Happy Friday! We're marching into March and each Friday we'll bring you our picks from what we've published each week as The Lead's week that was digest for the week ending Friday 14 March 2025.
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We start with the disability benefit cuts being eyed up by Labour, as Rachel Charlton-Dailey speaks to campaign groups and individuals potentially affected. The focus is on the PIP (Personal Independence Payment) which makes up the bulk of disability payments.
Zoë Grünewald had exclusive research from HopeNotHate into the state of the far-right in the UK, and beyond. It makes for difficult reading.
There were also strong reads from Zoe on the fracturing and infighting within the Reform party and the cynical cutting of the civil service at a time when the country should be expanding and investing in major projects to help shift the economy.
As mentioned, Reform, and the first of our two long-reads this week came from Fred Garrett-Stanley as he visited Great Yarmouth to see what the opinion is of Rupert Lowe amongst other issues. The seaside town went light blue in the general election last summer.
Our second long read came from Adam Bychawski and is a difficult read about how Ahmed Adan was wrongly imprisoned for 13 years. He now faces a fight for compensation.
And our latest edition of The Lead Untangles looks in-depth at the arguments for and against Manchester United's new stadium and the government's involvement in supporting it.
In The Lead North this past week:
The Lancashire Lead explored the future of fine-dining restaurant and hotel Northcote Hall as well as revealing the sacking of a Lancashire Police officer for sexual assault accusations
In The Blackpool Lead the troubling news of contaminated heroin being suspected to be behind three deaths in the town and how a tougher approach to food hygiene standards is being taken across the hospitality scene
And over at The Teesside Lead we revealed the company behind Teesside Airport made a loss of £13.4m and Leigh Jones explored the comments from Metro Mayor Ben Houchen that the 'North is owed Reparations'.
At The Calderdale Lead then we drilled into the future of The Shay Stadium as the council look set to offload it and there's been strong reactions within the Calder Valley to talk of benefit cutbacks
And finally, in The Southport Lead, we heard from the Imam of Southport mosque about the tragic and terrifying events of last summer and how a council-owned hospitality firm is £1.5m in the red
Some The Lead parish notices too:
- Natalie Morris returned from maternity leave this week (whoop!) to join our National Editors team. Her piece on Malcolm X's anniversary is well worth a read.
- We're on Bluesky, as well as X, so do give us a follow to be notified of new stories going live. Our piece about why we're staying on X, despite everything, is a good read.
- If you're a freelance journalist, or have a story tip, our pitching guidelines have all been updated and are over on our Substack.
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