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Trump has ended the Chagos deal, regardless of what Starmer says

The US president was right to kibosh the PM’s sell-out treaty and now it looks dead in the water Daily Telegraph 22/01/26 They laughed at me when I said Chagos would become one of the major issues of this Parliament, but it has now appeared in Keir Starmer’s rear-view mirror like a looming juggernaut. It’s an issue that I believe could yet bulldoze the Government. I put down questions after the election to the newly burnished Starmerite lieutenants, enquiring as to their intentions for the British Indian Ocean territory. Their answers were characteristically deceptive – and in the year and a half since, ministers have continued to act both incompetently and disingenuously. And now their entire Chagos plan has exploded like a bunker buster dropped on Labour HQ. The Prime Minister only has himself to blame. He ignored the many opponents to this bizarre deal, even as their voices grew louder – whether in the public, in the media, or in the House of Lords – where all opposition parti...

Let the people vote - EMail from Zia Yusuf

Dear Robin, As you know, Keir Starmer is colluding with Labour and Tory councils to attempt to cancel local elections for millions of British people in May. Again. I am pleased to inform you that yesterday, lawyers instructed by our party leader Nigel Farage, on behalf of Reform UK, successfully cleared the path in the High Court for our legal challenge to stop them from denying democracy again. Our Judicial Review will be heard on the 19th and 20th of February. The judge gave the government until the 16th of February to file their defence. We have also served legal papers to all 63 councils in question. As you know, sadly, we have a justice system in this country that has become politicised. However, our lawyers are first-class, and the law is on our side. We have a realistic prospect of victory. Our message to Keir Starmer and the Tory and Labour councillors trampling democracy is clear: we are coming for you in the High Court. Our message to you is that we will do ever...

Tory Wets are in Cloud Cuckoo Land

Matt Goodwin 20/01/26 The Tory Wets - ‘One Nation’ liberal conservatives who have dominated the Tory party for much of the last thirty years - are in Cloud Cuckoo Land. That is the only logical conclusion one can reach based on how they are currently responding to the defection of Robert Jenrick, Andrew Rosindell, and many other right-wing Tories to Nigel Farage and Reform. Writing in The Times this week, Matthew Parris, the standard bearer of the Tory Wets who more than a decade ago famously urged the Tory party to “give up” on white working-class people from the likes of Clacton because they were “going nowhere”, argues this: “For [Kemi] Badenoch it’s time, now the nutters have gone, for an olive branch towards men like Kenneth Clarke, Michael Heseltine, David Gauke, Dominic Grieve”. Other Tory Wets have been similarly giddy with delight at ejecting their right-wing challengers, joining the growing calls to return the Tory party to its Cameroon past. In recent days, The Times...

Labour's Foreign Policy begins to fray

Good afternoon. As Donald Trump lets his feelings about the Chagos “deal” be known, what role might Nigel Farage have played in this bolt-from-the-blue intervention? And as the Chinese embassy – similarly unpopular with the US president – is given the go-ahead, for how much longer can Keir Starmer walk the diplomatic tightrope? Annabel Denham, Senior Political Commentator. Daily Telegraph Donald Trump has just made a blow-your-socks-off intervention on Chagos. His Truth Social post, dripping with sarcasm about “brilliant” Britain, was a rebuke – some would say long overdue – to Keir Starmer’s decision to surrender the archipelago. Foreign policy is drifting into turbulent waters, and Starmer is not going to be able to chart a course with “calm discussion” alone. The Prime Minister had justified the deal on the grounds our allies supported it. Now the US president has described it as an act of “GREAT STUPIDITY”. If America is the rock, the hard place is the Starmeresque worldview ...

Starmer has acted in haste

Daily Telegraph Newsletter 19/01/26 So much for “every minute we focus on anything other than cost of living is a wasted minute”. Once again, Sir Keir Starmer began the week intending to turn our attention to the economy; once again, the Orange One has torpedoed those plans. Donald Trump’s latest threat – a blanket 10 per cent tariff on imports – is not just dominating headlines but would worsen living standards here in Britain. The US is our single largest export market at country level, and economists warn that tariffs on such a scale could tip us into recession. As opposed to the 1 per cent growth we've been enjoying over the past 10 to 15 years – itself largely the effect of higher immigration rather than productivity (the only sustainable basis for rising living standards). Britain has no buffer; external shocks land harder here than they would in a healthier or more productive economy – notwithstanding Rachel Reeves’s implausible insistence, citing the IMF's latest ou...

Ignore the Tory talking points: Jenrick’s defection is Kemi’s biggest blunder yet

Nigel Farage stands to benefit from having a talented politician with cabinet experience Daily Telegraph 18/02/26 It’s hard to know which Tory claim of the last week is more ridiculous. The one suggesting Kemi Badenoch handled Robert Jenrick’s defection to Reform well. Or the one suggesting the Tories are better off without him. We’ve heard both absurdities in the last week, when the reality is Nigel Farage has been handed yet another nail to hammer into the Tory coffin. Let’s take the first one first: that Badenoch did a great job in firing him. It’s true that taking fast and decisive action – with a rapid briefing on her own terms – was a technical success. But too many people are missing a more fundamental point: Jenrick partly left because she consistently treated him badly after her leadership win. Jenrick ran a decent, energetic leadership campaign and had extensive experience in Government, not least as a cabinet minister. Even though Tory ranks were hugely depleted after...