. More drilling won’t help lower energy costs.

The real answer is clean energy. Solar panels, batteries, homegrown power that no foreign conflict can touch. The government needs to speed up the rollout of renewables and use public finance institutions like the National Wealth Fund to drive down costs, not lock us into decades of expensive gas.

The bottom line

This crisis didn’t come from nowhere. We’ve been left dangerously dependent on foreign gas while the one thing that is actually protecting us right now, renewables, still isn’t being rolled out fast enough.

The solutions exist. Protect people’s essential energy. Stop repeating the same monetary policy mistakes. And build a clean energy system that actually works for us, not for the polluters.

The only question is whether the government has the nerve to act.

Britain’s once solid route into the world of work is under siege from artificial intelligence according to new research by the British Chambers of Commerce. The rise of AI is not just a talking point for tech insiders: it is already reshaping the early days of careers for millions of young people and ordinary families across the UK.

Skills shortage

The BCC’s latest report shows that around two-thirds of UK firms now say they cannot find workers with the right skills to do the jobs they need done. That labour shortage has been made worse by AI adoption and rising employment costs which could see youth unemployment spike to an eye-watering 17 per cent this year.

This dramatic statistic tells a grim story for entry-level roles that have traditionally given young people their first break. These are the jobs that matter for building confidence earning wages and learning how to contribute to an employer. Instead, the work landscape is rapidly changing with automation and smart tools performing tasks that used to be done by junior staff.

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AI adoption in business

The BCC points out that 54 per cent of small and medium sized enterprises are now using AI tools up from just 25 per cent in 2024 showing how rapidly this technology is embedding itself in everyday business life.

But the numbers also underline the scale of the challenge. Only about one in ten firms say they have invested in advanced bespoke AI systems that directly reduce headcount but the concerns about entry level jobs are intensifying as adoption deepens. Employers are increasingly asking whether certain junior roles remain necessary when machines can perform the same tasks faster and cheaper.

For ordinary people the effects are already being felt. Young jobseekers hoping to earn their first pay packet face a tougher market than their parents did. With skills shortages persistent and AI taking on routine tasks that used to be stepping stones into careers the talent pipeline is thinning at an alarming rate.

Few chances for the young

The BCC study suggests that fewer entry-level opportunities mean that young people may have less chance to gain crucial workplace experience and develop their skills a situation that almost guarantees a more uneven future unless action is taken.

Employers now face a stark choice between managing rising costs and embracing new technologies while still developing the next generation of workers. The BCC warns that current policy changes such as increases in national insurance and minimum wage reforms have effectively raised the cost of hiring entry-level workers by around seven per cent in real terms adding another barrier to junior hiring.

Support needed

The solution for a fair future rests on how the nation supports ordinary people through this transition. Technology should not push young workers out of the jobs market. Instead, the Government and businesses must ensure that training, reskilling and apprenticeships are widely available to equip people with the right skills for today’s world of work.

The BCC’s report recommends using funds such as the Growth and Skills Levy to subsidise AI literacy and giving tax credits or grants to encourage employers not just to adopt AI but to invest in human talent alongside it.

AI can be a powerful tool for productivity but only if it works with people not against them. If Britain fails to support ordinary families and young people through this period of transformation then the dream of a fair future where hard work leads to opportunity will slip away.

Policymakers must act now to safeguard entry-level jobs and the promise of social mobility that goes with them so that the next generation is not the one left behind by the AI revolution.

Britain is gripped by a crisis of confidence as millions of voters privately despair that no mainstream political party even bothers to treat the cost-of-living emergency as a genuine priority. The latest YouGov poll paints an unsettling picture of a public left feeling abandoned and short-changed, with little faith that Labour, the Conservatives or the smaller parties have their backs.

Cost-of-living the number one issue

In a stunning indictment of modern British politics, 53 per cent of Britons now say the cost of living is the most important issue facing the country, yet few believe that any party actually acknowledges it. Despite ever-rising bills and the daily squeeze on family finances, only between nine and 15 per cent of voters think any of the major parties regard inflation and household budgets as top-tier concerns.

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That’s right: more than half the public are worried sick about putting food on the table and paying energy bills, but the party leaders are sleepwalking on the issue. The figures will be a bitter blow to Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government, which campaigned last year on promises of “getting to grips” with the cost of living. Instead, just 15 per cent of Britons think Labour consider the cost of living one of their main priorities, and even among Labour supporters, barely 40 per cent believe their own party cares.

The Tories and the Liberal Democrats fare no better in the polls, with only around one in ten voters saying they believe those parties treat the crisis as a top concern. Even the Greens and Reform UK—who had hoped to carve out political space as the authentic voices of the struggling public—attract only marginal confidence on the issue.

No good choice

The fallout is clear: voters are headed for an identity crisis at the ballot box. When asked which party would be best placed to tackle the cost of living, the responses are a muddle of indecision, scepticism and bluster. The Conservatives and Labour are marginally ahead on paper, at 18 and 16 per cent respectively, but hardly a ringing endorsement. Reform and the Greens trail closely, leaving a picture of deep political distrust and apathy.

And while Westminster wrangles about priorities, everyday Brits are feeling the pinch. The YouGov data shows that around 42 per cent of adults say they’ve struggled to pay food bills regularly, with similar numbers flagging energy bills and fuel costs as persistent headaches. Nearly half say their household finances have worsened over the past year, and a worrying two-thirds believe the nation’s economy is on the wrong track.

The daily grind

This is no mere academic polling exercise. For millions of families ploughing their last pennies into essentials, the sense that politicians are out of touch isn’t hyperbole: it’s daily reality. And with public anger simmering, the poll suggests a huge electoral opening for any party or leader courageous enough to make the cost of living their obsession.

In short, Britain’s political class may talk about the cost of living but the people don’t believe a word of it. And until that changes, voters look set to stay unconvinced, unreassured and utterly unmotivated to rally behind a government they think has forgotten them.

Britain is sleepwalking towards an unprecedented property calamity that could leave 430,000 homes worthless and homeowners trapped in high-cost mortgages by 2050, a chilling new report warns.

The damning paper, Flooding the Market: The Climate Mortgage Trap, exposes how rising flood risks could transform thousands of ordinary households into what analysts are now calling “climate mortgage prisoners”.

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Insurance price hike

According to the report, perilous increases in river, sea and surface water floods mean insurers will be forced to hike premiums or withdraw coverage altogether. Without affordable insurance, many homeowners will be unable to remortgage or sell their properties and could be forced on to punishing standard variable rates, leaving them with crippling bills.

Experts behind the report paint a grim picture of a housing market in crisis. They warn that in such a world homes that become harder to insure and mortgage could be left unsellable and effectively worthless.

One of the report’s stark conclusions is that the ripple effects from these mortgage prisoners could disrupt the flow of lending and create a localised credit crunch, squeezing banks and homeowners alike.

In the worst-case scenario, where losses are widespread and banks’ balance sheets are strained, such upheaval could ripple throughout the wider economy and pose a risk to overall financial stability.

Nearly half a million exposed

The scale of the looming crisis is staggering. The research finds that 430,000 mortgaged homes in England alone could fall into this trap by mid-century, the same number as the population of Birmingham.

And it will not be spread evenly. Low-lying areas like Boston and Skegness have the highest concentrations of at-risk properties, potentially earning the unenviable title of the climate mortgage prisoner capital of England. Other constituencies such as Thurrock and Goole and Pocklington are not far behind.

Once flood risk bites, the consequences for household finances could be severe. The report predicts that homeowners in high-risk areas may face up to £45,000 in repair costs after a storm, while being unable to insure or sell their homes

Industry figures behind the study have issued a blunt warning. “For most British families, their home is their single biggest source of wealth,” said one director involved in the report. “But weather risks… are starting to erode that, as some properties become harder to insure and mortgage”. The report stresses that without decisive action within this Parliament, up to half a million households could be left trapped on higher rates in unsellable homes.

Urgent reforms needed

To avert this looming catastrophe, the paper calls for a series of urgent reforms. Among them is the introduction of Flood Performance Certificates to make climate risk transparent for buyers, and long-term clarity over the future of the government-backed FloodRe insurance scheme, which currently subsidises flood-prone properties.

The authors also urge the government to boost green and resilience mortgages, toughen building regulations and fully integrate climate adaptation into national policy.

Without such measures, the UK faces a housing market where whole neighbourhoods could become uninhabitable financial liabilities rather than homes. The clock is ticking.

Hundreds of thousands of households already struggling with sky-high energy and fuel costs could be in for an even worse shock, critics warned yesterday as 40 of Britain’s most high-profile civil society groups demanded the Chancellor squeeze more tax from corporate giants cashing in on the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Campaign groups unite

In a blistering joint letter to Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, unions, campaigners and charities including the National Education Union, Tax Justice UK, Greenpeace UK, 38 Degrees, Global Witness, Women’s Budget Group and Patriotic Millionaires UK have called for far tougher taxes on excess profits.

The coalition said many firms are on course for “windfall revenues” as a result of the economic chaos triggered by the conflict in the Middle East, and that it would be a “turning point for the UK” to seize that cash and use it to help ordinary families battered by the cost-of-living crisis.

At a time when households are already feeling the pinch from rising energy bills, soaring fuel costs and ever-higher prices for everyday essentials, the letter’s signatories said it was simply not acceptable for corporations to rake in eye-watering profits.

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‘Rich get richer while everyone else foots the bill’

Faiza Shaheen, Executive Director of Tax Justice UK, poured scorn on successive Governments for failing to keep corporate greed in check. She said: “Too often UK governments have failed to protect households and small businesses from the profiteering corporates and super-rich individuals who circle around crises like vultures”.

Ms Shaheen added that other countries had moved faster to shield ordinary citizens. “Spain has already frozen rents, yet our government fails to show urgency… this will not be yet another crisis where the rich get richer, while everyone else foots the bill”.

New data cited in the letter suggests some North Sea energy firms are already looking at “extra profits”, banks could pocket more revenue as mortgage costs rise and even big agricultural and defence contractors are posting record returns thanks to the global disruption.

Oil giants under fire

Areeba Hamid of Greenpeace UK did not pull her punches, warning that Britain’s reliance on fossil fuels was lining the pockets of oil executives at the expense of hard-pressed families. She said: “The oil-majors are set to make gargantuan profits from global instability while ordinary people pay the price of Trump’s war in Iran”.

Ms Hamid dismissed calls to relax windfall taxes on oil firms as a “slap in the face” to those struggling with energy bills and insisted that “the fossil fuel industry should be contributing more tax, not less”.

A ‘fair tax’ for tough times

Among the measures proposed by the alliance is a beefed-up tax on excess profits from North Sea oil and gas companies and a new levy on UK bank profits that are seen as being boosted by higher costs for consumers. They also want special levies on defence firms, big agribusiness and AI and Big Tech companies expected to benefit from the war’s economic ripple effects.

Simon Francis, Coordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, warned the disruption to gas prices had already pushed household bills to “elevated levels” and urged the Government to act now to protect families: “The Government must act urgently to protect households from the impact of rising prices and ensure that the billions in excess profits energy companies are making … are redirected to support the people who need it most”.

Conor O’Shea of Cost of Living Action added that politicians’ pledges to tackle profiteering “must now be matched by decisive action”. He said a tax on excess profits was “a fair and necessary step to rein in corporate greed and prevent the cost of essentials from spiralling further.”

The coalition insisted that the Government has a narrow window to stop profiteering before prices climb further and households are pushed to breaking point. With public anger mounting, campaigners said ministers can no longer ignore calls for a tougher approach to corporate excess.

More than seven million Britons face a catastrophic retirement crisis. That is the bleak conclusion of a new report by the Social Market Foundation think tank, which reveals that a staggering 54 per cent of Generation X—those aged between 46 and 61—have inadequate savings.

Reform voters exposed

But it is the report’s political findings that are the real eye-opener. A full 55 per cent of Reform voters in the Gen X age group are projected to suffer a brutal “pension shock”, the highest of any party’s supporters. Green Party voters are a close second, with 53 per cent facing the same grim fate.

The irony could not be starker. Reform voters are the most vulnerable but are supporting a leader who clearly has no interest other than lining the pockets of his dodgy donors and polluting paymasters and who will no doubt hang them out to dry.

And critically, most of them do not even know it yet.

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A cruel trap

The report, based on a survey of more than 2,000 Gen Xers carried out by polling company Survation, paints a picture of a generation caught in a uniquely cruel trap.

Born too late to enjoy the gold-plated defined benefit pensions their parents enjoyed—the ones that guaranteed an income for life—Gen X were already decades into their working lives when auto-enrolment finally arrived in 2012. By then, most had spent years contributing next to nothing to a pension pot that was never going to be enough.

The result: 39 per cent will retire unable to maintain their current standard of living, while 35 per cent face incomes below the bare minimum needed to cover basic necessities, currently set at just £13,400 a year.

For roughly two million in the generation, there is no safety net whatsoever: no property equity, no savings, no investments, nothing to fall back on.

A slow-moving avalanche

Gideon Salutin, Chief Economist at the Social Market Foundation, did not hide his alarm: “This generation now approaching retirement forms a slow-moving avalanche,” he warned, “Millions are heading for a retirement without the income they expect. Without action, their retirements will be meagre. Despite many of them working longer than their parents and making more money than their parents, Gen X is in for a substantially worse retirement.”

The regional picture is equally grim and will enrage anyone who believes the North-South divide has been ignored for too long. Nearly half of all Gen Xers in the North East—49 per cent—are projected to fall below even minimum retirement living standards, compared to just 19 per cent in London.

They don’t know what’s coming

Perhaps most alarming of all is how many people simply have no idea what is coming. Half of all survey respondents said they expected a higher retirement income than projections show they will actually receive. A remarkable 57 per cent said they do not regularly think about what retirement might cost them, and a mere 11 per cent have ever sought financial advice.

Catherine Foot, Director of the Standard Life Centre for the Future of Retirement, which sponsored the research, issued a stark warning: “Gen X are at the sharp end of a building retirement crisis. While today’s retirees are better off than previous generations, this trend is set to go into reversal within the next decade and into the 2040s. There is a relatively short window now in which to act.”

The report calls on the Government’s Pensions Commission to raise default auto-enrolment contributions from the current 8 per cent to 12 per cent, and to urgently expand free financial guidance to the millions who need it.

For the millions of Reform voters who thought the system had failed them on immigration and the cost of living, the pension timebomb is about to make it feel a great deal more personal.

Suggestions of a “net zero backlash” and populist revolt against green policies may be little more than a myth fuelled by elites in politics and the media. That’s the conclusion of a study by the Institute for Public Policy Research that claims the British public is being misled into thinking climate action is deeply unpopular, when in reality support remains strong.

Researchers found that around 60 per cent of voters back the UK’s 2050 net zero target, despite a growing chorus of political voices warning of a voter revolt. Yet the report lays the blame squarely at the feet of Westminster and the media, accusing both of amplifying a false narrative of public anger.

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Politicians under fire

In a stark warning, the think tank said claims of a backlash are “overstated”, with “political division among elites and distorted media narratives” posing the real threat to climate progress. The findings will alarm ministers already jittery about the rising popularity of insurgent parties and mounting pressure over the cost of living.

Crucially, the research found climate policy is barely registering as a reason for voters switching sides. Just 4 per cent of Labour-to-Reform defectors cited net zero as a factor in their decision.

Instead, the report points to a widening gulf between what the public actually thinks and what politicians believe they think. Conservative MPs, it found, are underestimating support for net zero by around 18 percentage points, suggesting a dramatic misreading of the national mood.

Media under fire

The media also comes under heavy fire. Analysis revealed that online news coverage of net zero in 2025 was more than two and a half times as negative as public sentiment. That relentless negativity, researchers warn, risks creating a dangerous echo chamber in which politicians react to a backlash that does not truly exist.

Becca Massey-Chase, one of the report’s authors, said: “Claims of a voter backlash against net zero have taken hold in Westminster, but the evidence shows they are largely a political myth.” She added: “The British public continues to support climate action, and politicians risk fighting the wrong battle if they assume otherwise.”

Her colleague Sam Alvis delivered an equally stark message, warning that some figures are actively undermining public support. He said: “Some politicians are deliberately trying to undermine public support for climate action.”

People want climate action

Despite the political noise, the report insists voters remain concerned about the impact of climate change on their lives and their children’s futures. But with living costs biting, climate has slipped down the list of immediate priorities, leaving space for critics to seize the narrative.

The think tank warns that if politicians respond by watering down green commitments, they risk creating a self-fulfilling prophecy in which perceived backlash becomes reality. Instead, it urges leaders to make a confident case for net zero, focus on lowering bills through clean energy, and rebuild trust with voters.

The message is clear. The real danger may not be public opposition at all, but a political class, often in the pockets of polluters, spooked by headlines of its own making.