Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

 As dawn broke on January 1, 2022 the nation could have been forgiven for looking to the year ahead with cautious optimism. The success of the vaccine booster scheme combined with the milder Omicron variant had turned Covid from a terrifying killer into little more than a sniffle for many. With the pandemic fading into the background, supply chains would surely open up again, easing inflation; outrage over alleged breaches of lockdown would fade as restrictions lifted and a government with a comfortable majority could get on with Levelling Up, seizing all those lovely Brexit opportunities and cruising towards another election victory for Boris Johnson. Except it didn’t quite turn out that way… Here’s CapX’s round-up of a baffling year. Source - CAPX - 20/12/22 Link January One question dominated the start of the year: What is a party? As details emerged of Downing Street staff drinking, vomiting, filling suitcases with booze and breaking swings during lockdown, including on the eve...

 The Welsh First Minister's pitiful record is surely all the evidence needed that devolution is a disaster Source - Daily Telegraph - 28/12/22 Link Sterling crashed to its lowest level in years. Inflation hit rates we have not witnessed in half a century. Prime ministers came and went with embarrassing regularity, and Harry Kane even fluffed a penalty at the World Cup. All things considered, 2022 was not exactly a great 12 months for anyone. And yet, with just a couple of days left until the calendar closes the door on the year forever, we finally have at least one piece of good news. Mark Drakeford has said that he is planning to step down as Welsh First Minister by 2024. Sure, he will cling onto power for a while yet before he heads into retirement. But we should celebrate the approaching end of his time in office nonetheless – since in his quietly shambolic way, the sanctimonious former academic has come to embody everything that has gone wrong with devolution. Drakeford has nev...

On everything from the Lords to gender politics, they cannot resist the unserious and unpopular Source - Daily Telegraph 28/12/22 Link This year’s Christmas number one – an execrable rehash of Band Aid’s Do They Know it’s Christmas? – once again involved recycling an old chart-topper. Nostalgia may be the norm at this time of year, but it seems a little much to extend the festive regression to the field of policy. And yet Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour has come to specialise in unconvincing cover versions of New Labour’s greatest hits (read: worst excesses). The old class war element is back; performative fights with rural and middle-class voters. There’s that familiar Blairite mixture of cronyism and radicalism – we’ll abolish the Lords, but not before the disgrace of putting Tom Watson in there. Perhaps Sir Keir has a war in the Middle East planned for his first term as well. Even that vintage cause célèbre, fox-hunting, is on the agenda again; though this country pursuit has long since m...

Property experts predict a plunge as buyers are priced out and sellers panic Source - Daily Telegraph 27/12/22 Link House prices will slump in 2023 as high mortgage rates crunch buyers’ budgets and bring sales to a 12-year low, analysts have warned. From peak to trough, values will fall by 12pc, according to both Capital Economics and Oxford Economics research consultancies. Lloyds bank, Pantheon Macroeconomics and the Centre for Economics and Business Research have each forecast an 8pc fall. Nationwide building society expects a 5pc drop – but in a worst-case scenario, it said values could plunge by 30pc.  Sceptical readers may cite previous forecasts for house price falls during the pandemic which never materialised. But the outlook for 2023 is very different – apart from anything else, it is clear the downturn has already begun. So how will soaring rates affect the market and how far might house prices fall? Growth is fast being eroded Between August and November, the average UK...

 Survey finds 32pc of adults chose Mr Johnson, with 29pc backing Rishi Sunak and just 3pc opting for Liz Truss Source - Daily Telegraph - 23/12/22 Link Boris Johnson is regarded as the “most competent” of 2022’s three prime ministers, a new poll has found. In a year that saw a trio of Conservative party leaders, the largest share of British adults chose Mr Johnson as the best, according to the People Polling survey. Thirty-two per cent of respondents said they thought he had been the most competent, followed by 29 per cent for Rishi Sunak. Just three per cent opted for Liz Truss, who lasted just 45 days in Downing Street before standing down following a disastrous mini-Budget that saw the pound crash and the Bank of England forced into an emergency intervention to calm market turmoil. The same question was put to those who voted for the Conservatives in the 2019 election. Among Tory voters, 62 per cent said Mr Johnson was the most competent, followed by 22 per cent choosing Mr Suna...

Oil and gas will play a crucial part in the transition to a greener future Source - Daily Telegraph - 24/12/22 Link A lot can change in a year. This may seem like a trite observation, but anyone with even a passing interest in the UK’s offshore energy sector, whether investor or protestor, will tell you it is also undeniably true. Twelve months ago, the North Sea oil and gas industry appeared to have reached a nadir in the popularity stakes. The much-heralded COP26 conference in Glasgow, which largely excluded fossil fuels companies, was still fresh in people’s minds. The future of the Cambo and Rosebank projects had received a great deal of publicity and the debate around the energy transition and climate change was growing ever more polarised. Protests were becoming more frequent and disruptive – a portent of what was to come.  Government, industry and indeed ourselves at the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) were in the midst of judicial reviews into decisions made on North ...

 Government had been braced for disruption as a week-long strike by 1,000 passport staff at six airports began Source - Daily Telegraph 23/12/22 Link Passengers have said they wish the Army could man the borders permanently after airports ran smoothly on Friday in an “embarrassing” blow to striking Border Force workers. The Government had been braced for disruption as a week-long strike by 1,000 passport staff at six airports began. Families with young children, who cannot use electronic gates, were expected to bear the brunt of delays at border control, but there was no widespread disruption as travellers arrived home. Military personnel and civil servants filled in for Border Force at major airports, including Gatwick and Heathrow, with passengers who had expected “carnage” suggesting border checks were quicker than normal. Oliver Cohen, 31, from London, whose flight from Antigua to Heathrow landed at 9am, said the “military precision” of passport control was “embarrassing” for s...

 That Zelensky went to the US, not Brussels, is a sign of Europe’s disgraceful failure to back Ukraine Source - Daily Telegraph - 22/12/22 Link Naturally, President Zelensky’s appearance before Congress, as a war-time leader appealing for American support, has been likened to Winston Churchill’s address on almost exactly the same date in 1941. Yet by then the US had declared war on Germany and victory was arguably assured. Today in Ukraine, victory is far from assured. Putin could still win. A more appropriate comparison would be with Churchill’s conference with Franklin D Roosevelt on board the USS Augusta and HMS Prince of Wales in August 1941. As with Ukraine, the US had been supplying arms to the UK. Churchill’s purpose, like Zelensky’s, was to consolidate US support for a long war ahead. Though even this is not like-for-like. In 1941, with all of Europe occupied, Churchill had nowhere else to turn. That is, of course, not the situation today – Europe is free and prosperous. So...

This demagogue of a second-rate politician is determined to force her will on a reluctant Scotland in spite of the damage it will cause Source - Daily Telegraph - 21/12/22 Link What Nicola Sturgeon has managed to do in the space of the last few days has been to turn a genuine, if misguided, democratic experiment - devolution - into a downright disgrace. In normal circumstances, maybe laughing stock would be a better description - given the farcical scenes acted out at the Scottish Parliament. But disgrace really is the appropriate term for what Sturgeon has perpetrated this week: here we had a demagogue of a second-rate politician determined to force her will on a reluctant people and all for the sake of boosting her ego and seeking to carve an international reputation for herself as a major social reformer. Instead, however, by using what she thought was the untrammelled power that her squalid coalition deal with the Scottish Greens gave her, all she’s done has been to damage not just...

 Panic over avian flu led many to buy frozen or to choose a different meat altogether this Christmas – leaving poultry suppliers overstocked Source - Daily Telegraph - 20/12/22 Link As we come to the end of a year of shortages which, at one time or another, saw our shelves bare of everything from cooking oil to mustard and eggs, it seemed inevitable, perhaps, that we would see out 2022 unable to track down a turkey.  A few months ago, as we began to hear about rafters of turkeys blighted by avian flu and warnings of Christmas shortages, many of us began to make alternative plans. For some, that meant forgoing the traditional 6kg bird altogether and planning the Christmas meal around a rib of beef, a large chicken or slab of pork shoulder. For others, it was a case of clearing a drawer in the freezer early for one of the thousands of turkeys that were being slaughtered and sold frozen well ahead of the big day.  We are now just four days away from Christmas lunch and, far ...

 Brexit is to thank for our renewed confidence in the world, from striking trade deals to assisting Ukraine Source - Daily Telegraph - 14/12/22 Link There should now be little doubt that Brexit was the greatest victory for democracy in post-war British history. At a stroke the majority of voters repudiated the defeatism of their political and cultural elites and reclaimed their national sovereignty. Today, we no longer have to pay billions of pounds annually to unelected foreign bureaucrats to make up laws designed to ruin us. Nor have we had to arrest people for preparing to overthrow the state, as in Germany. Our government does not face accusations of spying on opposition politicians, as in Greece. It does not have to worry about Hungary vetoing financial aid to Ukraine. Moreover, our Parliament has not seen the arrest of a senior member as part of a probe into corruption by a foreign state. Finally, we are not faced with wartime reparation demands of trillions of pounds, as Ger...

 The devolved administration will learn taxes can’t go up forever without consequences Source - Daily Telegraph - 17/12/22 Link A few years ago, before the pandemic, anyone travelling on the London Underground was likely to see a picture of an idyllic beach with the sun setting in the background and a couple pulling their canoes towards the sea. “Now is the time for work life balance”, ran the copy. “Live in Scotland”. It was artfully created to tempt London commuters, probably jammed up next to each other while they waited ten minutes for the signals to change, to contemplate a more peaceful way of life on the other side of the border. Who knows, perhaps a few were even persuaded to make the move.  But if it is acceptable for the Scottish Government to spend money tempting jobs out of London, then perhaps the trick can be reversed. This week Nicola Sturgeon’s devolved administration put up taxes yet again, raising the top rates even further above English levels. It is not far...

Scandal and impotence in the face of rebellion from individual member states mean there’s little cause for festive cheer in Brussels Source - Daily Telegraph - 16/12/22 Link The EU is not a happy family this festive season.  A corruption scandal in the European Parliament has embarrassed Brussels as it seeks to financially punish member states for their own alleged “rule of law” failures. And arguments over corruption are now poisoning the bloc’s internal relations, torpedoing its ability to act quickly just when Ukraine needs its support the most.  EU leaders thought a long-delayed €18 billion loan package for Ukraine was finally over the line when, after weeks of wrangling, Hungary’s opposition was unblocked earlier this week. Viktor Orbán had used his veto powers over the loan as leverage in negotiations on the withholding of EU funds for Hungary due to corruption concerns.  But the Ukraine aid was tied to other EU initiatives too, including the implementation of a glo...

 A more streamlined asylum system with annual quotas is sensible   A solid target is one thing, a deliverable plan quite another   Speeding up processing may turn out to be trickier than expected Source - CAPX - 14/12/22 Link In a policy area all too often characterised by vague blandishments, Rishi Sunak’s introduction of a concrete, testable target to deal with the backlog of asylum claims is a welcome development.  With pressure building on the Home Office to get to grips with the Channel crossings, the PM has declared that the small-boats crisis on the south coast is a priority for his premiership. To that end, a dedicated unit of 400 specialists will be set up to handle asylum claims from Albanian citizens, who represent a significant chunk of those entering the UK via the English Channel. Ministers have accused some of those same migrants of exploiting the system – particularly the 2015 Modern Slavery Act, to get around immigration rules.  In Parliament ye...

 Source - Choppers politics 14/12/22 Link Afternoon, Rishi Sunak received one of the loudest welcomes I have heard from Conservative MPs today as he turned up for the final Prime Minister's Questions of the year. Part of the cheers were out of sheer relief from Tory MPs that the end of a torrid year for the party is in sight. Parliament rises for its recess on Tuesday but most MPs are heading off for Christmas tomorrow night. At Prime Minister's Questions, Sunak clashed with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer over tomorrow's nurses' strike, as he accused the PM of "playing games with people's health" and urged ministers to intervene to stop the strike tomorrow. Sunak was having none of it: "The honourable gentleman says to get round the table but we all know what that means, that is just simply a political formula for avoiding taking a position on this issue. "If he thinks the strikes are wrong, he should say so. If he thinks it is right that pay dem...

 Read this exclusive extract from our Economic Intelligence newsletter and sign up at the bottom of the article to get it every Tuesday Spurce - Daily Telegraph 13/12/22 Link Nuclear fusion has long been a graveyard littered with unfulfilled promises. A spectacular breakthrough over recent days at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California does not yet guarantee the world bountiful clean, cheap, and safe energy. It does not get us off the hook on climate change or allow us to dodge the immense upheaval of net zero by 2050; nor does it alone put the old fossil-based order out of business. But mankind can now replicate the process of the sun and the stars within a laboratory. That is astounding. We can plausibly look forward to commercial fusion plants producing the first baseload power for electricity grids by the early to mid 2030s, and possibly slightly sooner.  The question is no longer whether it can be done, but how soon the first commercial start-up can crac...