Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

 Don't forget: it was her government which first entertained the prospect of cutting NI off from the rest of the UK Source - Daily Telegraph  29/06/22 Link On Monday, MPs voted to give the Government’s Northern Ireland Protocol Bill a second reading in the House of Commons. There were some genuine arguments against the legislation from the backbenches, as it cleared its first parliamentary obstacle, but others seemed less sincere and honest. You can understand why some Conservatives, who are worried about keeping their Westminster seats, allowed exasperation with Boris Johnson to shape their attitudes to the bill; even if, for now, they were not prepared to vote against it. However, its most strident Tory critic was Theresa May and her intervention deserved only contempt. After all, the former prime minister was in office when the government first entertained the notion of cutting Northern Ireland off from the rest of the United Kingdom by erecting a political and economic bor...

 It would be absurd to have a referendum every time the SNP won an election – once in a generation sounds about right Source - daily telegraph 28/06/22 Link On Tuesday, Nicola Sturgeon announced that she was introducing a referendum bill. But can she call a referendum without the consent of the British Government? In 2011, David Cameron agreed to a section 30 order, provided under the 1998 Scotland Act, to allow the 2014 referendum. Some 55 per cent of Scots rejected independence. Boris Johnson, supported by Labour and the Liberal Democrats, refuses to countenance another such order. Shortly before the 2014 referendum, the Scottish Government published a White Paper declaring it a "once in a generation opportunity". But Nicola Sturgeon argues that Brexit, which Scottish voters opposed in the 2016 EU referendum, is a material change of circumstances justifying a second referendum. She claims a mandate since the SNP and the Greens, who also support independence, won 72 of the 1...

 Sanctions stop Russia settling despite having the means and desire to do so Source - Daily Telegraph - 27/06/22 Link Russia has defaulted on its foreign debts for the first time in a century, in a humiliating blow to Vladimir Putin that further freezes his country out of the Western financial system. After narrowly swerving non-payment several times since launching an invasion of Ukraine in late February, Moscow failed to pay $100m of coupons on bonds due last month, for which a 30-day grace period ended on Sunday. Payment had been rendered practically impossible after the White House moved to block channels to creditors in the West, meaning Russia could not settle its debts despite the means and willingness to do so. The default – the first time Russia has failed to make payments to international bondholders since the Bolshevik revolution in 1918 – is mainly a symbolic event for now: Russia is already a pariah within the Western financial system and is unlikely to tap internation...

 The attack on abortion rights, and other horrors sweeping the States, means I can no longer defend the country of my childhood Source - daily telegraph 25/06/22 Link It is tempting, as a woman, to respond to the reversal of abortion rights in the United States with a tale of personal experience. I will spare you the details of mine, though rest assured I, like so many millions of other women in the once-liberal West, feel profound relief I was born in an era and a place where women have the right to choose. Mine was the second generation of women who knew that if we could not cope with a baby when that particular oncoming train was foisted upon us, we no longer needed to risk dying of sepsis following botched self-abortions or back-street terminations, or to fear being permanently mentally disfigured from forced childbirth. We took for granted that we could have children when ready and only then, without terror of life-changing consequences if a mistake was made. In Britain, secur...

 The British economy has weathered the past six years surprisingly well Source - Daily Telegraph - 24/06/22 Link A corrosive and essentially false story of British economic failure is taking hold in the public mind. The claims are being pushed by a large part of the Westminster media, echoed and amplified across the world. It is becoming an article of faith that the UK has underperformed ruinously since the referendum, lagging under every key metric and plagued by a collapse of trade, investment, and sterling. The narrative is coming from assorted think tanks and is being weaponised by the pro-Brussels establishment in an attempt to bounce Britain into the EU single market, and therefore to insert this country into an unworkable half-way house — in the EU without voting rights — to prepare the ground for a rejoiner campaign in the future. The economic assertions are going largely unchallenged. Parts of the Government are behaving almost as if they believe the worst. The most irrit...

 Source - Daily Telegraph 23/06/22 Link Happy Brexit Day! Six years ago, on June 23 2016, Britons voted by 52 per cent to 48 per cent to quit the European Union. And few of the 17.4 million Britons who voted to leave would have thought that six years later, Britain is still wrestling with how to enact that decision. There is not long to wait now, with three pieces of legislation on the stocks ready to deliver the Brexit that many thought they were voting for. But the parliamentary battle to make Brexit a reality is by no means over. One MP tells me: “It will be as big as anything seen for generations.” Here is why. Yesterday, Dominic Raab, the Justice Secretary, published the Bill of Rights which could hugely curb the influence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the UK. (Indeed, Suella Braverman, the Attorney General, told me last week that the new Bill could be used to force a vote of MPs in the Commons that will mean the ECHR can no longer intervene on migrants’ flig...

 The president’s disdain for his political rivals will come back to bite him now he has lost his majority Source - Daily Telegraph 21/06/22 Link What do you do when, after 44 years of getting everything you wanted, you come up against a brick wall? If you’re a top French civil servant briefly turned merchant banker then twice-elected president, like Emmanuel Macron, you first hide for 24 hours. On Sunday, having spent a painful run-off election night in which he lost his parliamentary majority by 44 seats – or by 134 seats if you don’t include the two allied centrist parties he took for granted the past five years – the president disappeared, making no official statement. He then cancelled all his Monday meetings, including the one that was meant to launch his latest gadget, the grandly named Refoundation Council. This is a typical Macronista quango in which lottery-picked citizens were meant to be confronted with NGO, union and business leaders, chosen for their innocuousness, all...

 Brussels' post-Brexit campaign has brought more headaches than results Source - Daily Telegraph 20/06/22 Link Mairead McGuinness, the EU’s financial services commissioner, is a woman on manoeuvres. A former farming journalist, her rise to become Ireland’s top political representative in Brussels has singled her out for greater honours.  The 63-year-old is favourite among bookmakers to become Ireland’s next president – its largely ceremonial head of state – when the job next becomes available in 2025.  Yet not everyone is a fan. Some male colleagues in her Fine Gael party call her “Elbows McGuinness”, owing to her barely concealed ambition – a moniker she has decried as sexist. One senior Fine Gael figure says McGuinness is admired for her combative media style and ability to quickly digest briefs, but is regarded by many within the party as a loner who makes little effort to make friends or allies.  For now, however, the Irish commissioner is focusing on a campaign ...

 Ukraine needs more support and equipment to resist pressure to enter premature negotiations Source - Daily Telegraph - 17/06/22 Link   Words are nice. Words matter. But in a war, here’s what matters more: weapons. And it is becoming clear that Ukraine needs more than it’s getting. Rather than allowing the war effort to stall in pursuit of some elusive “peace” deal, the West now needs to step up its efforts. Kyiv has had a busy week hosting allies. Boris Johnson visited today. The day before, Emmanuel Macron, Mario Draghi and Olaf Scholz had shown up in a wood-panelled train and offered, bizarrely, to let Ukraine become a candidate country for joining the EU. They offered warm words and promised not to pressure Kyiv into making any concessions to Russia. This is better than the rhetoric we have heard before – but there are many ways to skin a cat. No Western leader wants to be seen to force Kyiv to compromise with its invader. But if the West doesn’t supply enough weapons to s...

 Her demand for another referendum is a bluff, an act of political theatre to keep her troops hopeful Source - Daily Telegraph - 16/06/22 Link After relaunching her case for Scottish independence this week – with speeches, a 72-page economic dossier and the promise of a referendum next year – Nicola Sturgeon had a quick something to add. She did not, she said, intend to dwell on the hard border she plans to erect with England. She’d deal with the “implications of Brexit” another day. It’s easy to see why she’s not keen to discuss it. Most of Scotland’s imports and exports cross over the border with England, so what impact would it have subjecting all of them to checks, tariffs and customs controls? The SNP often talks about the harm inflicted by Brexit, but Scotland’s trade with England vastly outweighs its dealings with Europe. So “Scexit”, as some Unionists have taken to calling it, would be “Brexit times 10”. This phrase is from one of Sturgeon’s own economic advisers – and he m...

 The ECHR has exchanged constructive safeguarding to high-handed interventionism   It's easy to spot the activist QC, more interested in 'changing the world' than tackling injustices   Like a naive tom-tom owner, UK courts followed the direction set out by Strasbourg Link Source CAPX 17/06/22 The British Courts and our legal system are the envy of the world. We know this, because so many people choose to illegally cross the Channel in order to exploit them. An attempt to remove the most spurious claimants for processing in Rwanda very visibly failed this week. Like a naive tom-tom owner, UK courts followed the direction set out by the Strasbourg Court and applied an absurdly generous interpretation of the individual’s ‘human rights’. Meanwhile, over in Strasbourg itself, a judge issued a peremptory last minute ruling to halt activity without even hearing the UK Government’s legal case. This blockage was predictable. In the past, governments ran from ever exposing their po...

 Anna McMorrin’s intervention prompts accusations of Labour plot to rejoin bloc in all but name, as Government row over Protocol intensifies Source - Daily Telegraph. 15/06/22 Link Anna McMorrin told party supporters that Labour should renegotiate the current deal with the EU CREDIT: Richard Townshend A shadow minister said the Labour Party would seek to at least rejoin the EU’s single market and customs union once in power, it emerged on Wednesday, as the Government’s row with Brussels over Northern Ireland intensified. Anna McMorrin, a shadow justice minister, told party supporters that Labour should renegotiate the current deal with the EU, suggesting that it could be a path to rejoining fully. Her intervention prompted accusations that Labour was plotting to rejoin the bloc in all but name. It also further exacerbated divisions inside Sir Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet, as rejoining elements of the Brussels project is not official Labour policy. The revelation emerged as Maros S...

 The revolt against the government’s immigration policy is alarmingly anti-democratic. Source  - Spiked 13/06/22 Link The government’s ‘Rwanda policy’ is no longer about who is allowed to come to this country. It’s about who runs this country. Is it Boris Johnson’s government, which was elected by just shy of 14million citizens? Or is it the heir to the throne, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the House of Lords, and those human-rights lawyers who seem to spend their every waking hour bristling against democratic legislation – none of whom has ever won a single vote from us? In my view, it should be the former: the people we voted into power. In the view of far too many in the cultural elite, however, it must be the latter: those unelected, unpolluted establishment figures who think it is their duty to strike down the gammon laws of this gammon government. Especially the Rwanda policy. This is not about whether you like or dislike the Rwanda policy, under which illegal mi...

Ministers will be able to tear up and rewrite virtually all of the Protocol under legislation announced in Parliament on Monday evening Source - Daily Telegraph 13/06/22 Link Ministers will be able to tear up and rewrite virtually all of the Northern Ireland Protocol under sweeping changes announced in Parliament on Monday evening. Legislation to end border checks in the Irish Sea contains an “insurance” clause which could be used to cancel almost all other parts of the deal with Brussels. It may even be activated to scrap a consent vote on whether to keep or ditch the Brexit agreement, which will be held by members of the Stormont Assembly in 2024. Article 15 of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill grants the UK Government the power to disapply any part of the current arrangements under certain circumstances. They include safeguarding both the “economic stability” of the province and the “territorial or constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom”. “Ensuring the effective flow of tra...

Developing nations have had enough of the West’s lectures. Source - Spiked 12/06/22 Link Talk of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine turning into a proxy war between Washington and the Kremlin has ratcheted up in recent weeks. But there is another international conflict that already resembles a proxy war, albeit a non-violent one, and which preceded the war in Ukraine. This is the proxy war that President Biden has launched against the international forces of so-called authoritarian populism. Biden has framed this crusade as a global struggle of democracy against autocracy. And he is keen to intertwine his opposition to the regimes of China and Russia with his posturing against populist movements at home. Biden hopes that this guilt by association will help him to de-legitimate his domestic opponents. Among Biden’s rogues’ gallery of autocrats sits his domestic opponents, principally Trump supporters and other politically incorrect sections of the American electorate. China and Russia stand o...