Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

 The Leader of the House of Commons will need more than her sword to win over her disillusioned constituents Source - Daily Telegraph 29/06/24 Link When the Tory member for Portsmouth North carried the heavy ceremonial weapon during the coronation of King Charles III, in her role as Lord President of the Privy Council, she was widely praised for her stamina.  Outshining many of the great and the good in attendance, Mordaunt’s accomplished performance of ancient pageantry saw her unofficially crowned the breakout star of that historic day last May. But a year is a long time in politics. Now, with just days to go until the General Election, Mordaunt is fighting for her political life on Britain’s south coast.  On a baking hot day in her constituency, no-one is mentioning the sword any more. While there’s clearly still affection for Mordaunt as a local MP, there are plenty who won’t let that get in the way of their vote.  Constituents like Tony Burnham, 74, who has met ...

Labour have pledged to be even tougher on private landlords than the Conservatives  Rents in Scotland were up 12.1% last year, compared to 9% in the UK as a whole – due to rent control  Shrinking the private rented sector will hurt the poorest most Source - Capx - 28/06/24 Link Attacking landlords has become the great bipartisan cause in British politics. It is a convenient displacement activity. After all, the real culprits when it comes to high rents are the politicians themselves – for maintaining planning rules which restrict the housing supply. It doesn’t help matters that much of the media is willing to accept the politicians’ spin at face value. The outgoing government has been seeking to forbid landlords and tenants from signing fixed-term contracts. This astonishing attack on basic property rights and the ability to conduct voluntary transactions was sold to the public as an end to ‘no fault evictions’. Such phrases twist language until it loses all meaning. Would we ...

The Labour leader refuses to understand why gender ideology is so dangerous. Source - Spiked 27/06/24 Link As the Telegraph noted this week, Keir Starmer’s pledge to remove ‘gender ideology’ from schools is hollow, as he doesn’t understand what the term means. This the Labour leader has in common with many comfortable, middle-class men who only read the Guardian and get their news from the BBC. These men – and I was once among them – refuse to believe stories from ‘unclean’ sources. Thus, many people in this country are as clueless as Starmer is on gender ideology, though they at least have the excuse that they aren’t about to run the sixth-largest economy in the world. In the end, that’s no excuse either. It’s 2024 and it ought to be common knowledge by now that a few brave, despised women are fending off a vicious male sexual-rights movement that threatens them, their children, and the vulnerable. Lesbians are subjected to protests and sabotage when they put on female-exclusive event...

In slamming Badenoch, the actor couldn’t conceive legions of women have a legitimate reason for fearing the erosion of women’s rights Source - Daily Telegraph - 26/06/24 By the time the 2010 general election came around, David Tennant had already come and gone as the lead actor in Doctor Who and was carving out another starring role in Labour MPs’ election literature. Tenant had outed himself as a Labour supporter and, faced with defeat at a national level, Labour candidates were keen to make the most of his public endorsement.  But this week his association with Keir Starmer’s party became suddenly a touch more problematic. In an acceptance speech at the British LGBT Awards, Tennant launched a personal attack on women and equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch, publicly wishing that he lived in a world in which “Kemi Badenoch doesn’t exist any more.” Perhaps recognising that wishing the government’s only black female minister didn’t exist was not a great look, he followed up with a ha...

Conservative pragmatism has been torn to shreds by the howling gales of astonishing incompetence Source - Daily Telegraph 25/06/24 Link   The outcome of the general election is now considered such a foregone conclusion that the post-mortem examination is being conducted while the corpse is still twitching. Many pundits and politicians seem to think that the Government’s imminent demise can be explained by its failure to listen to one faction or another. There are, for example, plenty of one-nation Tories who argue that elections are won on the centre ground and their party lost its way when it lurched to the Right in order to protect that flank against Ukip, Brexit Party and Reform insurgencies. At the same time, many on the Right counter that the Conservative Party is no longer conservative enough because it has been corrupted by “wets” who have hiked the tax burden to a post-war high and embraced net zero. Certainly, the Tories have lurched around so much that they have provided ...

A Starmer government is destined to be vulnerable to the bad influences of the Blob in all its facets Source - Daily Telegraph 24/06/24 As the Tory party teeters on the brink, so, too, does Britain. Like much of its middle class, our nation is “bougie broke”. The parties might insist that there is still money for their various projects, but under the surface the country is a smoking ruin. Its finances are in such a mess that the state now spends four times more on debt interest than social care. Fifteen years into wage stagnation, Texan gas station managers can make more than London professionals.  The danger is that, under Labour, Britain will be tipped over the edge. Indeed, amid widespread voter apathy, there is one group that will be delighted at the prospect of Sir Keir Starmer as prime minister: the Blob in all its facets. The anti-Brexit establishment in Whitehall – which has done so much to mire the country in its mess – will be gleeful at the prospect of a government led b...

 It is the third ballot in a row in which Nigel Farage’s party has achieved its highest share since the party’s official creation Source - Daily Telegraph 22/06/24 Link Having already hit a five-year low last week with the pollster Savanta, the share of people planning to vote for the Conservative Party has slumped by a further two points amid warnings of a “collapse” in support. The exclusive poll for The Telegraph showed Labour on 42 per cent (up two points), the Tories on 19 per cent and Reform on 16 per cent (up two). It is the third poll in a row in which Reform has achieved its highest share in a Savanta poll since the party’s official creation in January 2021. The Liberal Democrats were on 9 per cent (down two points) with the Green Party on 5 per cent (down one) and the Scottish National Party on 3 per cent (no change). Savanta interviewed 2,103 UK adults aged 18 and over between June 19 and 21. Emma Levin, Savanta’s associate director, said: “Our research suggests that we ...

This insidious, illiberal ideology has nothing to do with protecting the marginalised. Source - Spiked - 16/06/24 Link Most will already have some idea of the problem commonly referred to as ‘wokeism’ or ‘cancel culture’. Because these terms are so slippery, it can be very hard to define them in a universally accepted way and therefore to criticise them. This is made especially hard when advocates of the theories behind this particular form of activism insist that the word ‘woke’ is a just pejorative used by right-wing bigots to prevent people from talking about social justice. Or they maintain that cancel culture is a myth created to shield those with privilege from accountability and to delegitimise the marginalised who call out bigotry. Nevertheless, ‘wokeism’ refers to a real phenomenon with identifiable characteristics. It is not simply about opposition to racism or other bigotries. Equally, cancel culture refers to a real phenomenon that extends beyond heaping scorn on celebritie...

Boost from Euros and Olympics comes too late as business rates punish dwindling sector Source - Daily Telegraph - 17/06/24 Landlords will be hoping for a welcome boost from the Euros and Olympics this summer, but for many pubs it will come too late. Pubs are disappearing at a rate of 80 a month across England and Wales so far this year, according to analysis of official figures by property consultancy Altus Group. The monthly rate of “vanishing” pubs has jumped by 56pc compared to last year. The analysis measures the number of premises that have been either demolished or repurposed and includes some that were sitting vacant or up for let before disappearing. However, the findings suggest an accelerating decline in the number of pubs across the country. Nearly 240 have closed down and either been demolished or converted into homes, offices or businesses so far this year, according to Altus. Wales and the North West have seen the largest decline in pub premises over the past year, with 7...

 Should employees avoid socialising at the pub to not offend those who don't drink?   EDI enthusiasts want minority groups to decide how staff members enjoy themselves after work   We should not allow the thin-skinned to dictate how we spend our time Source Capx 13/06/24 Link 13/06/24 There’s a problem with EDI enthusiasts. Their well-meaning aim to avoid putting anyone at an unfair advantage can quickly turn into the kind of joyless puritanism we used to expect from temperance campaigners in 1890 or a delicate maiden aunt in one of the Just William books. If you don’t believe this, have a look at a story about a report from progressive Islington recruitment consultants Rare, self-styled ‘leaders in diversity graduate recruitment’ to the upmarket legal profession, who believe passionately in ‘driving equality through technology’. A serious problem, according to this report, is that top City law firms organise far too many social gatherings in pubs. It’s not that the pubs ...

 Here are a selection of letters to the Telegraph from people who have previously voted Conservative. 16/06/24 Source - Daily Telegraph.  SIR – As a long-term member of the Conservative Party, I cannot wait to see the back of this totally incompetent Government. These Blairites must never be allowed to return.There are a few good MPs, like Penny Mordaunt, and I can only hope that they will join together with Nigel Farage to form a new, invigorated and competent Conservative Party. Meanwhile, I’ll vote for Reform UK. David BowenL yme Regis, Dorset SIR – There is now no choice. We have to endure a period of unpleasantness under Labour for the Conservatives to have any chance of redemption. Simon Warde Bognor Regis, West Sussex SIR – Sadly, Allister Heath’s “populist tsunami” (Comment, June 12) has long been predictable. It is not surprising that lifelong Conservatives are moving to Reform en masse. After decades of party membership, I resigned four years ago. By then the One ...

 Keir Starmer has proposed a dizzying combination of potentially damaging measures   Labour's proposals threaten the integrity of the House of Lords   Lower the voting age to 16 is a recipe for political disaster Constitutional reform is a difficult issue in politics, because it is complicated, important and, to most people, quite boring. Those who do take an interest, conversely, often inflate its significance. The Labour Party’s manifesto restricts constitutional change to a modest few pages, which may seem appropriate given the other challenges facing the country. Yet Keir Starmer and his advisers have managed to cram into those few pages a dizzying combination of proposals which are variously pointless, misconceived and potentially damaging. Perhaps this shouldn’t surprise us, after all, the Labour leader has a history with such issues. In 2020, Starmer asked former prime minister Gordon Brown to convene a commission of experts and interested parties and produce plans...

The prime minster unwittingly created the best possible circumstances for his party to be eclipsed by Reform Source - Daily Telegraph - 14/06/24 Link In the least surprising, but no less dramatic, development of the general election campaign, one poll has placed Nigel Farage’s Reform UK ahead of the Conservatives. It may be an outlier, and the one-point lead is within the margin of error. But that hardly matters. The fact that Rishi Sunak’s party is vying for second place with a Right-wing rival speaks volumes about just how disastrous the Conservative campaign has been so far. And the Conservatives know the game is up. You can almost see the panic in their eyes every time they appear on our TV screens. From a psychological perspective, they have already conceded; they’ve gone beyond denial and are fast on the way to anger and acceptance. But this is about more than a single campaign. The Conservatives have been written off before; there were many obituaries written in the aftermath of...