Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

While European leaders schmooze a brutal Russian regime, EU citizens must pay the price for a grossly incompetent vaccination programme Source - Daily Telegraph 31/03/21 Link Dangerous reactions emanating from chemical substances created in Russian laboratories are hardly unknown in Europe. Not only is the case of the Salisbury poisonings fresh in the memory, but it took German medical expertise to nurse Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, back to health after last year’s unfortunate incident of the Novichok in the underpants. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, led European condemnation of that assassination attempt, accusing Vladimir Putin’s regime of “attempted murder by poisoning” and “an attack on the fundamental values and basic rights to which we are committed”. Not long ago, EU leaders were also taking a tough line against the notion of relying on Putin for Covid vaccinations. In November, when bad-boy Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán first did a deal to import the un

Source - Daily Telegraph Economic intelligence news E mail 30/03/21 Link By   Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and  Jeremy Warner How the tables turn. Less than a year ago, the UK was Europe’s pariah. Having only recently Brexited, Britain’s early handling of the pandemic looked shambolic and incompetent; the grim hat trick of the worst per capita death rates among major economies, the biggest economic contraction, and the greatest hit to the public finances was fast looming into sight. It was a humiliating spectacle, leading me in one column to depict the country as a “ship of fools”, after Plato’s Republic in which the only qualification for captaincy was to have no knowledge of the seas whatsoever. One disaster seemed to follow another. But behind the scenes, the Government was actually getting one thing spectacularly right, and as it turns out, it is proving the most important of them – vaccine strategy. That success is now starting to pay dividends in what looks to be a fast recovering eco

Starmer's missteps have plunged Labour's poll performance, leaving him with little to show for his year as leader. Source - Daily Telegraph - 29/03/21 Link PATRICK O'FLYNN Sometimes in politics it is convenient for a leader to retain an under-performing colleague in a senior position to act as a lightning conductor for criticism when things don’t go well. One thinks, for instance, of Boris Johnson’s decision to keep Gavin Williamson as Education Secretary during last summer’s debacle over exams - a fiasco that was caused at least in part by the PM’s own dithering and late decision-making. It worked a treat, with Williamson being compared to Frank Spencer of Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ’Em fame and zero headlines about bungling Boris. But when the whole team is floundering then the steely gaze of the electorate inevitably alights upon the captain - and that is what is happening to Keir Starmer right now. Starmer’s inner-circle briefing that he will shortly sack the beleaguered shad

Source - The Spectator - 26/03/21   Link When he was acquitted on sexual assault charges at the High Court in Edinburgh last March, I predicted: ‘Alex Salmond is back from the dead and he will have his revenge’. The past 12 months has seen a relentless onslaught against Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP establishment and anyone who thought that would culminate in the equivocal findings of two inquiries (one clearing Sturgeon, the other damning her) will have been disabused this afternoon. Salmond has announced his return to politics in time for May’s Holyrood elections, under the banner of an outfit calling itself the Alba Party. The party will stand only on the regional list and is pitching itself as an effort to help secure an ‘independence supermajority’. Salmond himself will stand in the North East of Scotland. The SNP didn’t win any list seats there last time. (The list balances out first past the post seats and the Nationalists won nine of the 10 constituencies.) There were, however, a

 Britain has long been in awe of its continental friend – overlooking one fatal affliction Source - Daily Telegraph 26/03/20 Link What ever happened to the German Miracle? Angela Merkel’s final hour has become her lousiest moment. Every day seems to bring fresh calamity. The former chemist, once praised globally for her efficient handling of the pandemic, could yet preside over a higher Covid death toll than Britain. Amid a bizarre smear campaign against AstraZeneca, the third wave of the coronavirus could result in tens of thousands of unnecessary German deaths. The German Chancellor’s tacit support for the EU’s vaccine nationalism, meanwhile, is corroding her country’s benevolent image. Merkel’s authority is now so weakened that she was this week forced into a humiliating U-turn over a five-day Easter lockdown. Berlin’s implosion is not an event but a phenomenon. Nor is it all Merkel, though she cannot escape the blame. Germany’s ruling class is remote and fractious. The German publi

 If Ursula von der Leyen goes through with her vaccine sabre rattling she'll regret it  Nationalising vaccines would expose the EU27 to multiple legal challenges  The intellectual case the EU is making around vaccines is sloppy at best Source - CAPX - 25/03/21 Link If the EU needs a digger to get itself out of its vaccine mess, perhaps it should call the famously Eurosceptic chair of JCB, Lord Bamford. The background will be familiar to most. The European Commission claimed world leadership in its handling of immunisation policy, but in reality has been mired in the stagnancy of its Precautionary Principle. As the reality emerged, it blamed the supplier for not following contracts it had itself tarried over chasing, for vaccines its medicine regulator had dawdled over approving. EU27 leaders challenged product safety based on misunderstood stats over age group testing, and again over more misunderstood stats about side-effects. The Commission put Belarus and 120 other countries on

Italian elite unit found millions of AstraZeneca doses thought to be meant for the UK - but their destination was the EU itself. Source - Daily Telegraph - 24/03/21 Link It was an extraordinary story – the European Commission had turned detective to find AstraZeneca's secret stockpile of vaccines reserved for Britain. During a surprise raid over the weekend, an elite unit of Italian military police acting on EU orders discovered 29 million jab doses hoarded at a factory near Rome. The discovery appeared to confirm the EU's long-held suspicion that AstraZeneca was giving the UK special treatment, secretly exporting doses to its home country while failing to deliver on contracts agreed with Brussels. Yet, as EU officials admitted on Wednesday, the allegation, briefed to the Continental press, simply wasn't true. In fact, most of the doses discovered in the Italian factory were destined for the EU itself, with the remainder headed for poorer countries across the world. One for

Britain may feel the economic consequences of the EU's failure to inoculate its citizens, but currently the disease risk it poses is low. Source - Daily Telegraph 24/03/21 Link Only a small minority of Europeans have yet contracted Covid-19 or been vaccinated against it. Given this fact, and how highly transmissible the virus is, this means there is now another wave of infections on the Continent. Desperate attempts to extend restrictions are being met by lockdown fatigue. Recriminations abound as the hospitals fill and the death toll mounts. No wonder, then, that there is an effort to shift blame. More widespread vaccination could have been the answer but the EU did not start early enough. Legend on the Continent has it that AstraZeneca has met its supply schedule to the UK but is behind in supplying the EU. This is simply untrue. AstraZeneca got way behind here as well. Last May, when the UK made its original agreement with the firm, we were supposed to receive 30 million doses d

Contrary to some claims, this legislation does not allow sweeping crackdowns on protest The public take a much sterner stance on maintaining public order than much of the political class To what extent does protest entitle someone to immiserate and disrupt others? Source CAPX - 23/03/21 Link Last week, when I wrote about the need to reform the way we do public order policing, I noted in passing that the British public take a much sterner stance on maintaining public order than much of the political class. That was in relation to police tactics rather than the rules governing protest, but it nonetheless does make it seem rather unlikely that the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is going to spark the sort of national backlash some of its opponents are hoping for. Moreover, even if the bill were somehow halted, it would be very simple for this government or a future one to revive its proposals regarding control of protests as soon as we are subjected to the kind of deeply dis

America's use of "smart tariffs" has made the EU return to the negotiating table and make concessions - Britain should follow suit. Source - Daily Telegraph - 22/03/21 Link MATTHEW LYNN Vials will be stopped at the ferry ports. Factories will be monitored to check where products are going. And customs officers, presumably accompanied by sniffer dogs trained to detect whatever it is a Covid-19 vaccine smells like, will patrol the borders. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Union Commission, is threatening to escalate the growing vaccine war between Britain and the rest of Europe over supplies of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab. At a meeting of ministers on Thursday she may well invoke emergency powers to block exports from the continent.  But hold on. It is surely impossible for any British government to accept that without retaliating. We shouldn’t block the shipment of vaccines or their ingredients to Europe. That will simply cost lives on the continent, and two

The expected decision by the Local Government secretary Robert Jenrick is unprecedented in such a large city. Source - Daily Telegraph - 20/03/21 Link The Government is poised to take over the running of the city of Liverpool this week after a string of corruption allegations, The Telegraph can disclose. The expected decision by the Local Government secretary Robert Jenrick to intervene in the running of one of the UK's biggest cities is unprecedented in modern times. Commissioners could be sent in to run the day-to-day operations of the council for several years, something which has only happened three times in the past 25 years. Commissioners were sent in by the Government to take over the running of councils in Northampton in 2018, Rotherham in 2015 and Towers Hamlets in 2014. None of them was the scale of a city like Liverpool, however. Max Caller, a respected local government inspector who was the commissioner in Tower Hamlets, was appointed by Mr Jenrick to lead the investiga

Decision to select Dr Paul Williams, the former MP for Stockton South, prompts backlash from Sir Keir Starmer's hard-Left critics Source - Daily Telegraph 19/03/21 Link Labour MPs have told Sir Keir Starmer that the party has made a "terrible mistake" by selecting an outspoken Remainer as its candidate to fight a by-election in Leave-voting Hartlepool.  The decision to select Dr Paul Williams, a family doctor and the former MP for Stockton South, has prompted a backlash from Sir Keir's hard-Left critics, who fear the Conservatives will weaponise his outspoken views on Brexit. One pointed to tweets made by Mr Williams prior to his defeat in the 2019 election, including one in which he praised the former Labour Europhile Chris Leslie for showing "real leadership in the fight against this Tory Brexit shambles". "He shouldn't be our candidate. It's a 70 per cent Leave seat," a former senior frontbencher told The Telegraph on Friday night. Separ

 The fine unionist tradition of never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity is alive and well   SNP under-performance will boost Boris' wise stance of denying a second referendum   Without a referendum to unite the factions, divisions within the SNP will become all the more apparent Source CAPX - 19/03/21 Link Covering the Alex Salmond/Nicola Sturgeon scandal feels like being a reporter tasked with covering a match between two teams for whom one has little sympathy in a slow-moving, slightly arcane sport for which one is not an enthusiast. The First Minister dials the sanctimony up to 11 even as her government engages in an ever more obvious and cack-handed cover-up. Her predecessor, despite having been cleared of criminal charges, is an unpleasant man who in the name of revenge is clearly happy to poison the well of Scottish politics. Moreover, the scandal itself plays out across multiple fronts. There is the killer question of when Sturgeon knew about the investigation of

Wouldn’t a 'fair share' be the one that the EU negotiated itself with vaccine producers? Von der Leyen’s first year has been a massive failure that will cost many lives However much of a laughing stock the EU becomes, the Teflon-coated president soldiers on Source CAPX 18/03/21 Link Vaccine nationalism, where every country or region of the world selfishly fighting for itself to roll out Covid vaccines and battling with others, “can only slow down the global fight against the virus”. Instead, what we need is “teamwork solving global problems” through worldwide cooperation and open markets. These were the words of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen back in November when the first working vaccines had begun to appear. Even then, von der Leyen should have known that the Commission she heads had been much slower on the uptake than the UK, Israel, the US and many other countries. It should have already dawned on her that negotiating endlessly to get a lower purchasing

Why is Ursula von der Leyen willing to trigger a vaccines trade war over a coronavirus jab that many EU countries are not even using? writes James Crisp. Source - Daily Telegraph - 17/03/21 Link The European Commission president is lashing out wildly – not for the first time – as she desperately tries to appear in control of the EU's vaccine crisis. The crisis has been worsened by the decision of 17 countries to suspend the use of the AstraZeneca jab over blood clot fears, despite the bloc's regulator deeming it safe. Mrs von der Leyen has faced sustained criticism across the EU for its slow vaccine rollout and questions about the contracts her commission negotiated with pharmaceutical firms. In January she was forced to back down after moving to impose a hard border on the island of Ireland – the precise opposite of what the Brexit negotiations aimed to achieve – to enforce an export ban on Britain.  Despite that, EU governments are lumbered with a commission president who has

European leaders have destroyed confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine, meaning even more people will die. Source - Daily Telegraph Link AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD 16 March 2021 • 11:34am If European countries are going to suspend the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine every time there is a random stochastic death, it would be better if they handed their stocks immediately to Africa and poorer regions of Asia. The vaccine saga has degenerated into the most abject spectacle of European misgovernment in my working lifetime – although for sheer ineptitude it is hard to beat the absence of a lender-of-last-resort during the eurozone debt crisis. It is what happens when you push the precautionary principle to the point of absurdity. Once zero-risk thinking becomes reflexive – and institutionalised in law – it leads you into a cul-de-sac of systemic self-harm. We have extensive epidemiological data in the UK’s weekly “yellow card” summary of vaccines. As of February 28, there had been 227 deaths sho