Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

 Prime Minister's approval rating means he is now sixth from bottom in a monthly Cabinet league table Source - Daily Telegraph 30/11/22 Link Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt's popularity has plummeted among Conservative Party members in the wake of tax rises in the Autumn Statement. Mr Sunak's approval rating means he is now sixth from bottom in the monthly league table of Cabinet approval ratings published by the ConservativeHome website. The Prime Minister was the fifth most popular frontbencher in the previous survey, published on November 3, with a net approval rating of 49.9 per cent. But his first full month in office, which included the announcement of £24 billion of tax rises on November 17, has seen this fall to just nine per cent. Hunt on minus 9.9 per cent Mr Hunt, the Chancellor, is now in negative territory on minus 9.9 per cent, a fall of 30 percentage points on his previous rating (29.7 per cent). The figures suggest any initial boost gained from the relative poli...

Government tries to cut down on nitrogen pollution in a move set to reignite tensions with farmers who say the industry is unfairly targeted Source - Daily Telegraph 28/11/22 Link The Dutch government plans to buy and close down up to 3,000 farms near environmentally sensitive areas to comply with EU nature preservation rules. The Netherlands is attempting to cut down its nitrogen pollution and will push ahead with compulsory purchases if not enough farms take up the offer voluntarily.  Farmers will be offered a deal “well over” the worth of the farm, according to the government plan that is targeting the closure of 2,000 to 3,000 farms or other major polluting businesses. Earlier leaked versions of the plan put the figure at 120 per cent of the farm’s value but that figure has not yet been confirmed by ministers.  “There is no better offer coming,” Christianne van der Wal, nitrogen minister, told MPs on Friday. She said compulsory purchases would be made with “pain in the hea...

The Labour leader's instincts on the EU are similar to those of Blair, but there is good reason to think Keir will stick to his promises Source - Daily Telegraph ,- 28/11/22 Link eir Starmer has ample reasons for his not-so-subtle slight-of-hand that enabled him to take the Labour leadership by telling party members exactly what they wanted to hear, even though he obviously never had the slightest intention of fulfilling the promises he made during the campaign. After all, these were the same people who had elected Jeremy Corbyn — twice — as Labour leader, so they can hardly be surprised when a smoother operator takes full advantage of their gullibility. The problem he faces does not come from his own rank and file — most of whom now seem reconciled to being led to general election victory on Starmer’s terms — but from a far more important section of the country: the voters. However impressive the leader’s cynical manoeuvring has been, however necessary more grown-up voters recogni...

 It may well spark another exodus of refugees, but the West has shown an amazing capacity to absorb them Source - Daily Telegraph - 24/11/22 Link For the past 38 years, The Spectator has given a “Parliamentarian of the Year” award to some of the most influential figures in modern politics. They have, of course, all been British but we made an exception this year for a politician who has become an inspiration for democrats worldwide. Volodymyr Zelensky is quite an Anglophile, and was keen to address our ceremony via a live videolink. This was his plan until the last minute – but Russian missiles had hit, leading to the first nationwide power outage. The first, no doubt, of many. This is now Putin’s winter strategy. His army is losing to Ukraine’s forces, having been forced from just over half of the land occupied since February. So Moscow is switching to a strategy that targets civilians by firing missiles at the power generators, thereby denying not just electricity but running wat...

 The pig-headedness of the EU thwarted a sensible deal from being reached. Audacity is now the only choice Source - Daily Telegraph 26/11/22 Link Brexit has already worked. The European Communities Act has been repealed. The next general election will be the first since June 1970 to return a sovereign parliament. We have recovered the right to hire and fire our own lawmakers. When people ask what Brexiteers were really voting for, they miss the point. Brexiteers were voting to leave the EU, which (after some shenanigans) we did. Everything else is secondary. Secondary does not mean unimportant, of course. How we use our commercial and regulatory freedoms will, in large measure, determine our prosperity. But we need to separate the fact of taking back our independence from the question of how we use it. If, for example, you believe that the labour shortage is contributing to our economic woes, then you are arguing for a more liberal immigration policy; you are not arguing against Br...

 Scottish independence is now a thoroughly bourgeois, technocratic project. Source - Spiked 24/11/22 Link   The UK Supreme Court’s ruling, delivered on Wednesday morning, weeks ahead of schedule, was unequivocal. Court president Lord Reed said that the Scottish parliament did not have the power to legislate for another referendum on independence, because such a bill would relate to the future of the Union. And this, he said, is a matter reserved to Westminster. Scottish first minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon was quick to condemn the ruling. ‘Outright democracy denial’, she called it. This is clearly the SNP’s line now – that the UK parliament is obstructing democracy by refusing to grant Scotland another referendum on independence. Nationalist MSPs and MPs are peddling it and SNP supporters are parroting it. As one put it last night, ‘it’s Westminster that’s clearly blocking the democratic right to independence for the Scottish people’. All of which sticks firmly in the...

From rainbow armbands to monologues about migrant workers, retired footballers are falling over themselves to show how right-on they are Source - Daily Telegraph - 24/11/22 Link “Stick to football,” pleaded FIFA, somewhat optimistically. “Not on your nelly,” cried the media classes. The 2022 World Cup has so far been dominated not so much by the beautiful game itself but by broadcasters opining on anything apart from the action.   On both the BBC and ITV, pundits and presenters have been prone to issuing long-winded justifications about why they’re happily working away in the human rights black hole that is Qatar. Yes, they’re being handsomely paid to watch four weeks of football but they feel deeply conflicted about it, honest.  From taking the knee to rainbow armbands, from LGBTQ+ rights to migrant workers’ safety, retired footballers have put down their golf clubs, picked up their megaphones and are falling over themselves to prove to viewers at home exactly how right-...

 No more deals or standing aside: Reform UK will field a full slate of candidates at the next election Source - Daily Telegraph. - 24/11/22 Link Even before the rumoured new Swiss-style sell out to the European Union, the Conservative Party was already in deeper trouble than it knows. The game of musical chairs in Downing Street may be over for now, but the party is stuck at about 20% in most opinion polls. After twelve years of Tory rule, the only concrete achievement it can point to is that it “got Brexit done”. (In fact, even this claim barely stands up to scrutiny when you take into account the way Northern Ireland has been left in limbo). So, are we close to another ‘Chequers deal’ surrender, as we saw under Theresa May in 2018? The fierce denials from government ministers and Rishi Sunak in his address to the CBI this week may reassure some, but I'm far from convinced. The appointment of Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor of the Exchequer on 14 October and the installation of Sunak as...

 Whatever decision the Supreme Court takes on her holding a second referendum, the jury is out on her attitude towards voters Source - Daily Telegraph - 22/11/22 Link The nine Supreme Court justices have it in their power to make or break Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership of the SNP on Wednesday when they deliver their eagerly awaited verdict on whether she’s legally entitled to hold the referendum on independence she’s planning for Oct 19 next year. As the UK’s pre-eminent legal authority, they will not have been in the slightest bit interested in her future, or the lack of one.  Instead, they have been considering the referendum issue for more than two months now after Scotland’s First Minister referred the matter to them when even her own government’s senior law officer – Dorothy Bain KC, the Lord Advocate – said that she was unable to rule that Ms Sturgeon’s Indyref2 plan was possible without the say-so of Westminster. It is expected, by Unionists and most nationalists alike, t...

 On tax cuts, public spending and Covid lockdowns, the Labour leader’s attack lines are becoming rather blunted Source - Daily Telegraph 17/11/22 Link In the early months of the 2010 parliament, David Cameron’s coalition government succeeded in establishing the narrative that the structural deficit was all the fault of Labour overspending, rather than the drastic collapse of tax revenues caused by a recession which itself was sparked by the global financial crisis. Labour at the time was too focused on electing Ed Miliband leader to rebut any of these claims, and so lost a crucial argument. Now the shoe is on the other foot and Keir Starmer’s party has been making hay with this government’s various self-inflicted mistakes, which have resulted, among other things, in a receptive audience willing to believe pretty much anything about the Conservative Party. A couple of fascinating examples spring to mind. The first is the opprobrium Labour’s front bench poured on Liz Truss’s short-li...

 Source - CApx 20/11/22 Link If we’re being generous, Jeremy Hunt made the best of a very bad hand with this week’s Autumn Statement. To quote Tom Clougherty’s piece on Thursday, the overall package was ‘sensible and measured’, without the excessive tightening some had feared. And if you’re going to raise taxes, doing so by freezing thresholds is a slightly less painful way of doing it than raising rates directly (though it is also the fiscal version of ‘Boiling Frog Britain’). The basic political rationale, set out here, is that a painful Budget paves the way for brighter times closer to the 2024 election. Maybe, but even if we assume growth does pick up, there’s a more insidious problem that a healthier economy alone won’t fix – too many things take too damn long. Whether it’s catching a train, getting a GP appointment, renewing a passport, finding your kid a nursery place or buying a home, doing ordinary stuff takes longer – not than it should in an ideal world, but than it used...

 The war in Ukraine has exposed the deep divisions between member states. Source - Spiked - 18/11/22 Link The war in Ukraine was the first true test of the European Union’s ability to act as a geopolitical player. It was a chance for the EU to demonstrate that its version of supranational governance could offer an actual alternative to the nation-state-centred world of international relations. This was to be the birth of a ‘geopolitical Europe’, proclaimed the EU’s leaders following Russia’s invasion. After eight months of war, it is clear that the EU has failed this test. Far from projecting a unified stance on the global stage, EU member states are asserting their national interests ever more loudly. Germany and France, for instance, have been busy calling for unanimous voting in the European Council to be replaced by majority voting. This would allow them to use their economic power to strong-arm weaker members into voting with either Paris or Berlin on major issues. At the same...

 We need to create wealth to build a modern, prosperous economy – not tax it all away Source - Daily Telegraph - 18/11/22 Link Chancellor Jeremy Hunt went out of his way to attack what he himself chose to describe as “unearned income” in his autumn statement this week.  He followed those words with actions, announcing an extra tax on dividends,a windfall levy on excess profits, new rounds of charges on landlords, an increase in the rates on property, and of course a steep rise in inheritance tax, even if that one was slipped into the speech so stealthily even Gordon Brown might have felt ashamed of the subterfuge.  The truth is the entire premise of Hunt’s plans is flawed. In reality, there is no such thing as “unearned income”. All income is “earned”.  As any economics textbook will tell you, capital is a scarce resource just like land and labour. If an entrepreneur commits capital to a new venture, then he or she has earned the dividends that might one day flow fro...

 Fiscal tightening plus high interest rates is a dreadful combination   Young adults in Britain remain trapped in a permanent adolescence   What is infuriating about this is that it really does not need to be this way Source - CAPX 17/11/22 Link The last time a set of books looked this bad was – well, this week, when we finally got a glimpse into the black hole left by FTX losing several billion down the back of the world’s largest sofa. Britain’s young people can at least reflect that they are probably in better shape than FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. That is, unfortunately, the full extent of the good news. Today’s Autumn Statement was the latest confirmation that at some point British politicians replaced the idea that ‘people should be able to live well’ with ‘pensioners should be able to live well, and damn the rest’. You are expected to scrimp, save, forgo the pleasures of youth, postpone having a family, and possibly never have one, in order that your money and earni...

 Chancellor launches stealth tax raid and squeezes department budgets in a belt-tightening Autumn Statement Source - Daily Telegraph - 17/11/22 Link Jeremy Hunt has delivered billions of pounds of extra NHS and schools funding but launched a slew of stealth taxes to shore up the country's finances in a belt-tightening Autumn Statement. The Chancellor has frozen or cut a number of tax thresholds, extended the windfall tax on energy producers and put the squeeze on department budgets.  Mr Hunt said his plan will lead to a shallower recession and higher long-term growth as he promised to prioritise "stability, growth, and public services". He found a total of £55bn in tax increases and spending restraints to help boost the country's coffers He said: "British families make sacrifices every day to live within their means and so too must their government because the UK will always pay its way." Here are all of Mr Hunt's measures from the Autumn Statement: Econ...

 Chancellor vows to fight labour shortages as Sunak urges restraint on executive pay Source - Daily Telegraph 15/11/22 Link Jeremy Hunt is preparing to announce measures to help the long-term sick back into jobs on Thursday, as figures showed that a record 2.5million people are now unable to work because of persistent illness.  The Chancellor is expected to use Thursday’s Autumn Statement to warn that labour shortages are fuelling spiralling inflation by reducing the workforce and pushing up wages.  Data from the Office for National Statistics show that the number of people classed as long-term sick rose by 133,000 in the three months to September, bringing the total to 2,519,000. This is the first time the number has tipped over 2.5m since records began in 1993. It came as Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, called on top executives to exercise pay restraint and declared that union demands for a 17.6pc pay rise for nurses are unaffordable. The rise in long-term sickness has...