Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

The Prime Minister’s looming surrender on welfare guarantees a kamikaze Budget this autumn 25 June 2025  Daily Telegraph  Link Don’t believe the denials, the hubristic promises to fight on, the chest-thumping from deep down in the Number Ten bunker. It’s all over for Sir Keir Starmer, a hollow husk of a Prime Minister stripped of his last vestiges of authority and credibility. His final, doomed showdown with his MPs over his plan to trim incapacity benefits will only expose his impotence and lack of strategic nous. His premiership, not even a year old, is already on borrowed time. He will have to surrender again, or suffer total humiliation. He is now beholden to Labour MPs, and survives only on their say-so. There are, for the first time, whispers that he could be ousted as early as after the May local elections. I’m not so sure: I suspect that Rachel Reeves, his beleaguered Chancellor, is likely to be sacrificed first. She has certainly failed disastrously. She convinced her...

Barrow-in-Furness is a perfect microcosm of events taking place up and down the country 24 June 2025  Daily Telegraph  Link When property developers applied for permission to turn a former hotel into a “house in multiple occupation”, they claimed it was to accommodate nurses. According to the planning application, the occupants would “predominantly” be NHS staff who would “contribute to the local economy”. But instead of being filled with hard-working staff from the nearest hospital, the 17-bedroom property was swiftly packed with new arrivals. Far from breathing new life into a downtrodden area, it became yet another blight – and a new source of anxiety for local women. Mothers and daughters in Barrow-in-Furness have every reason to be fearful. Such is the concern for the safety of female staff working in other migrant hotels in the town that they are said to have been issued with rape alarms. When a concerned resident used freedom of information legislation to find out what ...

Trump hails pause in fighting after Tehran targets American base in Qatar Daily Telegraph  24 June 2025  Link Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between Iran and Israel hours after Tehran launched a retaliatory attack on an overseas US air base. The US president said the truce would take effect around 5am BST (midnight EDT) and congratulated both countries on “having the Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence” to end their war after more than a week of conflict. Earlier on Monday Iran fired missiles at America’s largest and most fortified military base in the Middle East in retaliation for attacks on its nuclear programme. Al Udeid, which also hosts RAF planes, came under fire from a barrage of ballistic missiles in an attack that forced the airspace to close abruptly across the Gulf. Explosions were heard over the financial hub of Doha, Qatar’s capital, as defence systems worked to intercept the missiles close to the American military base. Iran also said it had attacked the smal...

In backing ‘assisted dying’, MPs have given the state a licence to kill. 20th June 2025 Spiked Link Politicians twist words and abuse language to ‘make lies sound truthful and murder respectable’, said George Orwell. That has never rang more true than it does today. In the House of Commons this afternoon, MPs spoke in deceitful tongues to make suicide sound attractive and death sound liberal. They voted to legalise what they call ‘assisted dying’, but which I think we should call state-sanctioned suicide. For strip away all the linguistic trickery about a ‘right to die’ and what we are left with is a new regime of state-appointed death merchants who will have the power not only to propose self-destruction to the ill, but to facilitate it, too. Make no mistake, this is a dark day for Britain. MPs voted by 314 to 291 to pass the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. This is the private members’ bill, spearheaded by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, that will empower the state to aid and abet...

By attacking Tehran’s nuclear sites, the US president has taken a huge risk but sent an important message to America’s enemies Daily Telegraph  22 June 2025  Link Donald Trump was elected on a promise to avoid foreign wars and international entanglements. On Saturday night, he sent B-2 bombers into action to obliterate what was left of Iran’s nuclear programme, using the sort of deep-penetrating weapons that Israel lacks. Insiders said this was not a departure from his campaign pledge but a reminder that American power is based on the idea of “peace through strength”. He is still a leader who puts deals ahead of military action, said one former official speaking before the strikes, but one who recognises that the best deals come when adversaries are negotiating from a weakened position. He had sent a signal of his intent on Thursday. “Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my ...

The non-dom U-turn may be the most pointlessly self-defeating errors of this government 17 June 2025 7:57pm BST Daily Telegraph  Link Against some stiff competition, the decision to target non-doms for an inheritance tax raid on their global assets could go down as one of the most pointlessly self-defeating errors of this Labour Government. Scrapping non-doms status in favour of a residence-based regime brought all assets into the scope of inheritance tax after a four-year grace period, with HMRC’s claim lasting for up to 10 years after someone leaves Britain. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these reforms have triggered a wave of high-profile departures, with Bloomberg noting a surge in company directors moving abroad concurrent with the changes and advisors claiming a record exodus of millionaires. Having killed the goose that laid the golden egg, Chancellor Rachel Reeves now appears to be developing an interest in resuscitation, with speculation that the Government may now U-turn on the ...