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Healey is playing with fire if he risks a timid Budget

I suspect the Chancellor will not be giving a clear picture this coming Wednesday Daily Telegraph   For people of a certain age, the sight this Wednesday of a Labour chancellor by the name of Healey delivering the Budget will stir uncomfortable memories of what happened 50 years ago. In 1976, the Budget occurred in April, but by the autumn, people were seeing rather a lot of the then chancellor, one Denis Healey . The economy was in crisis. There was panic selling of the pound. Meanwhile, although inflation had fallen from its peak of more than 24pc the year before, it still stood at 14pc. In October interest rates hit 15pc, while the yields on 20-year gilts reached 16pc. In late September that year, Denis Healey applied to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a loan of $3.9bn ( £2.3bn). In December, he signed a letter of intent pledging to initiate large cuts in government spending to secure the loan. The detail about the state of the economy was then, of course, different f...
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Britain does not need new anti-racism powers. They would be abused

  Racist councillors have no place in politics, but proposed suspension rules could be weaponised to silence legitimate criticism of extremism Daily Telegraph 23/10/26 “Let’s change the law,” said the electronic bulletin from the divisive group Mend (Muslim Engagement and Development Group). This was in relation to the disgraceful racist comments by Reform councillors in Solihull, recently exposed by ITV. The e-bulletin from Mend is intended to get individuals from Muslim communities to lobby their local MPs to push for the development and approval of powers for local authorities so that they could suspend and exclude councillors in such instances in the future. Depressingly, pressure tactics, online mobilisation and anxiety-inducing language have become the norm in our polarised political environment. This is doing nothing to build social cohesion and commonality amongst our communities. Mend has a notorious past. Government officials, security watchdogs, and political think-tank...
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Burnham has backed himself into a corner over public control of Thames Water

  The Prime Minister’s rhetoric has collided with the reality that nationalisation is unaffordable Daily Telegraph 23/10/26 The quest to save Thames Water is the saga with no end. Two and a half years after shareholders abandoned the company, its future is no more certain. On the contrary, it is even more of a financial basket-case now than it was then, having been kept afloat by a steady drip-feed of emergency loans at a business that was already drowning in debt . Additional borrowings since March 2024 stand at roughly £3bn with another £2.4bn on the cards, just to see it through the next 12 months. That assumes, of course, that a disparate creditor base can agree on a deal – far from a foregone conclusion despite the high stakes. The arrival of Andy Burnham in No 10 would bring an end to this financial purgatory, we were told. Under Showtime Andy a privately led, debt-heavy industry ownership model that prioritised shareholder enrichment rather than customer care would be consig...
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The outrage over the Reform racism scandal is deeply hypocritical

  It took a year for undercover journalists to find racists in Reform, while the Greens spout their anti-Semitism openly. Spiked 21/10/26 So that’s it then, is it? In Brighton last month, a mainstream political party declared that ‘Zionism is racism’ and casually denied the right of the world’s only Jewish nation to exist. But now attention has shifted. The news cycle has moved on. The anti-Semitism in the Green Party of England and Wales is, it seems, so last month. Forget the erstwhile eco-warriors obsessing over Jews. Look over here instead: there are some racists in Reform UK. The sighs of relief emanating from major news corporations when it emerged that undercover reporters from ITV had footage showing some members of Reform making vile, racist remarks must have reverberated across London. Journalists could relax. Order had been restored. No longer would commentators have to confront the horrendous implications of the Green Party’s support for ‘the establishment of a single d...
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The mob is coming to Britain, and the police are woefully unprepared

  Unrest is spreading across Europe from France to Spain and Albania, yet the UK has no dedicated riot squad Daily Telegraph 21/10/26 Philip Johnston Show biography Published 21 October 2026 6:00am BST 76 Gift this article free Add us as preferred source France is ablaze and we could be next , say the gloomsters; and they may be right. Unrest seems to be spreading across Europe with riots in Milan, Albania, Spain and Portugal in recent weeks. This may all be coincidental or a sign of a deeper political malaise that is expressing itself in violent behaviour. If the politicians won’t listen, the French protesters say, what choice do we have? It is also the reason given by masked men who have turned up at south-coast ports when asylum seekers arrive. Advertisement So if the mobs take to the streets here can the authorities cope? The short answer is no. One reason why the French have a fundamentally different police set-up to Britain’s is their Gallic penchant for airing their grievanc...
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