Saturday, January 24, 2026
King Charles' forgotten Hamlet
Coed Darcy is a new estate built on the old BP works in Llandarcy. St Modwen, the developer behind the project and the owner of the entire 1,000 acre Coed Darcy site, originally announced a 25-year vision for a £1.2bn, 4000-home 'urban village' with 10,000 residents and four schools, however the development stalled and so far only has a few hundred houses, a play area and an empty shop.
The estate was meant to be a model of urban renewal, but before the development started in earnest, the company tasked with transforming the area, decided to pay homage to the then Prince Charles' interest in 'classic' architecture. The BBC even did a news piece on the hamlet fronted by Griff Rhys Jones, which can be viewed here.
Wales-on-line tells us that not far from the current community, nestled amidst green fields, scrubland and trees is a quaint little hamlet of red and grey-roofed homes. There are streets, something that looks like it could be a little school or community hall and some ponds:
The white-fronted buildings look pretty with their different coloured brightly painted doors and neat windows.
Look for any length of time, and you won't see a single person. No lights will illuminate the windows on an evening, and there won't be a sound to be heard, other than the wind or the steady thrashing of rain we've become accustomed to of late.
In fact, if you are anywhere near you will have had to traipse over rough ground, as there are no proper roads leading to this ghost community.
The houses were built on the site of the former BP oil refinery in Llandarcy, Neath, in 2013, with traditional Welsh stone and using cutting-edge construction techniques.
They were designed as a showcase for an environmentally sustainable village made up of thousands of new homes, and even had the backing of Prince Charles.
But six years since they were built, these particular homes, distant from other development on the massive old industrial site, remain empty with no infrastructure connected to them.
In fact, more than a decade on from when the plans were first submitted in 2006, just 250 homes have been built in the new village named Coed Darcy.
The original vision was for the empty houses to be part of an environmentally-sustainable urban village of 4,000 homes, similar to Prince Charles' Poundbury village in Dorset.
The Prince even visited the site himself when they were completed in 2013.
He said he was "trying to break the commercial mould with the kind of challenges the world is now facing," by backing the project.
This article is from just over six years ago and the homes are still empty, which in a housing crisis is not a good look.
Friday, January 23, 2026
Are Welsh Labour in panic mode?
The UK government has refused to devolve control of the crown estate, refused to give Wales powers over railways or reclassify rail projects like HS2 so that we get the Barnett consequentials and refused every request for extra powers including over the justice system.
In that time Eluned Morgan and her predecessors have talked up the benefits of having a Labour government at both ends of the M4 despite the fact that so far this collaboration has produced very little for Wales.
Now, with Labour tanking in the polls, she and her colleagues appear to have woken up. The BBC reports that Morgan has publicly come out to call on the Prime Minister to help stop pro-independence parties winning the next Senedd election by giving her country more powers.
The broadcaster says that the First Minister has warned that the "threat to the United Kingdom will become real" if parties wanting to leave the union were leading in both Scotland and Wales:
Speaking to the Institute for Government earlier in the day, Morgan said the most recent opinion poll gave "two pro independence parties Plaid and the Greens a majority in Wales".
"Separatism is now very much on the agenda in our nation," she said.
She said the significance of that was "not reverberating as it should".
"Support for independence tends to rise when politics feels stuck or uncertain, and it falls when people see devolution deliver."
Devolution is the "best way to lower the temperature and raise trust", she said.
"The UK government can play a leading role in helping us to resist separatism and the break up of the union. They can support us by giving us the tools to help improve life for the people in Wales."
Following her speech, Morgan said the "threat to the United Kingdom will become real" if pro-independence parties came out top in Wales as well as in Scotland, where pro-independence SNP are hoping to return to government following May's Holyrood election.
Morgan apparently used her speech to make a list of requests for more powers and money from Westminster, as well as a "new deal for devolution" including those elusive powers over natural resources, the Crown Estate, and policing and justice, which have mostly been rejected by the UK government.
There is a hint of panic in this long-awaited public break with the UK government. Unfortunately, it looks like it might be too little, too late.
Thursday, January 22, 2026
Is Farage too busy earning money to stick to the rules?
However, Daniel Greenberg said that following an investigation, he had concluded that the breaches were "inadvertent" and therefore would not be recommending any sanctions for the Clacton MP:
Rule five of the parliamentary code of conduct states that new MPs should register all their financial interests received in the 12 months before their election and that MPs "must register any change in those registrable interests within 28 days".
Farage missed the deadline 17 times, with delays spanning from four days to as long as 120 days.
The highest payment registered was £91,200 from gold dealer Direct Bullion, for whom he works as a brand ambassador.
A Labour Party spokesperson said Farage "isn't on the side of working people - he's just lining his pockets when he should be standing up for his constituents".
Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper said: "Five Jobs Farage is spending far too much time jetting off to talk our country down in the US and cashing in from his GB News show."
Farage is boycotting Prime Minister's questions. missing key votes, is hardly seen in his constituency and spends a huge amount of time jetting off to the USA and elsewhere. No wonder he is missing deadlines, he hardly has time to do the job he was elected to.
Wednesday, January 21, 2026
Will Labour backtrack on leasehold reform?
The paper says that Rayner has intervened in a tense standoff between Steve Reed, the housing secretary, and Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, over whether to stand by Labour’s promise to limit annual charges for existing leaseholders:
The measure was part of a draft leasehold bill due to be published last year, which was delayed after Reeves became concerned that capping ground rents could deter property investors.
Government insiders say Starmer is due to decide between his warring ministers on Tuesday, as pressure mounts from Labour MPs to publish the draft bill as soon as possible.
In an article for the Guardian, Rayner writes: “Over recent decades … ordinary homeowners have increasingly been charged high and escalating amounts of ground rent, leaving them in financial distress and often unable to sell or re-mortgage their homes.”
She adds: “Labour made a promise to leaseholders that we would fix this injustice, but ministers are currently subjected to furious lobbying from wealthy investors trying to water this manifesto commitment down.
“There are those who argue we cannot act on our promise as it could risk a backlash from investors, including pension funds. It’s hardly surprising – the system works just fine for them.
“They get an annual return for doing absolutely nothing, they can raise ground rents and pile up service charges without transparency and with total impunity, regardless of the devastation it causes to families.”
Labour promised in its manifesto to “finally bring the feudal leasehold system to an end”, including banning the sale of new leasehold flats. The manifesto added: “We will tackle unregulated and unaffordable ground rent charges.”
Matthew Pennycook, the housing minister, has been working on the draft bill since Labour entered government, including a measure to cap ground rents at £250 a year for current leaseholders. New leasehold properties must be sold with peppercorn, or nominal, ground rents, under legislation passed by the last Conservative government.
He was supported for much of that time by Rayner, who was also the housing and local government secretary before she left government last year after admitting to underpaying property taxes on her new property in Hove, East Sussex.
Pennycook was due to publish the draft bill in December, but the plans were postponed at the last minute after Treasury officials became concerned that the ground rent cap could hit pension funds that own freehold properties.
Labour MPs have become increasingly frustrated by the delays, given there are an estimated 5m leasehold homes in England, and have raised the issue repeatedly with the prime minister in the Commons.
The Tories bottled proper leasehold reform, we should expect better of the Labour Party. Leasehold tenure is an antiquated and unfair feudal system that should follow rentcharges into the dustbin of history.
Tuesday, January 20, 2026
Reform have mutated into the Truss/Johnson Tory Party Mark II
Readers of the Independent seem to agree. The paper says that they now see the party as little more than a refuge for self-serving ex-Tories. Commenters on the paper's site have argued that high-profile figures such as Robert Jenrick, Nadhim Zahawi, and Nadine Dorries switched allegiance to protect their political careers rather than to represent constituents:
Readers criticised Reform for taking in hard-right ex-Tories and recycling discredited politicians, saying it undermines the party’s anti-establishment image.
They also highlighted past Conservative failings in public services, social care, and immigration, arguing that with so many ex-Tory MPs, Reform offers little more than a continuation of the same policies.
A small minority suggested the defections might allow the Conservatives to rid themselves of unpopular MPs and regroup.
However, the dominant view was one of cynicism, that Reform is largely a vehicle for political survival, and its MPs cannot be trusted to act in the public interest.
The extent to which Farage's party is transforming into a mark 2 version of Truss's and Johnson's Tory Party is uncanny. With thanks to the twitter feed of Reform Watch UK Exposed, here is a list of leading defectors from the Tories so far:
Leader: Nigel Farage (former Conservative)
MP: Lee Anderson (former Conservative)
MP: Sarah Pochin (former Conservative)
MP: Danny Kruger (former Conservative)
MP: Robert Jenrick (former Conservative)
MP: Andrew Rosindell (former Conservative)
MS: Laura Ann Jones (former Conservative)
Deputy Leader: Richard Tice (former Conservative)
Chair: Dr David Bull (former Conservative)
Deputy Chair: Paul Nuttalls (former Conservative)
Leader in Scotland: Malcolm Offord (former Conservative Life Peer)
Mayoral Candidate: Laila Cunningham (former Conservative)
Mayor of Lincolnshire: Andrea Jenkyns (former Conservative MP)
Leader in London: Alex Wilson (former Conservative)
Leader of Kent Council: Linden Kemkaran (former Conservative)
Leader of Derbyshire Council: Alan Graves (former Conservative)
Leader of Worcestershire Council: Jo Monk (former Conservative)
Leader of Durham Council: Andrew Husband (former Conservative)
Leader of Leicestershire Council: Dan Harrison (former Conservative)
Leader of Lancashire Council: Stephen Atkinson (former Conservative)
Leader of North Northamptonshire: Martin Griffiths (former Conservative)
Lucy Allan, former Conservative MP
Alan Amos, former Conservative MP
Sarah Atherton, former Conservative MP
Jake Berry, former Conservative MP
Ben Bradley, former Conservative MP
Michael Brown, former Conservative MP
Aidan Burley, former Conservative MP
Chris Butler, former Conservative MP
Maria Caulfield, former Conservative MP
Simon Danczuk, former Labour MP
Nadine Dorries, former Conservative MP
Chris Green, former Conservative MP
Jonathan Gullis, former Conservative MP
Adam Holloway, former Conservative MP
David Jones, former Conservative MP
Marco Longhi, former Conservative MP
Anne Marie Morris, former Conservative MP
Lia Nici, former Conservative MP
Henry Smith, former Conservative MP
Mark Reckless, former Conservative MP
Ross Thomson, former Conservative MP and MSP
Ann Widdecombe, former Conservative MP
Nadhim Zahawi, former Conservative MP
And that's just the consequential ones. It is little wonder that Farage wants to put a deadline in place after which he says he won't accept any more Tories. Reform has become the Tory party that crashed the economy. Why would anybody expect them to do any different if they got into government again.
Monday, January 19, 2026
Greenland crisis should push the UK closer to the EU
They report that the EU and the UK are in emergency talks on how to face Trump’s latest threat of a 10 per cent tariff on goods from eight countries unless Greenland is sold to the US, with the tariffs set to rise to 25 per cent on 1st June.
What Trump doesn't appear to understand is that if he smashes Nato, the US will be vulnerable to the very threats from China and Russia that he claims he wants to protect against by bringing Greenland into the US:
Britain has stood by its Nato commitment and sent one officer as a token presence on a token European military mission to Greenland. As the UK has negotiated 10 per cent tariffs with Trump vs the EU’s 15 per cent, it has a little more to lose in a decline in UK-US trade.
But it has a huge amount to gain economically, culturally, and now in terms of its security, if the crisis caused by Trump is seized as an opportunity for Britain to rejoin the EU on terms that bind the UK to the mainland. This would make both parties safer – and stop Putin from dancing a happy jig around the Kremlin.
Last year the UK and the EU failed to agree terms for Britain to join the Security Action for Europe (Safe) programme. This is a €150bn loan mechanism to boost the EU’s defence industrial capacity in the face of Russia’s threat against Europe and invasion of Ukraine.
Britain was asked to stump up €4-6bn as the price of membership. Canada only had to pay $20m, but the UK would have been a full partner, not a “third-party” country with limited access to the funds.
Britain would have been able to benefit enormously from cherry-picking this EU facility without having to go for political integration – which is why the EU set the fee so high
.
But that was years ago in Trump time. Last December on our calendars.
The EU needs Britain’s arms industry. And Britain needs the EU economic and security blanket.
The UK’s armed forces are small and impoverished, with their chiefs saying they face a £28bn funding shortfall.
According to a recent report by the Centre for Economic Policy: “By 2025, we estimate that UK GDP per capita was 6–8 per cent lower than it would have been without Brexit. Investment was 12–18 per cent lower, employment 3–4 per cent lower, and productivity 3–4 per cent lower.”
Other estimates put Britain’s losses at lower levels, but there can be no doubt that Brexit has been a strategic economic failure.
The Europeans are not having an easy run either. Per capita GDP growth for the UK from 2016 has been 4.5 per cent, Germany has almost flatlined at 3.6 per cent. France’s is only 7.5 per cent.
The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said US tariffs would hit both sides of the Greenland debate but were a distraction from the "core task" of ending Russia's war in Ukraine.
"China and Russia must be having a field day. They are the ones who benefit from divisions among allies," Kallas said on X.
"Tariffs risk making Europe and the United States poorer and undermine our shared prosperity. If Greenland’s security is at risk, we can address this inside Nato," she added.
The EU needs help from the UK to do that. Britain has much to give the EU: its armed forces and military industries would accelerate and improve the bloc’s security.
If the UK Government was so minded, and they should be, this crisis could get them much more favourable terms to rejoin the EU. It would certainly benefit our security and our economy if we did that.
Sunday, January 18, 2026
A lobbying imbalance
The paper says that its investigation has found that Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Elon Musk’s X, whose Grok AI image generator has sparked outrage with its sexualised images of women and children, were among the US tech companies holding hundreds of meetings with people at the heart of government:
Google, the $4tn California company, had the greatest access, with more than 100 ministerial meetings, according to an analysis of meeting records for the two years to October 2025, which campaigners said showed the tech industry’s “capture” of government. The industry lobbying group Tech UK met ministers at the rate of more than once every eight working days.
X attended 13 meetings, a small proportion of the overall number, but still more than the child safety campaign group the NSPCC or the Molly Rose Foundation, founded by the family of 14-year-old Molly Russell who killed herself after viewing harmful online content.
“The frequency of meetings between government and big tech and their advocates is astounding and points to the incredible power imbalance at stake when it comes to protecting children online,” said Andy Burrows, the chief executive of the Molly Rose Foundation.
The government defended its position, saying “regular engagement with technology companies is vital to delivering economic growth and transforming public services”. Campaigners said the government should stop “bending the knee to US big tech companies” and that the figures revealed an “incredible power imbalance” when it came to protecting children online.
There has been growing controversy over X’s Grok AI tool, and a resurgence in the campaign for the government to follow Australia and ban social media for under-16s, which is opposed by tech companies. In the UK, 84% of people are concerned ministers will prioritise tech company partnerships over the public interest when it comes to AI regulation.
Dame Chi Onwurah, the Labour chair of the science and technology select committee, said the findings underscored “the reality that these firms have turnovers larger than the GDP of many countries, and their ability to influence stands in stark contrast to that of their users, our constituents, or those campaigning to make the internet safer”.
She said it was “crucial for big tech to be accountable to parliament – something that the disturbing recent news about ‘nudification’ tools has only underlined further”.
The technology companies and their lobbyists attended at least 639 meetings with ministers compared with just 75 meetings attended by the organisations and campaigners fighting for greater protections for children online, such as the NSPCC.
The tech firms’ access was also more than three times greater than that of organisations and campaigners seeking to protect creatives’ copyrighted works from being mined to build AI models, a development that figures including Elton John and Kazuo Ishiguro have said risks giving away artists’ “lifeblood”.
Ed Newton-Rex, a campaigner for creators’ rights, called the figures “shocking” and said they explained why ministers had launched their consultation on AI and copyright “with a ‘preferred option’ that read like a wishlist from big tech”.
“It is imperative that the government stop bending the knee to US big tech companies – which, as the recent Grok debacle has shown, don’t have the interests of the British people at heart,” he said.
As important as technology is, these figures are shocking. Government should be putting the safety of women and children ahead of the big tech companies and that should be reflected in the activities of ministers and their actions.
Saturday, January 17, 2026
The huge Roman villa unearthed in Margam
The footprint of the villa is 572 square metres, surrounded by fortifications, and according to the BBC, has been described by Dr Alex Langlands. the co-director of Swansea University's Centre for Heritage Research and Training, as a "really impressive and prestigious" building, likely to have been finely decorated with statues and mosaic floors:
The location, in a historical deer park, is significant because the land has not been ploughed or built on, meaning the villa's remains - less than a metre below the surface - look to be well preserved.
Those involved from Swansea University, Neath Port Talbot council and Margam Abbey Church said the discovery offered "unparalleled information about Wales' national story".
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"We've got what looks to be a corridor villa with two wings and a veranda running along the front," he explained.
"It's around 43m (141ft) long and looks to have six main rooms [to the front] with two corridors leading to eight rooms at the rear.
"Almost certainly you've got a major local dignitary making themselves at home here," he added.
"This would have been quite a busy place - the centre of a big agricultural estate and lots of people coming and going."
As a standalone structure, it is the largest villa yet to have been discovered in Wales.
Most of the known Roman remains in Wales are from military camps and forts, while grandiose estates like this are less commonly found.
The discovery would force experts to "rewrite the way we think about south Wales in the Romano-British period", Langlands said.
"This part of Wales isn't some sort of borderland, the edge of empire - in fact there were buildings here just as sophisticated and as high status as those we get in the agricultural heartlands of southern England."
It also showed that Margam - "a place that may even have lent its name to the historic region of Glamorgan" - was "one of the most important centres of power in Wales".
Further details of the team's findings will be shared at an open day at Margam Abbey Church today.
Friday, January 16, 2026
Another move by Labour towards suppressing free speech
The paper says that advocates for free speech and animal rights have warned that the move by home secretary Shabana Mahmood sets a dangerous precedent towards clamping down on basic freedoms, while activists staging round-the-clock vigils at a Cambridgeshire site breeding beagles for laboratory tests have vowed to risk arrest to continue protesting:
In a change to the law that was not part of a Bill before Parliament, Labour has amended the Public Order Act to categorise animal-testing facilities, including universities and laboratories, as “key infrastructure”, alongside airports, power stations and motorways.
Police will have stronger powers to stop protests, with penalties of up to a year in jail or an unlimited fine.
It means “Camp Beagle” demonstrators holding up placards outside a centre near Huntingdon that breeds dogs for laboratory testing could be prosecuted.
Anyone breaching the new ban may now face prison or an unlimited fine.
Cruelty Free International, which campaigns to end animal testing, branded the move “illiberal, draconian, unnecessary and almost certainly unlawful” and called on the Lords to reject it.
“This measure is an unjustified attack on democratic rights, and risks setting a dangerous precedent towards an ever-growing restriction of peaceful protest,” a spokesman said.
John Curtin, an organiser at Camp Beagle, told The Independent he and fellow members were prepared to be arrested.
“I’m not going to change my my actions one little bit, and we’ll just wait for the police to come along,” he said.
“They’re changing the law because we operate legally and peacefully.
“We’ve said the camp’s not going until this place is shut down. It’s business as usual. This is a disgusting act by the Labour Party who promised to get rid of animal testing. They’ll never live this down.”
Tens of thousands of people wrote to their MPs and members of the House of Lords to express their anger at the proposal before the vote.
But the government managed to pass the amendment by 301 votes to 110 after the Tories appeared to abstain on the issue, having previously tried to introduce the same measure before the election.
Nevertheless, 26 Labour MPs rebelled in another challenge to prime minister Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership.
One rebel MP pointed out: “We voted against this as the Labour Party when the Tories tried to do this in government; now our leadership is doing the same as the Tories.”
Labour MP Neil Duncan-Jordan is quite right when he warned of a slide against “the right to free assembly that began under the last government”:
“Shielding the powerful from dissent only strengthens our opponents. By curtailing the right to protest, we risk laying the foundations for a more authoritarian and less democratic state. That’s not the job of the Labour Party,”
I wonder if Labour ministers have thought that one of the reasons for the backlog of cases in the courts is because they keep prosceuting people for expressing their democratic opinion.
Thursday, January 15, 2026
Is the latest u-turn the final straw for Labour MPs?
The paper says that the government has reversed course on policy issues at least 11 times so far, including by raising the inheritance tax relief threshold for farmers after months of protest and scrapping a raft of benefits cuts under the threat of a backbench revolt.
They add that the latest decision comes amid growing concern over the direction of Sir Keir’s beleaguered Labour government in the face of disastrous approval ratings, with the prime minister facing mounting questions about his position:
Sir Keir last year said Labour would introduce a digital ID system that would be voluntary in most cases but mandatory for right-to-work checks. However, these plans were thrown into confusion on Tuesday night after it emerged that ministers were looking at rowing back on the compulsory element, allowing other digital documents to be used for right-to-work checks.
The U-turn, which has sparked a fresh wave of criticism from Labour backbenchers who believe the prime minister’s position is at risk, came just hours after health secretary Wes Streeting told a conference in London that the government should aim to “get it right first time”.
One despairing minister told The Independent: “Nobody knows what is going to happen next or what we are even doing.”
A senior Labour backbencher added: “It just feels like the government is in freefall at the moment. It is a complete shambles. It feels like this government is just holding on until May, and hoping that they can get through the moment of danger and things somehow turn around.”
Another MP said: “I keep being told to wait until the local elections in May, but increasingly I wonder what the point of that is.”
“It’s quite obvious No 10 have totally lost touch with reality,” another MP said of the U-turn. “One might have thought they were learning on the job. But their decision-making and policy development strategy is going from really bad to alarmingly inadequate.”
The MP expressed their belief that the prime minister will “fall on his sword” after what is expected to be a disastrous result for Labour at the local elections.
“A leadership contest has been on the cards for some time now. It’s widely accepted within the [parliamentary Labour Party] now. However, it’s a political game of chess – who makes the next move.”
Meanwhile, there has been vocal criticism of the attempt to revive Sir Tony Blair’s failed mandatory ID policy.
Norwich South MP Clive Lewis said: “This is the sort of thing a government tries to do at the height of its powers, not when it is struggling in the polls. If people trusted it on foreign policy and the economy, then it might have been able to say, ‘We are doing this in your best interests.’
“But these were badly designed plans in the first place. An unnecessary fight. And of course, it was always going to trigger the libertarian right.”
It came after former Labour home secretary David Blunkett fiercely criticised the U-turn, arguing that the government had been forced to abandon the scheme because it had failed to convince people of why it was a good idea after announcing it last year.
The u-turn is, of course, welcome, but one has to ask why it was proposed in the first place when there was no support for it, and how much money has been wasted on it already?
I think it is also the case that the proposal as it now stands is not even worth the paper it is written on and should be abandoned altogether before more public money is wasted,
