Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

 John Allan's group of business leaders believes the Government should target support at certain British industries post-Covid. Source - Daily telegraph - 28/04/21 Link The UK should use its post-Brexit freedoms to create domestic supply chains that rely less on foreign companies, a group of senior business leaders has said. The Covid Recovery Commission, headed up by Tesco chairman John Allan, said the Government has the chance to build up cutting-edge industries and create new export opportunities. It proposed using state procurement to create a Great British Supply Chain, in an attempt to boost certain industries, create jobs and give the UK a headstart on other nations. This could include decarbonising public sector buildings, rolling out 5G connectivity in the NHS, and investing in modern methods of construction including off-site manufacture. Supporting these industries could be a crucial way for the economy to reinvent itself and rebound post Brexit, Mr Allan said, while sp...

 Only viable course for an independent Scotland is to go it alone as a small, agile economy with its own currency and economic institutions. Source - Daily Telegraph - 29/04/21 Link Nicola Sturgeon cannot have her cèic and eat it. She cannot proceed with a unilateral vote on Scottish independence and then join the EU as a sovereign state.  The two are incompatible. The only circumstances in which Spain would lift its veto on EU accession is if Scotland secured independence by proper constitutional process, and even that would be uncertain under the hardline Rightist constellation of parties likely to win the next Spanish election. Nor would Italy wink at a Rhodesian-style UDI, given the latent irredentism of the Sudtirol; nor France with her Corsican problem; nor Slovakia or Romania with their Hungarian enclaves. There was a time when the EU flirted with separatist causes - some egging on the Quebecois - but that era of jejune romanticism is over.  It should have sent a s...

 It's not even at all clear the EU will win its case  Has there been a more blatant piece of political deflection than this court case?  By suing AstraZeneca, the EU is sending businesses a powerful message – but not a good one Source - CAPX - 27/04/21 Link Searching the CapX archives for articles on the EU and AstraZeneca, words ike “fiasco” and “mad” appear with alarming regularity. News that the Commission is now suing the drugmaker for allegedly failing to fulfil its contract is somehow both gut-wrenching and completely unsurprising. Never mind that AstraZeneca produced an effective, safe vaccine within a year, and supplied it at cost price. Never mind, either, that suing them will have no effect on any current supply issues. This is about sending a message. The EU presumably hopes that the message is “we’re tough, tough cookies, don’t mess with us or you’ll get sued too”. Which is fine, except it’s also likely to be interpreted as “don’t do business with us or you ri...

A loss of confidence would be perilous as Macron resorts to borrowing cash to prop up the welfare state. Source - Daily Telegraph 26/04/21 Link Which country in Europe has the most total government debt? Italy, perhaps, as it grapples with a depression that appears to have gone on for decades? Or maybe Greece after it nearly brought down the euro? Or even Spain after its wild boom of the early 2000s? In fact, it isn’t any of those. As of this month, it is France. In hock to the tune of €2.67 trillion (£2.32 trillion), this month it finally overtook Italy as the Continent’s biggest debtor – and the third biggest globally. Sure, in some ways that is affordable. France is a bigger economy than its southern neighbour, so the ratios are not so alarming as the total figures. And the country has a resilient industrial base, with at least a few world-class companies. Yet reforms are also going backwards; that debt is widely dispersed around the world, making it vulnerable to sudden changes of ...

 Defeat in Hartlepool would be a disastrous capstone to an underwhelming first year for Keir Starmer   If it isn't careful, Welsh Labour risks falling into the same constitutional pit as the Scottish party   Deterioriation in London should bother the Tories more – but mayoral defeat is now entirely priced in Source - CAPX 23/04/21 Link One half suspects that a big reason that the Conservatives have managed 11 years in office whilst still being comfortably ahead in the polls is that the political narrative – not to mention their own leadership – changes too often for any of it to grow stale. The sheer pace of events means that the era of David Cameron, Nick Clegg, and the Coalition feels scarcely less remote than New Labour. Even the grim chaos of Theresa May’s premiership and the ‘dead Parliament’ has been thoroughly eclipsed by the Covid-19 pandemic.  And with the vaccination programme well underway, how long until a new narrative replaces that? Perhaps as soon as n...

Dublin had been expecting a special relationship with the US President - not an all-out assault on its economic model with his tax plans. Source - Daily Telegraph 24/04/21 Link Dublin had been expecting a special relationship with the US President - not an all-out assault on its economic model with his tax plan. They were celebrating in Ballina in County Mayo when Joe Biden was elected as the 46th the President of the United States. The veteran politician seldom misses a chance to ham up his Irish ancestry - his great-great-grandfather Patrick Blewitt sailed for a new life in the United States in 1850 apparently - with some sentimental references to the old country. It always helps to have a friend in the White House, especially when it is someone as genially liberal as Biden. Except hold on. It turns out that the Democratic President is turning into the biggest threat to Irish prosperity for a generation. His plan for a minimum global corporate tax poses a potentially fatal challenge ...

Protesters put up a sign that read "You want to keep your waters??? OK ... So, keep your fish!" Source - Daily Telegraph 23/04/21  Link French trawlermen have blockaded lorries arriving into Europe carrying UK-landed fish, as London and Brussels were locked in a blame game on Friday over access to Britain’s waters.  In the latest installment of the so-called Brexit “fish wars”, local fishermen from Boulogne-sur-Mer, situated on the north coast of France, attempted to obstruct the lorries as they entered the port, which is the largest seafood processing centre in Europe. Some 80 fishermen set off flares on the Boulogne docks, blocked two trucks with a barricade of wood pallets and barrels, and put up a sign that read: "You want to keep your waters??? OK ... So, keep your fish!". Fishing leaders warned earlier this week that the blockade was particularly bad for the Scottish industry, as many of its high-value catches, including langoustine, scallop and white fish are...

 The idea that ethnic minorities adopt conservative positions for 'white acceptance' is deplorable   Dawn Butler's reference to 'racial gatekeepers' should have no place in British politics   Too much of Labour now feels like an activist organisation in thrall to nasty, racialised politics Source -CAPX 22/04/21 Link There was a time when the Labour Party was the leading anti-discrimination force in mainstream British politics. Promoting the economic, social, and political integration of ethnic minorities, impactful race relations legislation was passed under Labour governments. The party established the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) under Tony Blair’s leadership and passed the 2010 Equality Act under Gordon Brown. The 2010 Act, designed to legally protect people from discrimination in the workplace and wider society, consolidated a set of protected characteristics which included ethnicity and religious belief. It was this steadfast commitment to anti-d...

She insists an independent Scotland would have joined the UK's vaccine efforts, despite being part of the EU. If only that were true. Source - Daily Telegraph 21/04/21 Link Not that it is likely to make much of a difference to the result of the Scottish Parliament elections next month, but Nicola Sturgeon finds herself in a bit of a quandary. An online hustings event organised by NUS Scotland became the talk of Twitter as videos of a very rattled first minister were gleefully shared. What brought her to the point where she seemed keen to deliver a Glasgow kiss to her Conservative opponent, Douglas Ross?  The SNP have been put on the defensive for their insistence that an independent Scotland, as a fully-fledged member of the EU, would have chosen to abandon the European Medicines Agency and the EU approval and procurement process for the Covid vaccine, and would instead have joined the UK’s rather more successful efforts.  This, of course, is untrue. We know this not just beca...

The European Super League plan blew up in an extraordinary day, leaving the sport more divided than ever... but still intact. Source - Daily Telegraph - 20/04/21 Link It was on the Spanish chat show El Chiringuito late on Monday evening that the Real Madrid president Florentino Perez declared with some confidence that, along with his 11 European Super League co-conspirators, he was about to “save football” and within 24 hours many would argue that he had done just that. Some of the most powerful clubs in the European game, and some of its wealthiest owners had suffered the most astounding humiliation in sporting history. The career of their most ambitious leader, Ed Woodward, the Manchester United executive vice-chairman, and chief architect of this, the game’s most divisive breakaway, was hastily curtailed. In Italy, doubt surrounded the future of the equally hawkish Andrea Agnelli, president of Juventus, and erstwhile chairman of the European Club Association whom he had abandoned as...

The dearth of European workers will mean higher wages, bigger investment in automation - and a squeeze on corporate profitability. Source - Daily Telegraph - 19/04/21 Link Recovering from the Covid-19 catastrophe. Bringing all the extra debt taken on to pay for it under control. And of course adapting to our departure from the European Union while coping with rapidly accelerating technology. It is not hard to list all the challenges the economy will have to cope with over the coming decade. But there is a far bigger one that doesn’t get so many headlines that is probably more significant: falling immigration.  Figures out last week show there was a net exodus of more than 50,000 people in the latest quarter for the first quarter of last year. It looks as if 2020 was the first year in which the immigrant workforce fell since way back in 1993. That is a huge change, and one that will have a big impact on the economy. Wages will rise, especially at the bottom end of the market. Automa...

 Hi everyone. I am sorry but I have some very sad news for you. Our friend Catherine died in hospital (intensive care) on 14th April after 6 weeks in hospital. Cath's sister Jenny has contacted Richard to tell him. So far I'm not clear what the cause of death was. I know I always enjoyed Cath's forthright and knowledgeable contributions to the blog and I know some of you were members of other blogs before this with Cath. I'm very sorry to have to be the bearer of such very sad news. Cath will be missed by everyone I am sure. Robin.

 EXCLUSIVEThe former EU president still retains a fondness for Britain, but believes ‘brainwashing’ led to the dark cloud of Brexit. Source - The i - 19/04/21 Time is said to be the greatest healer. But for Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Union between 2015 and 2019, the gaping wound of Brexit five years after the referendum still seems sore. The Brexit vote, he argues, goes against history. But not helping the healing process for the fiercely pro-European former Prime Minister of Luxembourg – his views were shaped by listening to his father’s stories of the destruction of the Second World War – is that it happened on his watch. He blames his former nemesis David Cameron for the “mistake” of Brexit, himself for listening to Cameron, and the ‘misinformation’ that he claims ‘brainwashed’ the UK’s electorate. “I should not have listened to David Cameron,” he says leaning back in his chair in his office in the commission’s Brussels HQ. “He told me not to interfere in...

 It is time to embark on the three steps that will let global finance flourish in the UK. Source - Daily Telegraph - 17/04/21 Link The UK’s vaccines are not the only victims of the EU’s approach to British successes. The EU is also in the process of using regulation and protectionist policies to control markets and take business from the UK’s global financial services. The signs are that the EU will continue, in the near future, to drag its feet on co-operating with UK financial firms on equal terms to facilitate equivalence-based access to the EU markets. Given these signals from Brussels, the UK must accelerate reform in developing its legal and regulatory framework. Up until now the primary concern of UK lawmakers has been about equivalence. The fear was that if UK regulations do not track those in the EU, there would be the risk of a lack of “equivalence” determinations. But now, this worry has become irrelevant, since the EU is clearly unwilling to grant equivalency to the UK ...

Can  things get any worse for Keir Starmer? Yes appears to be the answer, if the latest YouGov poll is anything to go on. Source - The Spectator 16/04/21 Link While the Tories have surged ahead to 43 per cent, support for Labour has tumbled down to 29 per cent. It's important not to blow a single poll out of proportion, but nonetheless these numbers make for grim reading for the Labour leader. That 14 per cent lead for the Conservatives is the largest since mid-May 2020, when the recently elected Starmer was still digging his party out of the polling abyss of the Corbyn period. A year on – and coming weeks before a crucial set of local elections and a by-election – it shows all too clearly that Starmer has so far failed to rescue Labour.  To make matters worse, Labour appears to be leaking voters in every direction: to the Tories, the Lib Dems – whose vote Starmer managed to cannibalise early in his leadership – and the Greens, who are probably a receptacle for a certain kind ...

Boris Johnson need not say “No, never” to a second referendum on the Union - but some home truths are needed. Source - Daily Telegraph - 15/04/21 So, this is what it all boils down to. There was a Scottish independence referendum in 2014 and, despite promising at the time that this would be a “once in a generation” opportunity, Nicola Sturgeon now wants another one. And if her party wins an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament at next month’s elections, she will claim that as a mandate for one. The problem being, of course, that legally, only the UK government can authorise another poll. And that’s what all of Scottish politics is about, and has been about since 2011. Faced with the prospect, if not the reality, of another referendum, Unionists are all over the shop, torn between frustration at the “once in a generation” promise being broken, while utterly terrified of people on Twitter calling them undemocratic for opposing another referendum, whatever the results of the electi...

 The narrative that Boris is responsible for problems in the North hinders the search for actual solutions. Source - Daily Telegraph - 15/04/21 Link Our Prime Minister consistently reminds me of William Brown, Richmal Crompton’s 11-year-old hero, a natural leader whose optimism leads him to promise more than he can deliver. This regularly lands him and his followers in deep trouble, whereupon his brilliance/luck saves the day. Disaster followed by triumph is the story of Boris’s Brexit and Covid. This time, however, he has the problem of Northern Ireland. Unionists accuse him of treacherously undermining their constitutional position through the adoption of the Northern Ireland protocol, which creates an internal border in the Irish Sea. Republicans are crowing about the imminence of a united Ireland. Nightly rioting would still be occurring but for the death of Prince Philip. Disaffected, angry loyalists have no trust in government and little in such institutions as the police and...