Fear not, Zack Polanski’s seismic by-election success will ultimately spell his downfall Daily Telegraph 04/03/26 What a rollercoaster week it’s been for supporters of the Green Party. One day they win a historic by-election. Then, a day later, the Supreme Leader of Iran is killed. From ecstasy to despair, in one fell swoop. The poor things will have been weeping into their ginger kombucha. Still, now they’re on the up again because a seismic YouGov poll has shown that they’ve overtaken both Labour and the Tories – with only Reform narrowly ahead. Even more astoundingly, the poll reveals that the Greens are the most popular party with all age groups under 50. At this rate, they must be dreaming of winning not just by-elections – but the next general election, too. Unfortunately for the Greens, however, this extraordinary upturn in their fortunes does have a downside. Which is that, at very long last, they’re starting to come under some actual scrutiny. And they clearly don’t like i...
Delivering a Spring Statement is preferable to announcing policy for flip-flopping Labour Daily Telegraph 03/03/26 The Commons was mostly empty for the Foreign Office Questions that preceded the Spring Statement. Quite understandable. Once all the gangsters, tax exiles and make-up influencers have been repatriated from Dubai, our parliamentarians can do little to affect World War Three. Instead, it makes sense for them to focus on where they can make a real difference: shouting at each other across the benches. And there are few better opportunities for guffawing than the Spring Statement, perhaps the most pointless parliamentary session of the year. So they steadily filed in, enduring the tedium of questions on irrelevant side issues such as Chagos, Hong Kong and the multi-state war Britain had just joined in the Middle East, while they waited for the main event. As the Budget’s little brother no longer includes anachronistic fripperies such as “policy”, it is purely a homework-...