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Labour is facing a civil war over net zero

Louise Haigh and Jonathan Reynolds are bound to butt heads over the green transition 18 November 2024 - Daily Telegraph Link It was Europe for the Conservatives for much of the last twenty years, reform of public services and the Iraq war for the Blair government, and Europe again during the Thatcher years. Every governing party starts fighting amongst themselves eventually. And this government won’t be any different.  With looming job losses from Ed Miliband’s ideological crusade to make Britain the global leader on climate change it is already clear that a civil war within Labour is about to break out over net zero – and the battle will be a vicious one.  At a crunch meeting later this week, the car-makers will tell the Transport Secretary Louise Haigh and the Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds that thousands of jobs in the industry will soon be lost because of the unrealistic targets to sell Electric Vehicles.  The companies already have to make sure that 22 per cent of the vehicl
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Reeves’s wealth raid backfires as stamp duty revenue drops £140m

Luxury property sales slumped amid uncertainty around tax changes, analysis reveals 18 November 2024 - Daily Telegraph  Link Uncertainty ahead of Labour’s Budget sparked a slump in luxury property sales – costing the Treasury £140m in lost stamp duty, analysis shows. Nervousness around how the Chancellor would target wealth deterred investors from buying homes worth more than £5m, experts said. Research by Knight Frank, the estate agents, found there was a shortfall of 107 property sales worth between £5m and £10m between March and October. For properties worth over £10m, there was a shortfall of 35 sales. The loss equated to £140.3m in stamp duty revenue, Knight Frank said. It comes as Labour faces criticism for its failure to stamp out rumours ahead of the October 30 Budget around what could have been included. Reports ahead of the event speculated that Rachel Reeves was about to impose a number of drastic changes to capital gains tax, stamp duty and the non-dom regime. She also came
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Prosecutors have failed to act after an assault on police so we are doing their job for them

Despite compelling CCTV footage, the Crown Prosecution Service has not charged anyone over Manchester Airport attack 17 November 2024- Daily Telegraph  Link Policing by consent has always been central to Britain’s model of policing, since the days of Robert Peel, the founder of the Metropolitan Police. Critically this means having public approval and support, trust in officers, as well as community-based relationships. The unspoken part of this contract is that it relies on officers serving by consent, putting themselves in harm’s way, usually unarmed. Officers trust that they will be fairly protected and looked after when trouble occurs. They know they will be held accountable and must hold themselves to a higher standard of behaviour and performance. Everything breaks down if that trust is broken and officers fear they will be abandoned, or used as cannon fodder to suit the political motive of their bosses, other authorities and mainstream politicians. Experienced officers will leave
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Is dog-walking racist?

The Welsh government has been on a crusade to rid Wales of racism, largely the imaginary kind. spiked -  15th November 2024 Link In the eyes of every Welsh public body, quango and activist group, Wales is apparently dominated by ever-more insidious forms of racism. Since 2020 and the rise of Black Lives Matter, the Welsh state has been engaged in a farcical attempt to find racism in every nook and cranny, encouraging various third-sector organisations to join in the hunt. In August, it emerged that the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals now views the names of various Welsh buildings as a potential source of racial enmity. Allegedly, pubs with names like The Buccaneer Inn – due to pirates’ liminal association with the slave trade – ‘represent a racist legacy’. Now a new potential source of discrimination has been identified. Namely, dog-walking. This, at least, is the implication made by a report by environmental group Climate Cymru BAME, submitted to the Welsh
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This cruel Government is the nastiest since the 1970s

Starmer’s ministers are imbued with the Marxist poison they inculcated at Britain’s fetid universities The spiteful remark of John McTernan, a former Labour adviser, about “doing to the farmers what Margaret Thatcher did to the miners” reflects an unwelcome change in the character of the Left.  The remark has brought out into the open what some of us suspected already: that a significant part of the Left is more driven by hatred of the rich than by love and concern for the poor. McTernan’s remark included nothing about any public benefit. It was all about hurting family farms. It reflected a desire for vengeance. The imposition of VAT on private school fees was this attitude in action. The tax will raise less than first thought. The Labour Party appears not to have thought in advance about the extra cost to the state of providing schooling for those children priced out of private education. It did not care that the overall level of education in this country would be harmed by the tax.
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Heartless Rachel Reeves put more spite than thought into her Budget

 The Chancellor’s pig-headedness will ruin her party – and her country Source - Daily Telegraph  Link As the Budget continues to cast its horrific spell over the UK economy, it is becoming increasingly clear Chancellor Rachel Reeves did not put enough thought and effort into it. If she insists she did her due diligence, then she stands accused of putting ideology before economic reality. The real danger is that thanks to Ms Reeves’s decisions, the wealth-creating private sector will not generate the economic growth that is required to generate the tax revenues the Government is relying upon – forcing the Chancellor to come back with more plans for higher taxes and greater borrowing to cover the shortfall. Either she did her homework but came up with the wrong answers – or she listened to all the wrong people and is stubbornly refusing to make it right.  Neither is a good look and must surely drive support away from the Government – which polling already suggests is happening. The most
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The Kafkaesque thoughtpolicing of Allison Pearson

 Now even newspaper columnists are being investigated for their tweets. Spiked 13th November 2024 Link As she was getting ready for a Remembrance Sunday memorial last weekend, Telegraph journalist Allison Pearson heard a knock at her door. Two policemen had turned up, she claims in an article published last night, to accuse her of a ‘non-crime hate incident’ – a tool used by police to record accusations of ‘hateful’ speech, even when no law has been broken. When she asked what tweet this was regarding, and who had made the complaint against her, she was rebuffed by the officers, according to her account. A newspaper columnist being visited by the police, over tweets? It sounds like the stuff of dystopian fiction. And yet it is all too real. Following Pearson’s revelations last night, Essex Police have confirmed that they are investigating her under the Public Order Act, which criminalises material ‘likely or intended to cause racial hatred’. It seems that this is being treated as a cri
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