How much will bills go up next week? From energy to council tax
The average UK household can expect an increase in bills in everything from water charges to council tax next week, as 2025 looks set to be difficult year for personal finances.
A number of bills will rise from 1 April, including gas and electricity, council tax and water bills in what is likely to be a hard month for struggling households.
Increases to water bills and council tax will have the biggest impact in the month. And with some households shaping up to pay hundreds more, it’s important to know what to expect.
Here’s are the biggest bill rises coming in 2025:
From 1 April, the annual energy bill for a household using a typical amount of gas and electricity will go up £111 a year, or £9.25 a month, to £1,849.
Ofgem, which regulates how much suppliers can charge for each unit of energy, raised the price cap earlier this year by 6.4 per cent.
The cap is set every three months and affects 22 million homes in England, Wales and Scotland. Ofgem’s chief executive Jonathan Brearley said the increase was “unwelcome”.
Water bills are set to rise by £11 a month on average from April following regulator Ofwat’s price review, but this can vary depending on region and water company.
An annual Southern Water bill will jump 47 per cent to £703, for example, while Anglican Water customers will pay 19 per cent more.
This marks the first stage of a 36 per cent increase in bills over the next five years. Ofwat said the increase would pay for a £104 billion upgrade of the water sector to deliver “substantial, lasting, improvements for customers and the environment”.
Exactly how much a household water bill will rise varies from region to region. Southern Water customers will experience the biggest bill rise of all 11 water and wastewater companies. Wessex Water customers will see the lowest increase with a 21 per cent bill rise over the period.
Another spiralling cost, council tax will rise by £108 on average in April after Labour confirmed bills will be allowed to rise by a maximum of 4.99 per cent.
This means that households will see rises of around two times higher than the current inflation rate. The increases could raise an additional £1.8bn for councils in 2025-26, communities minister Matthew Pennycook has said.
Technically, the cap has remained at 2.99 per cent in recent years, with an extra 2 per cent permitted for councils with social care responsibilities. This accounts for 152 out of 317 councils.
It’s likely many local authorities will opt to raise council tax by the full 4.99 per cent in 2025, as 95 per cent of eligible councils did last year.
TV licence fees will also go up in line with inflation, meaning the cost of a standard colour TV licence will go up £5, increasing from the current £169.50 to £174.50.
For the latest cost of living advice and personal finance tips as 2025 kicks off, visit The Independent’s regularly updated guide.
Make Sunday boring again: How an end-of-week shutdown could save us
Not to sound hopelessly nostalgic, but Sundays used to be better, didn’t they? Maybe my vision is distorted by buffed-up, rose-tinted specs – I vaguely recall being woefully bored at the time – but in hindsight, the Sundays of my youth resemble a blissful, stress-free utopia. Once a week, my family would go to church; take a bracing yomp in green, open space; eat a roast dinner; and spend the afternoon reading or playing games before pivoting to an evening watching some of the most gentle programmes in the history of TV scheduling (Songs of Praise segueing seamlessly into Antiques Roadshow and Last of the Summer Wine). It was a day of peace, a day of rest, a day of, whether intentionally or not, Sabbath.
Part of this weekly slowdown was enshrined in law. Up until the mid-1990s, buying and selling on Sunday was still illegal under the Shops Act 1950. Almost nothing was open; to all intents and purposes, consumerism ground to a halt. “For better or worse, Sunday was different and had an identity of its own,” says Daniel Gray, author of Sunday Best, a new book exploring the UK’s Sunday traditions.
This lingering limitation on opening hours was a hangover from Britain’s history as a Christian country, part of a wider religious tradition stipulating that, since God happily knocked off on the seventh day after making all of creation, perhaps we mere mortals should follow His lead. It was inspired by the Sabbath, a Jewish custom that’s still observed by practicing Jews today. From sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday, abstaining from work is the order of the day – although what constitutes “work” can be a source of contention, depending on your interpretation – alongside devoting time to worshipping God.
Never ones to shy away from borrowing a good idea, Christians adopted the concept and shunted it to Sundays, with the fluid principles behind “Sabbath” evolving over the centuries – as evidenced by the changing legislation about what one could and couldn’t legally do on this sacred day. Gray highlights these rules through history in Sunday Best: as early as the year 925, the first King of England, Athelstan, outlawed Sunday trading; subsequent monarchs prohibited everything from sports and music to travel and “assembling” (other than at church, of course).
Even as religious adherence waned and Sabbath observance plummeted in Christian societies after the Second World War, the setting aside of a special day once a week – 24 hours of rest, simplicity and quality time with family – continued to permeate and shape British culture.
But has the day now “lost its sense of otherness”, as Gray puts it, as a consequence of growing secularism and the fact that legislation governing Sundays has largely fallen by the wayside?
The answer seems to be a resounding “yes”. Sunday’s uniquely lazy flavour arguably started to get diluted with the Sunday Trading Act 1994, still in place today, which stipulates that stores can fling wide their doors on a Sunday – albeit for a maximum of six hours between the hours of 10am and 6pm. “The fact that everything’s open makes it look like the other days of the week,” says Gray. “It also doesn’t feel like it used to because of the incursion of the coming week. Monday seems to have made its way into Sunday through technology – checking our work emails on our phones, for example.”
What has fundamentally changed, he posits, is that we’ve collectively forgotten the beautiful art of being quiet – previously a key tenet of what differentiated Sunday from the surrounding week’s hecticness. “Everything’s so noisy and in your face,” says Gray. “There’s so much noise from people’s phones.”
The peaceful, switched-off Sunday may have been eroded over time, yet we are in need of rest more than ever, argues Claudia Hammond, author of The Art of Rest. “The benefits of getting more rest cannot be overstated,” she says. “And the same is true of the downsides of not resting enough; half of sick days taken are due to work-related stress. Our over-busy lives can leave us fatigued, which in turn can lead to memory lapses, blunted emotions, poor concentration, misunderstandings, poor judgement, and even accidents.”
By contrast, taking proper breaks and having a decent amount of rest can lower blood pressure and heart rate, boost concentration and creativity levels and increase resilience against stress. Hammond cites the Rest Test, conducted by psychologists from Durham University, which found that people who think they get more rest than average have wellbeing scores twice as high as those who feel in need of more rest.
But true rest in the digital era is very hard to come by. The online world is constantly encroaching; physical shops may be limited to certain opening hours on Sundays, but ecommerce never sleeps. News alerts, notifications, messages – none of it takes a day off.
Part of the nostalgia of looking back is remembering the kind of Sunday, now hard to fathom, during which no one scrolled on their phone, replied to an email on their iPad, responded to the “ping-ping-ping!” of constant incoming WhatsApps or mindlessly let another episode of Married At First Sight flick onto the flatscreen telly while barely concentrating.
Many of us view these 21st-century screen-related activities as being part of our leisure or relaxation time – 24 per cent of us consider scrolling on social media a “hobby”, according to one 2024 poll – yet research shows that they are anything but restful. Study after study has linked increased social media use to anxiety and depression. Experts have associated the growth in smartphone use with a mental health crisis in children and young people around the globe.
Society as a whole, meanwhile, is in the midst of a mass cognitive decline – or “brainrot”, to use the horrifying colloquialism – courtesy of tech. “High levels of internet usage and heavy media multitasking are associated with decreased grey matter in prefrontal regions,” according to one piece of research. Another bit of analysis from Stanford University revealed that people who frequently use many types of media at once, or are heavy media multitaskers, have reduced memory and attention spans.
It’s why there is a growing movement to reclaim Sundays or implement a new iteration of the Sabbath by shunning devices for one day a week. Human Mobile Devices (HMD), a mobile phone manufacturer that champions the idea of building a healthier relationship with technology, launched its “Shut the Phone Up Sunday” initiative in February, encouraging people to reclaim their time and “mental clarity” by taking a break from their smartphone for one day a week.
While not weekly, global digital detox days encouraging participants around the world to unplug for 24 hours are regularly hosted by The Offline Club, which organises real-world, in-person events and hangouts. On Saturday (29 March), they even held a World Record attempt for the largest number of people simultaneously switching off their phones in London’s Primrose Hill.
“The need for time and space offline is more evident than ever,” says Ben Hounsell, head of the London chapter. “You often go to a restaurant and see a couple or family all have their phones on the table next to them. It’s a big problem in today’s society – it’s like there’s always a third person in the room, and that person is your phone.” Hounsell now asks people: how often are you alone with your thoughts? “People have forgotten what it’s like,” he says. “Boredom is virtually a luxury these days.”
In fact, “boredom” is often associated with Sundays when adults look back at their childhoods. And, as much as the word has negative connotations, it could be fundamental to sparking creativity and hatching new ideas. In one 2014 study examining the relationship between boredom and creative potential, participants were split into two groups, with one given something boring to do before embarking on a creative task. The result? “Boring” activities resulted in increased creativity. Scientists concluded that, in the absence of external stimuli, “attention is focused on internal processes and thoughts, thus generating new ideas”.
This phenomenon is something Tiffany Shlain, author of 24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week, has discovered since she and her family introduced a weekly “tech shabbat” 16 years ago. “I have my best ideas [as an artist and a writer] on the day where I’m not getting deluged with input from the world,” she says. Though Jewish, Shlain is not religious – yet now swears by the practice of a screen-free Sabbath once a week, from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. “A day of rest is this built-in practice that’s been around for thousands of years,” she says. “This is ancient wisdom, and any idea that’s been around that long and is still an idea is probably something we should look at.”
Shlain first started her practice following a turbulent period during which her father died and her daughter was born within the space of a few weeks. “It really was one of those moments where I felt like life was grabbing me by the shoulders and saying, ‘focus on what matters’,” she says. “I was really feeling distracted, like I couldn’t focus and I wasn’t present. I was everywhere and nowhere all the time with my phone – it was such an existential feeling.” The combination of birth and death acted as a wake-up call: “We were like, we have to live our lives differently. And we started turning off the screens.”
It has been, says Shlain, the best thing she has ever done – both in terms of connecting with family and as a means of individually recharging. “The longer I did it, the better I felt,” she adds. “It’s this incredible reset every week.”
Anyone can and should implement their own version of a tech shabbat, she urges, regardless of religion or background. Shlain advises getting prepared before you try it – writing down important phone numbers on a piece of paper in case of emergency, procuring an analogue or “dumbphone” if you don’t have a landline, handwriting directions to anywhere you want to go the next day – and focusing on making it a genuinely exciting prospect.
“I do recommend that families write down all the things you love to do that don’t involve screens, and do that for each member of your family, and make your Sabbath a day of doing those things,” she recommends. “And those of you that don’t have kids: just do what brings you joy and pleasure. People have forgotten how much they love to do without screens.”
This echoes what Gray picks out as being at the heart of reclaiming the old Sunday tradition: getting out in nature, meeting friends at the pub for a lazy afternoon of pints and chats and playing cards.
Hounsell’s top tip, meanwhile, is to start small if doing a whole day initially feels overwhelming: “Just try to get away from your phone for an hour before you go to bed and for an hour first thing when you wake up. I think that would be huge for a lot of people.”
However you put it into practice, reclaiming a day of rest could be the key to revolutionising your entire week. As Shlain puts it: “We just weren’t designed to be ‘on’ 24/7. There’s a reason the Sabbath is the fourth commandment – even before ‘Do not murder’, we were told to take a day off!”
As families mourn, can one country stop social media harming children?
Ellen Roome has said more than once that if her son had been hit by a car, his death would have at least made some kind of sense.
But after finding 14-year-old Julian “Jools” Sweeney dead in his room on a night in April 2022, she is still searching for answers.
“Not one person in Jools’s life thought there was a problem. Not one teacher, not one adult, not one child,” Ms Roome says nearly three years later.
Her crusade is now squarely aimed at social media, and after finding out about the deaths of other British teenagers in similar circumstances, the Cheltenham mother has joined a group of parents suing TikTok over a dangerous online “blackout” challenge they believe their children took part in.
Ms Roome has tried to access her son’s social media accounts to see the content he was looking at before his death, but says she’s been blocked by the platforms.
“I thought, well, we’re responsible for a minor. Why on earth can’t we see what he’s looking at?”
In the past week, the grief of another family involved in the action against TikTok was made plain before a coroner, who is investigating the death of Maia Walsh, a 13-year-old girl found dead in her Hertford bedroom in October 2022 after seeing concerning content on the platform. Months before, she had commented: “I don’t think I’ll live past 14.”
Harrowing tales like these have sparked a debate over the best ways to protect children from social media harm. The government is already facing criticism that new laws in force ordering tech companies to remove dangerous content are not robust enough, while prime minister Sir Keir Starmer batted away a Conservative push for a blanket phone ban in schools as “wasting time” and “completely unnecessary”.
Labour backbencher Josh MacAlister’s fight to place age restrictions on Facebook, TikTok and similar platforms was shot down by technology minister Peter Kyle.
But in Australia, parents’ anxiety over their children’s exposure to an unsupervised online world has shaped concrete government action: a ban on teenagers under the age of 16 from accessing social media.
The new laws, which have been given a year to take effect, are a litmus test for a society growing increasingly fearful of the harms faced by children on their smartphones, including violent radicalisation, misogyny, eating disorders and bullying.
“We know social media is doing social harm,” Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese said upon introducing the legislation in November. “We want Australian children to have a childhood, and we want parents to know the government is in their corner.”
But alongside the question of whether the government should bar children from the platforms is the question of whether it actually can, as doubts are raised over the effectiveness of systems designed to restrict the ages of their users.
Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS) founder Tony Allen believes a ban is absolutely possible.
The UK-based company has been tasked by the Australian government with undertaking a trial of age assurance technology – so far involving 55 participants and 62 different systems – that will underpin the success of the scheme.
Mr Allen says age assurance is split into three categories: age verification, linked to proving someone’s date of birth; age estimation which analyses a person’s biometric data such as their pulse and facial features; and age inference, which assumes someone’s age based on a particular qualifier – like owning a credit card.
“You have to be over 18 to be able to be issued with a credit card… so the reasonableness of the inference is the law requires you to be over 18. You’re therefore likely to be over 18,” he says.
However, he qualifies that whatever the system chosen by the government would involve a never-ending catch-up game to fend off those finding new ways to get around it.
“There’s a lot of work going on, on how you detect deepfakes and injection attacks,” he says, explaining the latter “injects code right behind the camera and then tricks the system into thinking it’s looking at you, and it’s not”.
Another pitfall is the tendency of some artificial intelligence to discriminate against people of colour by assuming they’re younger than they actually are, according to Professor Toby Walsh, chief scientist at the University of New South Wales’s AI Institute.
But Prof Walsh, who is independently overseeing the trial, is broadly optimistic. He has likened the ban to age restrictions on smoking and drinking in that, while it is unlikely to be flawless, it could be a major driver in forcing cultural change.
“You go behind the bicycle sheds, maybe at school, you will find people smoking cigarettes. Young people will find ways to access alcohol. But we have made it difficult, and we have made it illegal to provide tobacco and alcohol to people underage, and that has changed the conversation around those things,” he says.
Despite the legislation passing in November with opposition support, the approach has been sharply criticised by independent MPs and the Greens, as well as human rights organisations, who have warned it will leave marginalised teenagers, such as those in the LGBT+ community without a place to interact.
Contributing to the criticism is Andy Burrows, CEO of Molly Rose Foundation, a suicide prevention charity set up following the death of British teenager Molly Russell, who took her own life after viewing toxic content online.
“Banning under-16s from social media is a backwards step that would push risks and bad actors onto gaming and messaging services and leave young people at a cliff edge of harm when they turn 16,” Mr Burrows says.
“Children should not be punished for the failures of tech platforms nor the delayed response from successive governments. Our young people’s safety deserves strong, effective solutions to complex problems.”
Unsurprisingly, the social media giants targeted by the law are also opposed to what they claim is a rushed bill that will fail to achieve its goals.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, argued before an Australian parliamentary inquiry into the legislation that the evidence didn’t support a blanket ban and it was unclear what “reasonable steps” companies needed to take to bar children from their platforms to avoid nearly AU$50m (£24.4m) penalties.
“This ambiguity is problematic as understanding a person’s real age on the internet is a complex challenge,” the company’s submission reads.
However, Australia’s eSafety commissioner and former industry insider, Julie Inman-Grant, says she has already spent years calling on tech companies to be more proactive in addressing the harms on their platforms. “It’s not as though they haven’t been given the chance,” she says.
“But age assurance in isolation is not enough. We also need to keep the pressure on the tech industry to ensure their services are safer and our systemic transparency powers and codes and standards are already having an effect in this area.”
The outspoken Ms Inman-Grant, who last month described Elon Musk as an “unelected bureaucrat”, was involved in a high-profile court dispute last year with X over the proliferation of a video on the platform that showed the stabbing of a controversial Sydney preacher.
It later surfaced that Southport killer Axel Rudakubana had viewed the video before carrying out his notorious attack.
Prof Walsh concedes he is concerned about the willingness of American tech giants to comply with the new laws amid the shifting political climate in the US.
“The US-centric policies coming out of North America these days are certainly troubling,” he says, before turning to a precautionary principle enshrined in European law to support Australia’s trajectory.
“We have been running a very interesting, but somewhat concerning, experiment on human society, especially the young people in human society… we are obliged to take a precautionary approach to the potential harmful effects.”
Despite the unknowns, Ellen Roome is supportive of what Australia is trying to pull off – in fact, she says it doesn’t go far enough.
“Just get rid of it. It’s not fit for children. It should be 18, in my opinion,” she says.
Earlier this month the UK’s own online safety legislation came into force. Its primary goal is to make social media companies prevent and remove harmful content such as extremist and child-abuse material from being published on their platforms. The Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology says the bill will make the UK “the safest place in the world to be a child online”.
However, during that same time, provisions in a Labour backbencher’s private member’s bill to force social media companies to exclude teenagers under 16 from their algorithms were watered down to a commitment to researching the issue.
But Ms Roome says that in that time, children will continue to access harmful material: “How much more research do you need?”
If you are experiencing feelings of distress, or are struggling to cope, you can speak to the Samaritans, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org, or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch.
If you are based in the USA, and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call or text 988, or visit 988lifeline.org to access online chat from the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. This is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you are in another country, you can go to befrienders.org to find a helpline near you
Plans for a third Trump term are already in motion – no matter what the law says
When Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon said “I’m a firm believer that President Trump will run and win again in 2028,” last week, it should have been a surprise, but wasn’t. “We’re working on it. … We’ll see what the definition of term limit is”, the dishevelled Bannon told NewsNation. It wasn’t the first time he had mentioned it either. The president’s adviser, who went to prison for refusing to testify before a congressional committee about the 6 January insurrection, suggested it in December. Then, he argued that Trump could circumvent the 22nd amendment, which codifies the two-term limit, because the word “consecutive” is not in the text of the document.
Trump has been making his feelings clear too. Shortly after his election victory last November, the president told congressional Republicans: “I suspect I won’t be running again unless you say ‘He’s so good we’ve got to figure something else out’.”
Then, in January, during the annual House Republican retreat in Florida, he joked with speaker Mike Johnson: “Am I allowed to run again, Mike?” In February, he asked supporters at the White House: “Should I run again? You tell me.” Offhand musings about a third term in office sound less like bluster and more like a blueprint
The safeguard of the two-term president emerged in direct response to Franklin D Roosevelt’s unprecedented four-term presidency during the Thirties and Forties. Before Roosevelt, the informal precedent set by George Washington – stepping down after two terms – had been respected by every president. Today, the 22nd amendment leaves little room for interpretation: “No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice, and no person who has held the office of president, or acted as president, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected president shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”
Earlier this year, Republican congressman Andy Ogles introduced a House resolution to amend it to enable a president to be elected for up to three terms. Ogles wrote: “President Trump’s decisive leadership stands in stark contrast to the chaos, suffering, and economic decline Americans have endured over the past four years.
He has proven himself to be the only figure in modern history capable of reversing our nation’s decay and restoring America to greatness, and he must be given the time necessary to accomplish that goal. To that end, I am proposing an amendment to the constitution to revise the limitations imposed by the 22nd amendment on presidential terms. This amendment would allow Trump to serve three terms, ensuring that we can sustain the bold leadership our nation so desperately needs.”
However, it certainly wouldn’t surprise constitutional law professor Michele Goodwin if Trump did actively try to seek a third term by any means necessary: “There has already been a display of lawlessness in the executive orders and other actions taken by the Trump administration.”
Indeed, Goodwin, a professor from Georgetown Law, says Trump is making history for things that are anti-democratic and anti-constitutional. “For example when the president said he wants to do away with birthright citizenship, he can’t do away with it with the stroke of his pen. It’s in the American constitution. In the kidnapping of people who have green cards and then secreting them away, making history in mass deportations – these things have been wrongfully reported as if these are just people who are ‘just illegals’, but these are people who are in a legal process for refugee status or towards immigration status. So the fact that they may not have a green card does not mean that they’re not in an appropriate legal status and process.”
Birthright citizenship is protected in the 14th amendment and courts have blocked it for now. The Ronald Reagan-appointed judge issued an emergency order initially halting Trump’s executive order, saying, “I have been on the bench for over four decades. I can’t remember another case where the question presented was as clear.”
Other legal scholars have dismissed the idea of running for a third term as impossible, but for Trump’s most ardent supporters, constitutional roadblocks have rarely been a concern. In fact, the mere suggestion that he might seek to extend his grip on power has already energised his base.
And there is little political opposition in sight. Robert Reich, who was labour secretary under president Bill Clinton and served in the Ford and Carter administrations, headlined a recent Substack post Where the HELL are the Democrats?: “It should be the Democrats’ moment,” he wrote, “Democrats are nowhere … Almost invisible. They’re squandering this opportunity.” Reich points out that some Democratic operatives are telling Democrats to “play dead”; to give the Trump administration and congressional Republicans who support him “enough rope to figuratively hang themselves”. The midterm elections aren’t until November of 2026. Keep your powder dry. “Rubbish,” says Reich. “Tens of millions of Americans believe there’s no real Democratic opposition to Trump. They feel demoralised and defeated.”
Goodwin says the Trump administration is moving in coercive ways into legal spaces. Universities have been pressured to change their curriculum (Columbia University is placing its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies departments into “academic receivership” at the insistence of the Trump administration), and this week vice president JD Vance was put in charge of “removing improper ideology” from the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which comes under the Smithsonian Institute.
Whether it is a threat against law schools, or banning major law firms who have worked for his “enemies” from receiving government contracts, as of this month there are now 60 universities “under investigation” by Trump’s Department of Education “for antisemitic discrimination and harassment”.
“When people feel threatened, as some people are,” Goodwin says, “they begin making concessions – unnecessary concessions.” In the past, she says, we could rely on the unbiased, fair, judiciary to take care of things, but even successful lawsuits hold little muster with the new administration. “The difference now is there’s a certain level of defiance [on the part of the Trump administration]. And that becomes a problem.”
Law professors are fearful, she says. “There are those in the legal profession who saw in the first week of his presidency there had already been sufficient unconstitutional executive orders that caused concern that there was a crisis of democracy.” With the help of his henchman Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, Trump is also attempting to shut down agencies created by Congress, placing 4,200 staff at the US Agency for International Development on leave in February, and firing 1,600 from their job. Lawyers said Congress would be able to stop Doge but that clearly didn’t happen. “There are people afraid right now.”
The problem, she says, is “it’s much easier to destroy something than it is to build it,” Goodwin says. “A house set aflame can be decimated in no time. And it’s not just about recreating the physical structure. It’s the character. It’s remembering how people who respected each other worked together. This dismantling, the firing of people, the gutting of various institutions, may take decades in some instances to rebuild and to restore. And it will mean a commitment from our government to do so at a time when the government will be economically distressed.”
Goodwin says the US is in a “thought experiment” right now. She says Steve Bannon spoke a while back about “flooding the zone”. Bannon was talking to writer Michael Lewis in 2018 when he said “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with sh**.”
Goodwin reckons there’s a psychological component to this. “One analogy that comes to mind is domestic violence. In a family environment where somebody is flooding the zone with physical and mental abuse – various forms of coercion so you don’t know what to expect when that person comes home at night – it’s destabilising; you’re fearful; you’re so overwhelmed by it. But the overwhelming aspect of it works – and that’s what it’s intended to do. [What Trump is doing] is meant to destabilise people; to cause a kind of paralysis. People are so overwhelmed they lose sight of what to work on, what to do.”
While Goodwin calls the current situation “dystopic”, she believes help might come from a somewhat unlikely source – the Supreme Court. At the beginning of the month, chief justice John Roberts and justice Amy Coney Barrett, nominated by Trump during his first term, joined the liberal wing of the court in denying the administration’s efforts to freeze $2bn to pay foreign aid organisations for work they had already completed. In response, alt-right Maga activist Jack Posobiec said that Barrett was a DEI hire.
Those who had worried the Supreme Court’s lurch to the right, and its contentious ruling that presidents are immune from criminal liability for actions taken in office, would mean Trump would be given carte blanche to run roughshod over the constitution might be proved wrong. In mid-March, Roberts again defied Trump in his calls to remove a judge, in what the Associated Press called “an extraordinary display of conflict between the executive and judiciary branches”.
In a democracy under siege, the Supreme Court is the last line of defence. The question is, considering its make-up, whether it will be to the task hit after hit. Or when the time comes for a third-term run, will so much have gone up in flames that people will forget where the hosepipe is or even where to point it.
Quakers condemn Met raid as six arrested in Westminster meeting house
The Quakers in Britain group has condemned the arrests of six Youth Demand supporters by more than 30 police officers.
The arrests were the first “in living memory” to occur in a Quaker meeting house, recording clerk for the group Paul Parker said, after the officers detained the Youth Demand supporters at 7.30pm in Westminster on Thursday.
“This aggressive violation of our place of worship and the forceful removal of young people holding a protest group meeting clearly shows what happens when a society criminalises protest,” he said.
“Freedom of speech, assembly, and fair trials are an essential part of free public debate which underpins democracy.”
The detainees were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance, police said. Youth Demand said the meeting was held to “share plans for non-violent civil resistance actions” planned for April.
Met Police said the group had intended to “shut down” London over the month of April using tactics including “swarming” and roadblocks”. Police said they had a “responsibility to intervene” because the protests threatened to cause “serious disruption and other criminality”.
Houses were also raided during the operation on Thursday and Friday, Youth Demand added.
In a statement, Quakers in Britain said: “Quakers support the right to nonviolent public protest, acting themselves from a deep moral imperative to stand up against injustice and for our planet.
“Many have taken nonviolent direct action over the centuries from the abolition of slavery to women’s suffrage and prison reform.”
An elder at the Westminster meeting house, Mal Woolford, described the actions of the police as “ridiculously heavy-handed”.
“There were six very young women of about 20 years old, talking in a circle around a packet of breadsticks and a pot of houmous,” he said.
Youth Demand, the self-described “youth resistance campaign fighting for an end to genocide”, began carrying out acts of civil disobedience last year.
It calls on the government to halt all trade with Israel and raise money from the “super rich and fossil fuel elite” to pay damages for the impacts of fossil fuel burning.
In April last year, the group hung a banner and laid rows of children’s shoes outside Sir Keir Starmer’s home, after which three people in their 20s were issued with suspended prison sentences.
Further arrests were made last July after the group announced plans to disrupt the State Opening of Parliament.
Met Police said: “While we absolutely recognise the importance of the right to protest, we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality.
“On Thursday, 29 March officers raided a Youth Demand planning meeting at an address in Westminster where those in attendance were plotting their April action.
“Six people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. Five of those arrested on Thursday have been released on bail and one will face no further action.
“A further five arrests for the same offence were made on Friday, 28 March. Four of the arrests were at addresses in London and one in Exeter. All five of those arrested on Friday have been released on bail.”
The Barbados edit: Best experiences, from festivals to foodie feasts
There’s always something happening in beautiful, beachy Barbados, so whether you’re a carnival fan, firm foodie, or love live music, you’ll find incredible experiences to suit every passion. What’s more, travellers heading to Barbados this year can enjoy incredible discounts of up to 65 per cent on select hotels and an array of attractions and activities across the island, while indulging in the island’s vibrant culinary scene through exclusive menu offers from participating restaurants.
Here we delve into just some of the best activities, events and unmissable adventures you can enjoy on this wonderful, welcoming island.
The Crop Over festival transforms Barbados into an island-wide party with music, parades and dancing everywhere you look. More than 100,000 people take part in this annual gathering, which traditionally marks the end of the island’s sugar cane season. This year, the fun kicks off in July and the excitement peaks on the Grand Kadooment Day, featuring costumed revellers in bands, parading and dancing to great calypso songs blasting from the music trucks driving along the sizzling streets. The Crop Over festival is where Rihanna “got her style groove” according to fashion writers. You may just find yours there, too.
Read more: Best adults-only hotels in Barbados
If you’d prefer a smaller but equally fun celebration then Holetown Festival on the West Coast of Barbados is your friend. It’s a bouncy, colourful and family-friendly jamboree that celebrates the arrival of the first settlers to the island back in 1627. With a steel band concert, nightly shows, and a floodlit tattoo and night parade, the week-long event showcases the rich cultural heritage and traditions of Barbados.
Read more: Best family hotels in Barbados
The Barbados Reggae Festival is your chance to plunge yourself into the beating heart of reggae music. Renowned local and international reggae artists gather on the island in April to conjure up a rhythmic menu of reggae and dancehall. The music is only part of the fun: there are several beach parties and themed get-togethers across multiple events, including Reggae On The Hill. This year is the 20th anniversary of this festival, so the vibe is set to be better than ever.
Read more: Best beach hotels in Barbados
Culinary fans should book their trip to coincide with the vibrant Barbados Food and Rum Festival. This event has been named the Caribbean’s Best Culinary Festival at the World Culinary Awards two years running. Held annually in October, food lovers from around the globe descend to enjoy the island’s famed culinary experiences, with local and international chefs joining the eminent local mixologists to serve up fine food, drink and Bajan hospitality.
Another foodie must-experience is the Oistins Fish Festival, held annually over the Easter weekend in the pretty fishing village of Oistins, on the south coast. It celebrates the local fishing industry, with music, crafts and delicious local food. Dubbed one for the whole family, it includes an Easter bonnet competition, egg and spoon races, a fish boning competition and a hilarious contest where youngsters compete to reach the top of a greased pole.
By day, Harbour Lights on the stunning Carlisle Bay is a popular beach club, with loungers, umbrellas, and turtle and shipwreck snorkel tours, but at night, it transforms into a thrilling venue offering pulsating steel pan rhythms, stilt walkers, costumed dancers, and a live band. On Friday evenings you can party under the stars as the venue turns into an open-air nightclub.
For bar-hopping, head to St Lawrence Gap, known as ‘The Gap’ by locals. Here you can watch the sunset with a cocktail at On The Bay or Mimosas Trattoria and Bar, or head indoors for a great dining experience at Cocktail Kitchen, and finally take your pick from the late-night bars where you can party into the small hours of the morning.
Barbados lives and breathes cricket, and you can hear the sweet sound of leather on willow in villages across the island. The cream of the action is at the celebrated Kensington Oval, where you can take in an international Test Match or a One-Day match, soaking up the incredible atmosphere with music, dancing, drinking and delicious food. No one does cricket quite like the Barbadians.
For more adventurous sports fans there’s the Barbados Open Water Festival, with a variety of open water swim races that are open for all ages and abilities, as well as fun social events where the athletes and spectators can rub shoulders. It’s held in November at the Barbados Yacht Club in the tranquil, crescent-shaped Carlisle Bay. If boating is more your drift, Barbados Sailing Week in January promises incredible sailing experiences, races, beach parties and delicious Bajan food and drink. The perfect way to explore the island, cuisine and culture.
For travel information and inspiration and to discover hotel, experience and culinary offers, head to Visit Barbados
Who is fighting in Whitehall’s spending wars?
There’s no respite for Rachel Reeves after her spring statement. As well as worrying whether Donald Trump’s tariffs will blow her economic strategy off course, the chancellor must now divide up a shrinking cake among Whitehall departments before her spending review concludes in June.
The Treasury hoped this process would be more harmonious than previous reviews, but it is not, as cabinet ministers fight hard to defend their budgets. The “protected” departments, health and defence, will get a larger share of the cake, so the slightly bigger cuts announced by Reeves on Wednesday will fall disproportionately on those whose budgets have not recovered since George Osborne’s austerity.
Housing and local government is already down 46 per cent on its 2009-10 level, while culture is down 38 per cent, work and pensions 29 per cent, environment 22 per cent, transport 20 per cent, and justice 19 per cent. Despite that, the Treasury has told these departments to model cuts of 5.7 per cent and 11.2 per cent over the three-year review period.
Several ministers tried but failed to persuade the chancellor to change her fiscal rules earlier this month. She doubled down on them this week, judging that the financial markets would not tolerate higher borrowing. Reeves will be relieved that the bond market dog did not bark, but her decision makes the spending review even more difficult.
Tensions between the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions led to this week’s last-minute announcement of a £500m cut in universal credit after the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) fiscal watchdog ruled that the government’s £5bn worth of welfare cuts would save only £3.4bn. OBR officials complained that the rushed, late figures had not given them enough time to work out the precise savings.
The £500m worth of cuts in injury time gave the game away: for all the talk of (admittedly needed) welfare reform, these rushed savings were really about making the chancellor’s sums add up. History suggests that hurried measures save less than expected.
Despite all the uncertainty in the global economy, Reeves replaced the vanished £9.93bn of headroom against her rules with a new figure of precisely £9.93bn. Old Whitehall hands detect a Treasury trick of keeping the headroom low to redouble the pressure on ministers to rein in spending. But it could come back to bite Reeves if her cushion disappears again by her Budget in October.
There’s also bad blood between the Treasury and the Department for Education. They blame each other for a leak suggesting that Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, was ready to end free school meals for infants and reduce spending on schools by £500m. A classic “bleeding stumps” move in the Treasury’s eyes – putting up something so gruesome it would be knocked down – as Reeves duly did on free meals.
“Complete rubbish,” replied Phillipson’s allies.
Whitehall is not a happy place. Reeves wants to save £2.2bn by reducing administration costs by 15 per cent by 2030. She has earmarked £306m for redundancy payments, and up to 50,000 jobs could go – a lot more than the 10,000 she trailed.
The chancellor promised that some savings will be switched to frontline services, but civil servants insist that such a cull will harm service delivery. Again, there’s a long history of headline-grabbing efficiency savings that do not live up to their billing.
Ministers are right to encourage underperforming officials to leave rather than be shuffled to their next Whitehall job. But their unnecessarily hostile language, like Keir Starmer’s talk of “an overcautious flabby state”, has alienated civil servants – many of whom voted Labour and, wearing their professional hat, welcomed the fresh start of a new government. “A lot of people are disillusioned; they did not expect this from Labour,” one senior official told me.
Sue Gray, Starmer’s former chief of staff and previously a Whitehall lifer, had a point when she used her maiden speech in the Lords to urge politicians to avoid phrases like “blobs”, “pen-pushers”, “axes” and “chainsaws”.
But Starmer and Reeves have a point too. There are now 513,000 civil servants – 90,000 more than at the start of the pandemic. In 2023, productivity in public services was 0.3 per cent lower than in 1997.
Reeves delayed her cuts until the later years of this parliament, and Whitehall whispers suggest she hopes some will not be needed if she secures greater economic growth. But such hints are not bankable as ministers squabble over their budgets.
Many Labour figures are alarmed that the welfare cuts will push 50,000 more children into poverty. Even though the OBR said the planned housebuilding boost could add 0.2 per cent to GDP, Labour backbenchers are starting to wonder whether Reeves will avoid a “doom loop” in which no or low growth forces more cuts or tax rises, which then further harm growth.
As one MP, a Reeves loyalist, put it: “She has put all her chips on growth. But what if we don’t get it? We’ll lose the next election.”
Stand up to Donald Trump on tariffs, prime minister
The prime minister is considering retaliation against the United States after giving up hope of avoiding tariffs due to be imposed by Donald Trump on Wednesday. Sir Keir Starmer is right to hit back, unfortunately, because that is the only language that the US president understands.
Mark Carney, the new prime minister of Canada, has demonstrated that standing up to President Trump is the way to persuade him to engage positively. On Thursday, Mr Carney – who is in the middle of an election campaign – tore into the US president, saying that the US was “no longer a reliable trading partner”, and that Canada’s old relationship with the US, “based on the deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation, is over”.
On Friday, he was rewarded with a telephone call which Mr Trump afterwards described as “extremely productive”. Mr Carney said that, in it, the US president “respected Canada’s sovereignty”, which had not always been the case in conversations with Justin Trudeau, his predecessor, whom Mr Trump, in a mocking reference to his desire to make Canada the 51st state of the US, used to call “Governor Trudeau”.
“I’ve always loved Canada,” Mr Trump told reporters after the call – not that he loves it enough to lift the tariffs he has already imposed on the country, or to lift the threat of further tariffs to come, including those on car imports that will also be imposed on Britain on 2 April.
As our political editor reports, at the beginning of last week there had been optimism in 10 Downing Street that the United Kingdom would avoid the tariffs planned for Canada, the European Union, China and the rest of the world. There was even a hope that a very limited quick-fire trade deal might be completed before Wednesday, which Mr Trump insists on calling “Liberation Day”.
Those hopes have now evaporated, leaving the chancellor braced for the destruction of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecasts within a few days of their publication.
The only hope that remains is that based on the experience of Mr Trump’s first term, when the tariffs that he imposed tended to be limited and of short duration. It is not clear whether the president knows perfectly well that tariffs will raise prices for US consumers, but that those consumers, as voters, like the rhetoric of socking it to “unfair” foreign competition – or if Mr Trump genuinely believes that free trade is against America’s interest, and has in the past been talked out of doing too much harm by his advisers.
Either way, we can only hope that he retreats from a full-blown trade war this time, as he has done before. In the meantime, it makes sense to adopt a robust posture towards him, as Mr Carney has shown.
Sir Keir should make it clear that he cannot allow US firms to have low-tariff access to the British market if British firms are being shut out of America. It may have no basis in economics, but if it is the way to convince Mr Trump that the UK is not his doormat, then needs must.
The prime minister is right to stand up to Mr Trump, while at the same time continuing to pursue a special US-UK trade deal. The British position does not have to make sense: it just has to match Mr Trump’s combination of bluster and sweet talk. With any luck, the US president will feel that he has made his point with his domestic audience and can move on.