Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

The former cabinet minister claims the ex-chancellor put up ‘huge resistance’ to legislation, as he backs Liz Truss for the Tory leadership Source - Daily Telegraph 30/07/22 Link A former cabinet minister has broken cover to accuse Rishi Sunak of blocking attempts to break the Brexit impasse with the EU. Brandon Lewis, the ex-Northern Ireland secretary, claimed that the Treasury under Mr Sunak put up “huge resistance” to efforts to override the Northern Ireland Protocol and was more focused on trying to “keep the EU happy”. Mr Lewis made the comments as he endorsed Liz Truss for the Conservative leadership, claiming she was “much more likely” than Mr Sunak to achieve a swift return to power sharing in Northern Ireland if she becomes prime minister. Mr Lewis served as Northern Ireland secretary from February 2020 until earlier this month, when he turned down Cabinet promotions to join the exodus of ministers resigning from Boris Johnson’s government. In the role, he helped develop the N...

 Rishi Sunak is far better than people think, but Ms Truss has the vision and skill set required to deliver now Source - Daily Telegraph - 30/07/22 Link Britain is on the verge of a breakdown. Our economy has not recovered from being put into an induced coma for the better part of two years. Our currency has been debased. Our tax levels are at a 70-year high. Our bureaucracy is dysfunctional. Our healthcare system is an international embarrassment. Part of our country is governed by the EU – and the rest retains most of the Brussels regulations which we were supposed to have scrapped by now. Our trade unions threaten aggressive strikes. We may be heading for a full-scale sterling crisis. Things badly need to change. That is why I am backing Liz Truss. Despite – or, more likely, because of – having served in five Cabinet posts, she has a clear sense of what is wrong with the cheap-money, high-spending consensus that has grown up since Tony Blair’s time in office. She knows that we n...

 This pillar of the Remain establishment has never pretended to side with workers. Source - Spiked - 28/07/22 Link No matter what else the British left has lost over recent decades, it has retained its remarkable powers of self-delusion, particularly when it comes to the Labour Party. In their latest outburst of fantasy politics, left-wingers have condemned Sir Keir Starmer as a ‘scab’ and a ‘class traitor’, after the Labour leader sacked a frontbench party spokesman for doing broadcast interviews from a rail-strike picket line. What did they expect Starmer to be? A proletarian militant disguised as a posh barrister? In order to qualify as a strike-breaking scab, traditionally the left’s ultimate insult, you surely have to be part of a workforce or working-class movement in the first place. Starmer has not pretended to be anything of the sort. Starmer leads a Labour Party that has no loyalty to or connection with the labouring classes. Starmer’s Labour is the party of the metropoli...

 Trailblazing Britain is leading the most ambitious rollout of offshore wind in the world Source - Daily Telegraph 28/07/22 Link Today’s electricity price shock is the last crisis of the old order. Britain will soon have far more power at times of peak production than it can absorb. The logistical headache will be abundance. Wind and solar provided almost 60pc of the UK’s power for substantial stretches last weekend, briefly peaking at 66pc. This is not to make a propaganda point about green energy, although this home-made power is self-evidently displacing liquefied natural gas (LNG) imported right now at nosebleed prices.  It is a point about the mathematical implications of the UK’s gargantuan push for renewables. Offshore wind capacity is going to increase from 11 to 50 gigawatts (GW) by 2030 under the Government’s latest fast-track plans. RenewableUK says this country currently has a total of 86GW in the project pipeline. This the most ambitious rollout of offshore wind i...

 The EU’s plan for mandatory gas rationing is utterly terrifying. Source - Spiked 27/07/22 Link The EU’s 27 member states – all modern, advanced industrialised economies, some among the richest in the world – are about to start rationing their energy supplies. This week, at an extraordinary summit, EU members agreed to a European Commission proposal to slash their gas use by a punishing 15 per cent over the next eight months. From August 2022 to March 2023, the lamps will, quite literally, be going out all over Europe. The immediate spur for this is the prospect of Russia limiting or even cutting off supplies of gas to the EU. According to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, even this worst-case, nightmare scenario is ‘likely’. European leaders were particularly spooked earlier this month when the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, which supplies Russian gas to Germany, had to be shut down for 10 days for repairs. They were afraid it would never reopen. The EU’s punishing ...

 President Zelensky is a standing rebuke to those in Britain who dismiss Boris as a frivolous adventurer Source - Daily Telegraph 26/07/22 Link This morning in 10 Downing Street, Boris Johnson is honouring Volodymyr Zelensky, who will be attending virtually. The outgoing Prime Minister will be presenting the ongoing Ukrainian president with the Sir Winston Churchill Leadership Award of the International Churchill Society. No doubt Boris – a Churchill fan and biographer – would have rather liked to receive the award himself, but in a way this occasion works out better for him. Even his many critics find it hard to gainsay the point that he has been the most vocal and effective Western leader in defending Ukraine and denouncing the Russian invasion. His numerous Ukrainian fans are perplexed by his premature departure. Even without opening his mouth to offer his usual eloquence, as he will today, President Zelensky is a standing rebuke to those in Britain who dismiss Boris as a frivol...

 The Foreign Secretary has come under fire from Rishi Sunak for what he called her 'fantasy' economics Source - Daily Telegraph ,- 24/07/22 Link Liz Truss’s tax-cutting plans have been backed by a group of prominent economists, the Daily Telegraph can reveal. The Foreign Secretary has come under fire from Rishi Sunak over her plans to slash National Insurance and reverse a scheduled rise in corporation tax - proposals the former Chancellor has described as “fantasy” economics. But, in a letter to The Telegraph, seven economists have now offered their support for Ms Truss’s plans for “timely, targeted and fully affordable tax cuts”. And the Adam Smith Institute, a free market think tank, said that pressing ahead with Mr Sunak’s plans for a corporation tax increase would lower business investment by 7.6 per cent and average household wages by £2,500. The seven economists, led by Dr Graham Gudgin from the Centre for Business Research at Cambridge University, said tax cuts were nec...

Pro-growth Liz-enomics would deliver the post-Brexit shake-up Britain needs Source - Daily Telegraph 22/07/22 Link Matthew Lynn We can cut taxes. We can shelve planned increases in the amount of money the state takes from workers and companies. We can redefine the Bank of England's mandate and start bringing public spending under tighter control. With a radical pro-growth, pro-business platform that is now likely to take her into No 10 by the autumn, Liz Truss has already decisively shifted the economic debate.  Already, she has broken the consensus Gordon Brown established 25 years ago – that tax cuts never work, that higher state spending was always better, and that the Bank would control inflation. But she should seize the opportunity to be even bolder by setting out a plan to reduce the size of the state. Tear up the tax code and start again, scrap tariffs and embrace deregulation to boost productivity and growth. The space is there to dramatically redefine the way the state wo...

Berlin’s vacillations on Russia and failed energy policy have left the whole of the EU vulnerable to Putin’s shameless gas blackmail Source - Daily Telegraph - 21/07/22 Link   When the Russian state energy giant Gazprom resumed pumping gas through the Nordstream 1 pipeline yesterday, after a ten-day shutdown, a collective sigh of relief was audible across the capitals of Europe. Yet Russian gas is flowing at only 30 to 40 per cent of normal capacity: enough to meet immediate demand, but not enough for EU countries to build up stocks for the winter to come. So it is rather clear what Vladimir Putin intends to do – to play with Europe like a cat with a mouse. He was hinting at something when he said menacingly this week: “Maybe they will turn it off at some point, and Nord Stream 1 will stop, and that’s it.” Indeed, Putin has already forced the EU Commission to impose a 15 per cent cut in gas consumption across the board. Once this comes into effect, it will sow division by penalisin...

 Source - Daily Telegraph - 21/07/22 Link Afternoon! Hasta la vista baby! Or not. Boris Johnson’s plans to stage a political comeback are in real trouble after the latest report from MPs investigating whether he lied to Parliament over partygate. The MPs are looking at Johnson’s statements to the Commons between December 2021 and May this year when the official inquiry by civil servant Sue Gray was published. At first, the PM said there was not a party in 10 Downing Street, then he insisted that when he said all rules were followed “it was what I believed to be true” earlier this year in the Commons. As I pointed out in my newsletter on June 30 it had been widely assumed that MPs would have to prove he had “deliberately misled” the House of Commons over the extent of parties in Downing Street during the lockdowns. However, the MPs make clear today that this bar has been lowered simply to whether Johnson misled the Commons, following the Labour motion passing unopposed on April 21 w...

 Outgoing premier gives typically bombastic valedictory sermon as MPs pack the Commons to see his dying moments at the despatch box Source -'Daily Telegraph 20/07/22 Link It was political judgment day for the Prime Minister – and the verdicts ranged from very good to appalling. Perhaps the most damning assessment surfaced on a couple of billboards that some of the wackier protest groups were waving up and down Whitehall on this stifling July morning. “BORIS knew Hydroxychloroquine is a cure for Covid,” one cried. “Arrest Boris for TREASON AND GENOCIDE,” read another. Things were looking somewhat rosier indoors. As Bozza entered the Chamber for his valedictory PMQs, his backbenchers – the toads – erupted into a deafening cheer. “Yeaaaaaah,” they bleated, Judas-like, as if the last few weeks of ferocious backstabbing had been a mere scratch. You almost expected the ringleaders to plant an unconvincing kiss on his cheek. Perhaps they felt a pang of guilt, or an assassin’s remorse, bec...

 Momentum is behind the Foreign Secretary as she pushes to win over supporters of the ousted Kemi Badenoch Source - Daily Telegraph 19/07/22 Link Liz Truss has moved into prime position to reach the final two in the Tory leadership contest after closing the gap on Penny Mordaunt. On Tuesday night, the Foreign Secretary was trying to win over supporters of Kemi Badenoch, her main rival on the Right of the party, who was knocked out of the race. In an article for The Telegraph, Ms Truss hints at possible jobs to come for newer Tory MPs such as Ms Badenoch as she promises a “government of all the talents”.  She writes: “As Prime Minister, I would unite the party and lead a government of all the talents that includes the best and brightest from across the Conservatives." Ms Truss picked up 15 extra votes from Tory MPs in the fourth round of the contest on Tuesday, putting her on 86 votes, just six short of Ms Mordaunt, the trade minister, on 92. She had been 11 votes behind. Rishi...

 How the British state turned a blind eye to the rape of thousands of children. Source -:Spiked - 17/07/22 Link The report into grooming gangs in Telford in the West Midlands, published last week, told an all-too-familiar story. Groups of men, of largely Pakistani heritage, sexually abused young girls for years while the authorities, fearful of appearing racist, did nothing. This ought to shame the nation. Over and over again, we have seen the same story unfold. Local councils and police forces, paralysed by the forces of political correctness and identity politics, have failed spectacularly to protect the children and young people in their care. This raises urgent questions: How did we get here? What is the true scale of the problem? And what can be done to tackle it? Rotherham Rotherham, a large market town in South Yorkshire, is at the heart of the grooming-gangs scandal. In 2012, The Times revealed that a confidential 2010 police report had warned that vast numbers of children ...

 Our next PM must deliver on Brexit's promise – and deprive critics of an undemocratic and undeserved victory Source - Daily Telegraph - 16/07/22 Link Our next PM must deliver on Brexit's promise – and deprive critics of an undemocratic and undeserved victory Brexit has hardly featured in the race to become the next Prime Minister, but the Conservative Party is still divided on the best way forward. The new leader will be under great pressure from many quarters to keep the UK economy as close to the EU as possible, rather than pursue the ambition of a truly ‘Global Britain’. This would be a historic mistake. Unfortunately, ‘Continuity Remain’ is alive and well, and still pushing the line that Brexit has been an economic disaster. This can be refuted simply by comparing the UK’s growth since the 2016 referendum with the big four economies in the EU, namely Germany, France, Italy and Spain. ‘Brexit Britain’ is vying with France for top spot on total growth and is sitting comforta...