Skip to main content

Posts

Farage's petrol station

When does a political stunt become a gimmick? Not today. Daily Telegraph politics 10/03/26 Even Reform’s detractors must give credit where credit is due: the party managed to pull off cut-price fuel at a petrol station in deepest Derbyshire, as lorries rolled past tooting their horns approvingly. Ed Miliband’s Stone or Kinnock: The Movie this was not. Alongside Robert Jenrick, one of Nigel Farage’s newest MPs, the Reform leader filled punters’ tanks with the “cheapest” fuel in Britain, in an attempt to give voters a flavour of what life under the party might feel like. “Reform rates,” Jenrick quipped, as he manually adjusted the prices on a totem sign. Farage and Jenrick pictured today at petrol station in Derbyshire Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick have reduced petrol prices at the Newhaven services, near Buxton Beneath the theatre was some policy: the party has promised to reinstate the 5p cut to fuel duty in its first budget, paid for using £12bn savings from the green energy ...
Post a Comment
Read more
Recent posts

Rachel Reeves says she’s for ‘working people’. Her actions suggest otherwise

Labour has raised taxes to a near post-war high – its language on raising living standards is just rhetoric Daily Telegraph 04/03/26 Listening to the Chancellor’s Spring Statement in isolation would give the impression that the Government is running an efficient economy with a realistic promise of improving living standards. Unfortunately, I don’t think that this was likely to be the case for most of us, even before we had the uncertainty imposed on us by international events. Improved living standards rely principally on the ability of the Government to do so through economic growth. This in turn relies on greater business investment and improved productivity. On taking office, Rachel Reeves declared that economic growth was to be her priority, but it has not worked out that way. A combination of the increase in employers’ National Insurance, business rates, and changes to the minimum wage has placed a heavy burden on business and reduced their incentive to take on addition...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Greens are finally coming under serious scrutiny – and they’re rattled

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

U-turns have become a reflex for Reeves

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-...
Post a Comment
Read more

As the liberal order dies, Starmer’s Britain is doubling down on its stupidity

The PM is unable to respond to the implosion of the global status quo other than by incanting Leftist platitudes Daily Telegraph 04/03/26 What happened to us? How did we fall so far, so quickly? Where is our moral compass, our self-respect, our pride? Sir Keir Starmer’s Britain stands alone, but for the most deplorable of reasons, unwilling to fight back when our bases are hit by drones, incapable of deploying what is left of the Royal Navy, unable to respond to the implosion of the old world order other than by incanting Leftist platitudes, debilitated, humiliated and disgraced. America and Israel are waging a moral and just war to punish an evil, millenarianist, Iranian Islamist regime that kills and maims, and yet Britain is a no-show, pathetically asserting the war violates “international law”, sabotaging Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s heroic efforts at every opportunity. Starmer’s non-response to the attack on our base in Cyprus by Iranian proxies is an act of such br...
Post a Comment
Read more

Unemployment set to hit 10-year high

Chancellor to declare she has ‘right economic plan’ in Spring Statement as joblessness figure expected to near 1.9 million Daily Telegraph 02 March 2026 9:43pm GMT Unemployment is set to hit a 10-year high, the public finance watchdog will forecast on Tuesday, as Rachel Reeves declares she has the “right economic plan” for Britain. The Chancellor will use her Spring Statement to the House of Commons to highlight reductions in borrowing costs, inflation and interest rates. However, estimates from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the independent forecaster, will reveal a rise in joblessness as Ms Reeves’s tax raids on employers bite. Unemployment had been forecast to hit 1.8 million in 2026, according to the OBR’s predictions in November 2025. But the watchdog is now set to revise its figures for 2026 to closer to 1.9 million looking for work – the highest jobless rate since 2015. It comes after the Treasury increased the National Insurance (NI) rate paid by employ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Starmer is angering all sides with his dithering on Iran. He must act

We didn’t start this, but the UK must make some effort to finish it rather than just wringing our hands Daily Telegraph Ben Wallace 02 March 2026 7:29pm GMT I remember sitting in the president of Iran’s outer office in 2006. I had gone with Jack Straw, Lord Lamont and Jeremy Corbyn on a parliamentary visit. All of us had different positions on the regime, and a more unlikely foursome you couldn’t imagine. The regime showed us no favours. In fact, they delighted in trying to trap us into embarrassing situations while they lectured us on the British Empire and James Bond. In those days, there was a genuine tension between the Iranian hardliners and the so-called reformers. There was even a semblance of an internal challenge to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Sadly, all that has changed over the years. The hardliners strengthened their grasp. Despite the image of the mullahs being in charge, it has become ever more apparent that the IRGC, which was loyal only to the ...
Post a Comment
Read more