Business

Britain’s drive to establish itself as a global artificial intelligence powerhouse is heading for a direct confrontation with its legally binding climate commitments, after planning documents revealed that the country’s first “nationally significant” data centre would be fired by gas rather than clean energy.

The £2 billion Wapseys Wood development in Buckinghamshire, backed by SDC Capital Partners, would consist of up to three hyperscale data centre buildings, each drawing as much as 100 megawatts of power. Crucially, it would also feature an on-site gas turbine energy generation centre capable of producing between 270 and 350 megawatts, which developers describe in submitted documents as necessary to deliver a “resilient and reliable power supply”.

The scheme is the first data centre proposal to be accepted for consideration under the government’s nationally significant infrastructure regime, a designation that hands the final decision to the communities secretary, Steve Reed, rather than the local authority. If waved through, it would rank among the ten largest sites of its kind in the UK, with its promoters claiming the development would create 400 jobs and deliver roughly 5 per cent of domestic computing demand over the next five years.

The row over Wapseys Wood reflects a wider bottleneck that is reshaping the economics of Britain’s digital infrastructure. With grid connection queues stretching for years, developers are increasingly bypassing the electricity network altogether and turning instead to on-site generation, or to the gas grid.

Figures from Future Energy Networks, the trade body representing pipeline operators, show that 113 applications have been lodged by data centre developers over the past two years, with enquiries in 2025 running at roughly three times the level of the previous year. Seven of those applications have already secured agreements to connect. Should every one of them proceed, they would collectively consume enough gas to heat 1.3 million homes.

Toby Perkins, the Labour MP who chairs the environmental audit committee, warned that the scale of the demand merits serious political attention. “That a small number of centres could demand the same energy as millions of homes should give us pause for thought,” he said. “Data centres may well play an important role in growing our economy, but we should be careful about approving projects that put the net zero transition at risk.”

Critics argue that Wapseys Wood is merely the most visible example of an emerging trend. Donald Campbell, director of advocacy at Foxglove, a non-profit campaigning for more accountable technology policy, said the developers had made no effort to dress the project up as environmentally friendly. He cautioned that if the bulk of the pending gas grid applications were approved, “climate pollution from big tech will go through the roof”.

The shift mirrors developments in the United States, where hyperscalers have moved aggressively to secure their own generation. Meta is building seven new natural gas plants to feed its Hyperion campus in Louisiana, a site that could eventually draw up to 5 gigawatts. Microsoft, meanwhile, is working on plans for a gas-fired plant in West Texas of similar scale.

The carbon implications for Britain are material. Oliver Hayes, head of policy and campaigns at Global Action Plan, estimated that the Wapseys Wood turbine alone could emit around half a million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, set against total UK emissions of 367 million tonnes. “Tech bosses claim the lack of grid connections threatens their AI goldrush,” he said. “But ministers must not allow them to dash for gas instead.”

Under current planning rules, any proposed new gas plant must set out a credible path to decarbonisation. The Wapseys Wood developers have pointed to a future switch to clean-burning hydrogen. Yet industry specialists are sceptical that the technology will be commercially deployable on the timescales required. Marten Ford, advisory project leader at Aurora Energy Research, said that although the current test focuses on technical readiness, it does not address cost competitiveness. “Given current market conditions, near-term conversion to hydrogen is unlikely, with feasibility more plausible later in the 2030s,” he said.

A spokesman for the Wapseys Wood project defended the proposal, saying it responded to “an urgent need for new data centres in the UK” and would bring significant economic, employment and environmental benefits. He stressed that the scheme remains at pre-application stage and that SDC Capital Partners would continue engaging with the local community, including through a second round of public consultation later this year.

The government, for its part, insisted that the AI build-out and climate targets can be reconciled. “Data centres are vital to driving growth and AI is increasingly part of the high-tech solutions that will help us solve environmental challenges,” a spokesman said, adding that the AI Energy Council is actively seeking investment in new clean power sources and that ministers are working to accelerate grid connections and curb energy costs for eligible projects.

For Britain’s small and mid-sized technology businesses, the stakes of the debate are significant. Cheap, abundant computing capacity is increasingly the raw material of enterprise innovation, and delays to new infrastructure risk pushing AI workloads offshore. But a dash for gas, if replicated across the pipeline of pending projects, could saddle the UK with a new generation of carbon-emitting assets just as other sectors are being asked to decarbonise at pace. The Wapseys Wood decision, when it lands on Steve Reed’s desk, will offer an early indication of how Whitehall intends to balance those competing imperatives.

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Britain’s first major AI data centre sparks net zero clash as gas power plans revealed

Britain’s supermarkets could be staring down the barrel of patchy shelves by midsummer, with ministers quietly war-gaming a scenario in which the continuing conflict with Iran chokes off carbon dioxide supplies to the country’s food and drink industry.

Whitehall officials have been rehearsing what they describe internally as a “reasonable worst-case scenario” should the strait of Hormuz remain closed into June, shipping routes stay jammed, and a mechanical hiccup at one of Britain’s critical CO2 plants compound the pressure. The exercise, codenamed Turnstone and convened under the Cobra emergency framework, has drawn in officials from Downing Street, the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence.

News of the drill, first surfaced by The Times, has prompted a rapid-fire reassurance campaign from ministers, who insist the planning is prudent rather than panicked. Business Secretary Peter Kyle told Times Radio on Thursday that the leak was “unhelpful” but argued the public “need to be reassured that we are doing this kind of planning”. CO2 supplies, he added, were “not a concern” for the UK economy.

For small and medium-sized food producers, brewers and hospitality operators, however, the contingency talk lands at an awkward moment. The summer trading window, already inflated by the World Cup kicking off on 11 June, is make-or-break territory for independent breweries and wholesalers. A squeeze on carbon dioxide would ripple rapidly through their supply chains, hitting everything from pint pulls to packaged meats.

Carbon dioxide, though a by-product of other industrial processes, is the quiet workhorse of British food and drink. The gas is used to stun pigs and poultry at abattoirs, to pack fresh meat and salad leaves in modified-atmosphere packaging that keeps bacteria at bay, and to put the fizz in beer and soft drinks. It also underpins refrigeration, MRI scanning, surgical procedures and the cooling of nuclear reactors.

The UK ranks among Europe’s heaviest consumers of the gas, a dependency that has already prompted pre-emptive action. In March, Mr Kyle earmarked £100m to restart the mothballed Ensus bioethanol plant on Teesside for a three-month run, specifically to hedge against wartime shortages. On Thursday he argued the Teesside decision showed “we are doing this kind of action behind the scenes to keep resilience in our economy”.

Britain’s largest grocer, for its part, appears sanguine. Tesco chief executive Ken Murphy said the government was “doing the right thing” in preparing for the worst, calling the analysis a reasonable one and welcoming the Ensus reopening. But he stressed Tesco had “seen nothing at this point” in its own supply chain and that none of its suppliers had flagged problems with CO2 availability.

Mr Murphy, whose business has absorbed six years of rolling disruption, Covid, Brexit, energy shocks, inflation, said Tesco was “constantly working on various scenarios internally” and confident it could head off issues before they reached the shop floor. The bigger near-term headache, he suggested, has actually been the punishing weather across southern Spain and north Africa, though shoppers would be hard-pressed to spot the fallout because the grocer had been able to “flex” its sourcing.

A government spokesperson underlined the caveat that “reasonable worst-case scenarios are a planning tool used by experts and are not a prediction of future events”, adding that ministers were “continuing to work closely with business groups to tackle the impacts of events in the Middle East”.

For SME owners watching the tea leaves, the message from Whitehall is calibrated: keep calm, carry on, but don’t mistake the silence on the shelves for complacency in the corridors of power. With Hormuz still contested and the diplomatic track with Tehran far from delivering a durable settlement, the summer trading season is shaping up as a stress test for a supply chain that, as 2021’s last major CO2 crunch demonstrated, can turn from background utility to front-page crisis within days.

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Supermarket shelves face summer gaps as Iran war threatens UK’s CO2 lifeline

Bitcoin has no headquarters, no board of directors, and no founder willing to take credit. In the eighteen years since the white paper appeared under the name Satoshi Nakamoto, the question of who actually wrote it has attracted reporters, cryptographers, amateur sleuths, and seasoned investigators, all of whom have come up empty or close enough to it. That streak may be over.

Finding Satoshi is a feature documentary built around a four-year forensic investigation into Bitcoin’s origins and the identity of its creator. The documentary is directed by Matthew Miele and Tucker Tooley while the investigative reporting is led by William D. Cohan and Tyler Maroney. Cohan is a New York Times bestselling author and longtime Wall Street Journal contributor and Maroney is a private investigator at Quest Research & Investigations whose background spans some of the most complex cases in recent American legal history.

The film draws on original reporting, forensic analysis, and previously unseen evidence. More than twenty subjects spoke on record. The biggest differentiator, the investigation reaches a conclusion and the film confidently presents it.

Prior investigations into Satoshi’s identity have simply missed the mark. Finding Satoshi operates on different terms, framing the question not as lore or legend, but as a serious unanswered question with global cultural and financial consequences. As such, it demands a rigorous, evidence-based approach, which the film delivers on.

The stakes underlying that question are worth understanding. Bitcoin’s market capitalization has, at times, surpassed a trillion dollars, reshaping global conversations about money, power, and trust. The wallets widely attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto are estimated to hold over a million Bitcoin, placing whoever controls them among the wealthiest individuals in the world. Those early holdings have remained inactive, and Satoshi has not communicated publicly since 2011. The person behind it built something that transformed the financial landscape, then disappeared.

Understanding that person requires understanding what they built and why. Finding Satoshi traces Bitcoin not as a technology event, but as an intellectual and philosophical one. The film follows the full lineage of ideas that produced the Bitcoin white paper: the cypherpunk movement, the early development of digital privacy cryptography, the work of Phil Zimmermann on PGP encryption, and the predecessor technologies, including Hashcash and Bit Gold, that laid the conceptual groundwork. Bitcoin emerged from this specific tradition of belief, holding that individuals should be able to transact without interference, without surveillance, without an institution standing between them. That belief guided every choice Satoshi ever made, even the choice to vanish.

Through rare access to early builders, architects, and influential voices across the crypto ecosystem, Finding Satoshi emphasizes the human ideals behind the code as much as the history and science of it all. Simply put, Bitcoin is, rightfully, presented as an expression of philosophy and conviction rather than merely a technical artifact.

The range of voices interviewed reflects the film’s ambition and scope. Interviewees include Michael Saylor, chairman and co-founder of MicroStrategy, Fred Ehrsam, co-founder of Coinbase, Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum, Bill Gates, Gary Gensler, former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Kara Swisher, Gillian Tett of the Financial Times, Kathleen Puckett, the former FBI behavioral analyst who helped identify the Unabomber, and Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of C++.

Finding Satoshi does not leave the question open. At the end of the investigation, the film answers the question, identifying the person behind Bitcoin while respecting the gravity and implications of that claim. The resolution is treated as the culmination of evidence, earned through four years of sustained work rather than provocation or spectacle. Watch the film to find out.

Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, called it the most thoughtful treatment of the subject he had encountered and said he believed the film had reached the right answer. Jameson Lopp, a professional cypherpunk and Bitcoin security engineer, described it as the most expertly produced Bitcoin documentary to date. Nic Carter said most investigations into Satoshi’s identity had been careless or dismissive of the subject matter. This one, he said, is not.

The film is not only told by real investigative journalists, it is produced by real filmmakers: Tucker Tooley for Tucker Tooley Entertainment and Jordan Fried for Fried Films and Happy Walters. Tucker Tooley Entertainment’s projects have collectively earned more than $2.61 billion at the worldwide box office, spanning prestige dramas, major studio franchises, and global streaming hits. Recent productions include Lee Daniels’ The Deliverance, which debuted at number one on Netflix, and Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, which opened at number one at the U.S. box office in January 2025.

Finding Satoshi releases exclusively at FindingSatoshi.com. Coinbase users receive 24-hour early access beginning April 21, 2026. General release follows on April 22. There is no streaming platform, no theatrical window, and no alternative distribution point. The release model mirrors Bitcoin’s own architecture: direct from creator to audience, with no intermediaries standing between them.

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Finding Satoshi: The Code, the Mystery, and the People Who Spent Four Years Unraveling Both

For a long time, procurement software was sold as a productivity story. It promised fewer email chains, quicker approvals, cleaner supplier records and less paperwork for finance.

That pitch still exists, but it no longer captures the most interesting change in the category. The real shift is that procurement platforms are increasingly being used not just to digitize transactions, but to turn management rules into something people have to follow. Deloitte’s 2025 Global Chief Procurement Officer Survey describes procurement as being at a turning point, while a 2025 Harvard Business Review article, based on research with Digital Procurement World, says companies have ambitious plans to digitize procurement rapidly, especially through AI. Put simply, procurement software is being asked to do more than speed up routine tasks. It is being asked to support management discipline.

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Why Procurement Automation Is Really About Rules

Rachel Reeves has pledged to slash electricity bills by up to a quarter for more than 10,000 British manufacturers, in a move Whitehall hopes will shore up the country’s battered industrial base and blunt criticism that ministers have been slow to tackle the highest energy costs in the developed world.

Speaking from Washington, where she is attending the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund, the Chancellor confirmed on Thursday that the British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme (BICS) will be widened by 40 per cent, bringing an additional 3,000 firms under its umbrella. The scheme, first trailed in last year’s Modern Industrial Strategy, will exempt qualifying businesses from the indirect costs of three legacy green levies: the Renewables Obligation, Feed-in Tariffs and the Capacity Market.

Treasury officials put the value of the relief at roughly £35 to £40 per megawatt hour, or up to £600 million a year once the scheme takes effect in April 2027. Crucially, ministers insist that neither households nor businesses outside the scheme will see their bills rise as a consequence, with the cost being met through a mixture of changes within the energy system and Exchequer funding. Full details are to be set out in next year’s Budget.

In a concession to firms that have been lobbying hard for immediate relief, the Chancellor has also agreed to a one-off backdated payment in 2027, replicating the support manufacturers would have received had BICS been operational from April 2026. Exemptions on the Renewables Obligation and Feed-in Tariff levies will kick in from April 2027, with Capacity Market exemptions following that October.

Eligibility will run the length of the industrial spectrum, from sprawling steelworks and automotive plants to smaller recyclers, plastics producers, metal fabricators and pharmaceutical manufacturers. Aerospace companies, nuclear fuel processors and makers of cooling and ventilation equipment are also expected to qualify. Relief will be calculated site by site, based on the proportion of electricity used to manufacture eligible goods. Sites where less than 25 per cent of power is used for qualifying production will receive nothing; those between 25 and 50 per cent will get a half exemption, and any site above 50 per cent will benefit in full. Notably, the scheme draws no distinction between large corporates and SMEs, a point likely to be welcomed by smaller firms in the supply chain who have often found themselves shut out of previous industrial aid programmes.

Ms Reeves said the measure was part of the Government’s broader push to deliver “stability, keeping costs down, and boosting competitiveness” at a time when the Middle East crisis is once again rattling global energy markets. “This Government has the right plan for the economy: backing British industry, cutting electricity costs, and building a stronger, more resilient future,” she said, adding that the announcement would help manufacturers “compete, win and create good jobs across the country”.

The Business Secretary, Peter Kyle, framed the move as a response to the number one complaint he hears on factory visits. “When global instability puts businesses under pressure we’ll always do what’s needed to support them,” he said. “By extending the reach of BICS by 40 per cent, we’re acting decisively to tackle the number one issue that businesses face head-on.”

Business lobbies offered a qualified welcome. Rain Newton-Smith, chief executive of the CBI, said the Chancellor had shown she was “listening to firms grappling with volatility in global energy markets”, though she stressed that BICS should be viewed as “an important step” rather than “job done”. Lasting reform, she argued, would require stripping policy costs from electricity bills altogether, scaling up energy efficiency support and accelerating the rollout of renewables.

Mike Hawes, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, described the final design of BICS as “a major win” for the car industry, saying it sent “a clear and immediate signal that we are open for business and a prime destination for investment”. Shevaun Haviland, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, welcomed the backdating in particular, which the BCC had lobbied for.

Not everyone was satisfied, however. Stephen Phipson, chief executive of Make UK, delivered the sharpest riposte, warning that relief coming in 2027 was cold comfort to manufacturers renegotiating their contracts now. “Manufacturers are staring down the barrel of huge increases in their energy bills this month,” he said. “Many simply can’t wait until 2027 for relief.” The UK still labours under the highest industrial electricity costs in the developed world, he noted, and failing to act immediately risked “substantial job losses and further deindustrialisation of a sector vital for our national security and resilience”, a sector that supports 2.6 million skilled jobs.

Thursday’s announcement follows the £420 million boost delivered on 1 April through the British Industry Supercharger, which lifted the discount on electricity network charges for around 500 of the most energy-intensive firms from 60 to 90 per cent. Together with BICS, ministers argue the two schemes represent the most significant intervention in industrial energy pricing in a generation.

A second consultation on the regulatory changes needed to bring the scheme to life closes on 14 May, with legislation expected on the statute book by the autumn. A full review of BICS is pencilled in for 2030. The full list of eligible SIC and HS codes is due to be published on gov.uk later today.

Whether the package is enough to arrest the slow erosion of Britain’s industrial base, or whether, as Make UK fears, it simply arrives too late for firms already on the brink, will now become the defining question of the Chancellor’s industrial policy in the run-up to the Budget.

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Reeves unveils 25% electricity bill cut for 10,000 manufacturers as energy costs bite

British SMEs with transatlantic trade links have been warned they face a prolonged and uncertain wait before recovering tariffs wrongly collected by the United States, after Washington confirmed that its long-awaited online refund portal will handle only a fraction of outstanding claims when it goes live next week.

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is due to switch on its Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries system, known as CAPE, on 20 April. The first phase of the portal is expected to cope with roughly 63 per cent of refund requests. The remaining 37 per cent, however, have been left without so much as a provisional timetable, raising fresh concerns for cash-strapped importers that have been out of pocket for the best part of two years.

John Havard, a consultant at audit, tax and business advisory firm Blick Rothenberg, said the scale of the backlog was “extraordinary” and that the uncertainty surrounding the more complex tranche of claims would do little to reassure small and mid-sized businesses that had counted on a swift resolution once the US Supreme Court struck down the tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

“Many of these remaining cases are classed as final tariffs because the goods concerned will have entered the US more than a year before the refund claim is filed,” Havard said. “In such instances the claims procedure is going to be considerably more involved. We are unlikely to hear anything further until government officials next appear before the Court of International Trade to deliver their next mandated progress report.”

The numbers involved are eye-watering. Blick Rothenberg estimates that around 53 million unlawful tariff collection transactions were processed during the period in question, with the total refund bill potentially reaching $166 billion (£132 billion). More than 26,000 importers, collectively responsible for some $120 billion of IEEPA tariffs, have already registered with CBP to receive their money back electronically, following a White House directive requiring all federal payments to be made by electronic transfer.

The rules governing who can actually lodge a claim are tightly drawn. Only the official importer-of-record, or that party’s nominated US customs broker, will be entitled to submit a refund request. Businesses must also hold an active account with CBP’s Automated Commercial Environment before they can receive any money. Havard said there had been “considerable activity” in new account registrations since the Supreme Court’s ruling, suggesting that many firms had been caught flat-footed by the decision.

For those still waiting, there is at least one sliver of good news. In a previous statement to the US trade court, a government official confirmed that interest would be paid on all refunded amounts, offering modest compensation for what is shaping up to be a lengthy delay before cheques actually land.

For British exporters and importers with exposure to the US market, the practical advice is straightforward: ensure ACE registration is in order, confirm which party holds importer-of-record status on historic shipments, and brace for a drawn-out administrative process. The fundamentals of the refund entitlement are no longer in doubt; the mechanics of getting the money back, it seems, very much are.

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US tariff refund backlog leaves UK exporters in limbo as Washington scrambles to process billions in claims

Walt Disney is preparing to shed roughly 1,000 jobs in the first significant cost-cutting exercise under its new chief executive Josh D’Amaro, as the entertainment giant grapples with the shifting economics of Hollywood.

In an email to staff on Tuesday, seen by Reuters, D’Amaro told employees the company would be eliminating roles across several divisions, citing the need for a more nimble operation. “Given the fast-moving pace of our industries, this requires us to constantly assess how to foster a more agile and technologically-enabled workforce to meet tomorrow’s needs,” he wrote.

According to a person familiar with the matter, the redundancies will land across the recently reorganised marketing group, the studio and television businesses, sports network ESPN, products and technology, and a handful of corporate functions. Affected staff began receiving notifications earlier this week.

The cull marks D’Amaro’s first major structural intervention since succeeding Bob Iger in the corner office, and signals that the new chief is wasting little time in putting his own stamp on the House of Mouse. It also places Disney firmly alongside its peers: Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount Skydance have both taken the axe to headcount in recent months as the legacy Hollywood majors confront the same unforgiving combination of a softening linear television market, sluggish box office receipts and intensifying competition for viewers’ attention and wallets.

For Disney, it is the largest round of cuts since 2023, when the group announced some 7,000 redundancies as part of a sweeping $5.5bn (£4.2bn) cost-saving drive. That earlier exercise was launched under pressure from activist investor Nelson Peltz, who had been agitating for sharper financial discipline and a credible route to profitability for the group’s loss-making streaming arm.

With a global workforce of around 231,000 at the close of its last fiscal year in September, the latest reduction is proportionately modest, affecting well under half of one per cent of total headcount. But the symbolism is hard to miss. By targeting marketing, studio, television and ESPN in a single sweep, D’Amaro is effectively telling Wall Street that no corner of the empire is beyond scrutiny as management hunts for leaner operating structures and faster decision-making.

The job losses were first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

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Disney to axe 1,000 jobs as new chief D’Amaro moves to streamline empire

A Norwegian green-steel start-up has emerged as the preferred bidder for the former Liberty Steel operations in South Yorkshire, raising hopes of a long-awaited rescue for two plants that have become emblematic of Britain’s troubled heavy industry.

Blastr, a business backed by the Oslo-based renewables investor Vanir Green Industries, has entered a five-week period of exclusive negotiations with the Government’s official receiver to acquire Speciality Steel UK (SSUK), the company that owns Britain’s largest operating electric arc furnace in Rotherham and the downstream works at Stocksbridge.

The deal, if completed, would draw a line under one of the most drawn-out corporate collapses in recent British manufacturing history. SSUK has been in the hands of the official receiver since last August, when London’s High Court stripped ownership from the embattled metals magnate Sanjeev Gupta and declared the business “hopelessly insolvent”.

A successful sale would also hand ministers a rare piece of good news on the steel file. The Department for Business and Trade is already wrestling with the future of British Steel in Scunthorpe, the Chinese-owned blast furnace operation taken into state control roughly a year ago and now widely tipped for full nationalisation. Whitehall officials had privately floated the idea of bolting SSUK on to British Steel to create a single, state-shepherded speciality and long products champion, but sources suggest that option has fallen away under Blastr’s plans.

Confirmation of the exclusivity window came on Wednesday. “The official receiver will look to complete the sale at the earliest opportunity,” the Government said in a terse statement, with officials pointing to the tight five-week runway as a sign that negotiations are already well advanced.

For Blastr, the prize is considerable, but so is the challenge. The company does not yet own or operate a single working steel plant. Its flagship project is a greenfield site in Finland, where it plans to use green hydrogen to produce low-carbon iron and steel — a technology that remains commercially unproven at scale. The business is led by Mark Bula, a steel industry veteran who has held senior roles at large producers in India and the United States, and who is understood to be the driving force behind the push into the UK.

Industry watchers expect Blastr to require substantial external financing to take the Rotherham and Stocksbridge sites across the line. Even so, insiders argue that SSUK itself is a fundamentally viable business, long throttled by the chronic shortage of working capital that plagued the wider Liberty Steel group under Mr Gupta and left the plants unable to buy raw materials consistently. Gupta, whose globe-spanning GFG Alliance has contracted sharply in recent years as cash pressures mounted, fought to retain SSUK to the last, but was eventually overruled in court.

The Rotherham electric arc furnace is a particularly strategic asset. As Britain’s largest operational EAF, it is central to any credible vision of a lower-carbon domestic steel sector and produces the kind of speciality and engineering steels used by the aerospace, defence and oil and gas industries — customers the Government is keen to keep sourcing at home.

The response from the shop floor was cautiously welcoming. Charlotte Brumpton-Childs, a national secretary of the GMB union and a former steelworker herself, said Liberty Steel employees “have been at the sharp end of years of uncertainty at this point — this needs to be a deal that secures the long-term future of steelmaking in South Yorkshire”. She added that “any sale of SSUK must include due diligence which guarantees ongoing operations and stability of the sites”, a pointed reminder that unions will scrutinise Blastr’s funding package and operational plan closely before offering unqualified support.

For a region that has watched its steelmaking heritage erode over decades, and for a Government anxious to demonstrate that its industrial strategy can deliver more than just holding operations, the coming five weeks will be among the most consequential yet for the future of British speciality steel.

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Norwegian green-steel start-up closes in on rescue deal for former Liberty works in South Yorkshire

Rachel Reeves touched down in Washington on Tuesday carrying an unwelcome piece of luggage: the International Monetary Fund’s verdict that Britain is the biggest economic casualty of the Iran war among the world’s wealthiest nations.

The Fund’s spring forecast, delivered as the Chancellor arrived for the IMF and World Bank meetings, trimmed 0.5 percentage points from the UK’s 2026 growth projection, the steepest cut handed to any G7 economy since its January outlook. Inflation is now expected to push towards 4 per cent, while unemployment is heading for its highest rate in more than a decade.

For the small and medium-sized businesses that power two-thirds of the UK’s private sector workforce, the numbers translate into a grim set of pressures: softer consumer demand, stubborn cost inflation and a Treasury with precious little headroom to soften the blow.

The UK entered the conflict already on the back foot. Growth was sluggish well before the first missiles flew, with firms and households hunkering down ahead of last autumn’s Budget amid a fog of tax speculation that dampened activity across the high street and the boardroom alike.

Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the IMF’s economic counsellor, pointed to what he called a “shadow effect” lingering from that weaker momentum, a drag the Fund believes will bleed into next year’s performance. It is a diagnosis the Chancellor firmly rejects, arguing that Labour inherited a damaged economy from the Conservatives and has since set firmer foundations. Yet the data is unsympathetic: British households were already wrestling with the G7’s highest inflation rate before a single Iranian oil facility was struck.

The deeper problem is energy. The Iran conflict has delivered the sharpest shock to global supplies since the oil crises of the 1970s, and Britain’s gas-heavy power mix leaves it unusually exposed. Although much of the country’s gas is produced domestically, imported cargoes are being bought at sharply elevated wholesale prices, and because gas sets the marginal price for UK electricity, the pain travels quickly from the terminal to the meter.

“There is more of a pass through, if you want, of gas prices into wholesale prices of energy,” Gourinchas observed, noting that household bills were being cushioned only temporarily by existing government measures.

Reeves has used her Washington platform to push for de-escalation while sharpening her criticism of Donald Trump’s decision to prosecute the war on Iran. The political calculus is plain enough. With the public finances squeezed by elevated debt and stubbornly high borrowing costs, her fiscal room for manoeuvre is wafer-thin, and Labour is trailing in the polls as it approaches a testing set of May local elections.

Treasury insiders expect short-term, narrowly targeted relief measures rather than a broad spending splurge, precisely the prescription the IMF itself has endorsed. Anything more expansive risks spooking the gilt market and undoing the hard-won credibility Reeves has spent the past year trying to bank.

For Britain’s business community, the more consequential question is what happens once the immediate crisis fades. Insulating the country against the next energy shock will demand a far more aggressive push into domestic renewable generation, grid reinforcement and the kind of supply-side reforms that unlock private investment at scale.

SME owners hoping for relief will be watching two pressure points closely: whether the promised targeted support reaches smaller firms exposed to soaring input costs, and whether the long-promised industrial strategy finally delivers the cheaper, home-grown power that British manufacturers have been demanding for the best part of a decade.

Reeves returns from Washington with the IMF’s blessing for her fiscal restraint, but also with its unvarnished warning that, on current trajectory, Britain will spend 2026 at the bottom of the G7 league table. For a Chancellor already short on political capital, that is a verdict she can ill afford to let stand.

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Reeves flies into Washington as IMF brands Britain the G7’s biggest loser

The AA has become the first company to feel the sting of the Competition and Markets Authority’s new consumer enforcement powers, landing a £4.2 million fine and being ordered to return £760,000 to more than 80,000 learner drivers who were stung by so-called drip pricing.

The watchdog ruled that the motoring group’s two tuition arms, AA Driving School and BSM Driving School, failed to display the full cost of lessons upfront when customers booked online, a legal requirement under the regime that came into force last year. Instead, a compulsory £3 booking fee was quietly bolted on further down the purchase journey, leaving learners to discover the true price only once they were deep into the checkout process.

Sarah Cardell, the CMA’s chief executive, was unambiguous in her verdict. “If a fee is mandatory, the law is clear: it must be included in the price from the very start, not added at checkout, so consumers always know what they need to pay,” she said.

The enforcement action is the first of its kind and sends an unmistakable signal to British business that the regulator is prepared to wield its sharpened teeth. Since April 2025, the CMA has been able to investigate and penalise breaches of consumer protection law directly, without recourse to the courts, a shift that had been widely flagged as a potential game-changer for how SMEs and large corporates alike present pricing online.

Affected customers will not need to lift a finger. The two driving schools will write to those who qualify and refund them automatically, either to the card originally used or, failing that, by cheque. Individual payouts will depend on how many lesson packages each learner purchased, with the average repayment coming in at roughly £9.

A spokesperson for AA Driving School sought to draw a line under the episode. “Although the £3 booking fee was made clear to customers prior to their purchase, we acknowledge it should have also been displayed at the start of the online booking journey,” they said. “Having listened to the regulator, we made immediate changes to our website to make the £3 booking fee more prominent. We are now refunding all relevant customers. Whilst we are disappointed with the outcome of the investigation, we have fully co-operated with the CMA throughout and would emphasise that protecting consumer rights has been central to our business for more than 120 years.”

Drip pricing, the practice of advertising a headline figure and then layering on mandatory extras at the point of sale, has long been a bugbear of consumer champions. A 2023 study by the Department for Business and Trade found that nearly half of online traders were using the tactic, stripping an estimated £3.5 billion a year out of consumers’ pockets. For small and medium-sized businesses watching the AA case unfold, the lesson is straightforward: what might once have passed as a marketing nicety is now a regulatory tripwire.

The ruling also arrives at a delicate moment for the AA itself. Advisers were reportedly appointed late last year to examine either a sale or a stock market flotation of the group, five years on from its £219 million take-private deal struck by Warburg Pincus and TowerBrook Capital Partners. A public rebuke from the CMA is hardly the shop-window polish its owners will have been hoping for as they court potential buyers.

The timing is equally awkward for Britain’s hard-pressed learner drivers. Department for Transport figures show that the share of 17 to 20-year-olds in England holding a full driving licence has tumbled from 37 per cent in 2018 to 29 per cent in 2024, with the cost of tuition cited as the single biggest deterrent to getting behind the wheel. Learners who do press ahead now face an average waiting time of 22 weeks to sit their practical test, compared with roughly five weeks in February 2020, before the pandemic upended the system.

For an industry already struggling with affordability and access, being publicly pulled up for opaque pricing is an unwelcome spotlight. For the wider business community, the message from Canary Wharf is rather blunter: the CMA has found its cheque book, and it is no longer afraid to use it.

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AA ordered to refund 80,000 learner drivers in landmark ‘drip pricing’ ruling