Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

  How mass immigration is undermining our national community Source Matt Goodwin 29/11/2004 What makes a nation? I’d suggest six things. A people who share a common territory, who feel a shared identity, who have a collective memory or history, speak a common language, have a similar set of values, and as a result of all these things, have a distinctive culture and way of life. Yes, economic prosperity matters. But much more important than money, than GDP, as philosopher Sir Roger Scruton once said, is a deep and powerful sense that ‘we belong together and that we will stand by each other in the real emergencies’. A nation, in other words, requires a “we” —a deep sense of unity that transcends politics and markets. And for that you need something else —social trust. For a nation to work and survive, its people must be willing to trust others in the community they do not know but who they support because they see them contributing to the collective pot, playing by the rules, and pre...

Fixing the public finances must be a priority, but if this is done in a way that stifles growth, it can’t succeed 27 November 2024 Daily Telegraph  Link “Matilda told such dreadful lies, It made one gasp and stretch one’s eyes”. In the Hilaire Belloc poem, Matilda, tired of play, tiptoes to the telephone and summons for immediate aid the London fire brigade. Her aunt eventually succeeds in persuading the attending fire fighters that they are not needed, “and even then she had to pay to get the men to go away”. A few weeks later a real fire breaks out, but every time Matilda shouts fire, they only answer “little liar”. The poem ends with Matilda, and the house, burned to the ground. Read my lips – no new taxes or borrowing, Rachel Reeves told the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) annual conference this week. “You can be confident we are not going to come back again and do another Budget like this,” she promised business leaders. Where have we heard that before? Less than six m...

The Energy Secretary’s pledge is not politically stupid, but the target date is so far in the future it’s almost meaningless 26 November 2024 Daily Telegraph  Link There were many victims of the post-Covid cost of living crisis, but among the biggest are the governments unlucky enough to have been in power when it happened. Think about it: Joe Biden gone and his supposed Democratic successor, Kamala Harris, slaughtered at the polls; Rishi Sunak gone; Emmanuel Macron still clinging to office but effectively not in power; likewise Olaf Scholz, awaiting his own imminent demise; and so on. No doubt there were myriad other factors at work, but the one constant is the steep rise in prices that took hold after the pandemic. No political leader can be directly blamed for the inflation that swept Western economies back then; yet they have all been punished for it none the less. Mr Sunak’s undoing was Sir Keir Starmer’s making. But now in power, the Labour leader is wrestling with some of th...

 Time is running out for Labour to get a grip on the cost of housing Channel crossers 25 November 2024  The Government has admitted that they have now opened more hotels for asylum seekers than they have closed. In the four months since the general election, the number of hotels in use has jumped from 213 to 220. While seven hotels were emptied, another 14 have been brought into use. Despite Labour’s election promise to close the hotels, there is no sign that they will be able to manage this anytime soon. That means taxpayers are continuing to support over 30,000 asylum seekers in hotels, at a cost of £4.2 billion a year. Similarly, the Government has had to row back on their intention to end the use of large sites for asylum accommodation, with RAF Wethersfield in Essex due to expand from 540 beds to at least 800. There are two big problems, both the result of Government policy. The first is that their plan to “smash the gangs” isn’t working. The numbers crossing the English ...

After their ‘loveless landslide’ Labour have set about losing friends and alienating people at breakneck pace 25 November 2024 Daily Telegraph  Link After his first term, Tony Blair felt rueful about New Labour’s obsession with leading in the polls and resolved to push big reforms through faster even if they proved unpopular. Nobody could accuse Keir Starmer of waking up each morning fixated on winning a daily popularity contest. After receiving a Blair-sized majority on the back of a ten-point lower vote share in a notably low turnout election – the so-called “loveless landslide” – Starmer and Labour have set about losing friends and alienating people at truly breakneck pace. Their average poll rating has already declined from their already unimpressive 33.7 per cent election vote share to an average of 29 per cent now. Starmer’s personal chart tells an even starker story: he has plummeted from a net popularity rating of +11 in the immediate aftermath of the election to -38, accor...

Home Secretary ignores backlash over threat to free speech 22 November 2024  Link The Home Secretary is planning to expand the recording of non-crime hate incidents despite the backlash over the threat to free speech. Yvette Cooper is committed to reversing the Tories’ decision to downgrade the monitoring of the incidents, specifically in relation to anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, so they can be logged by police. Labour believes the current guidance to forces prevents officers from tracking tensions involving Jewish and Muslim communities that could escalate into violence and criminality. It comes amid calls by senior Tory MPs to scrap the requirement for police to record non-crime hate incidents (NCHI) or further restrict the ability of officers to log them to protect free speech in the wake of the Allison Pearson row. A Home Office source said: “It is part of our manifesto commitment so we will work with the College of Policing to understand the best way of doing that so police ...

Keir Starmer is brazenly trying to take money from people who don’t vote for his party and give it to people who do 20 November 2024 Daily Telegraph  Link In just 10 words, Tuesday’s front-page headline summed up everything that’s wrong with this Government. It read: “Farmers Must Pay Up for the NHS, says Rachel Reeves”.  Well, of course. That was bound to be the excuse she fell back on. Because, in Labour’s eyes, “paying up for the NHS” isn’t merely about funding a public service. It’s a sacred and holy duty. An ancient, mystical rite. Listening to the Chancellor, you’d think she was the chief of some remote and primitive tribe, commanding them to make sacrifices to appease the gods. “In the name of Our NHS, each man must hand over his first-born child. If the gods are pleased, they may reduce hospital waiting lists from 7.57m to 7.56m.” At any rate, I hope the public won’t be fooled. Because, whatever the Government may say, I don’t believe for a moment that its policy on fa...

Sir Keir Starmer has backed the International Criminal Court (ICC) after it issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. Source - Daily Telegraph -  Link When asked about the issue, Sir Keir’s official spokesman said the Government respected the independence of the court. He declined to say whether Mr Netanyahu would be arrested if he arrived in the UK. The spokesman said: “We respect the independence of the ICC, which is the primary institutional institution for investigating and prosecuting the most serious crimes in relation to international law. “This Government has been clear that Israel has a right to defend itself in accordance with international law. There is no moral equivalence between Israel, a democracy and Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah, which are terror groups. “We remain focused on pushing for an immediate ceasefire to bring an end to the devastating violence in Gaza.” Under the Conservatives, the British government had told the court it...

Louise Haigh and Jonathan Reynolds are bound to butt heads over the green transition 18 November 2024 - Daily Telegraph Link It was Europe for the Conservatives for much of the last twenty years, reform of public services and the Iraq war for the Blair government, and Europe again during the Thatcher years. Every governing party starts fighting amongst themselves eventually. And this government won’t be any different.  With looming job losses from Ed Miliband’s ideological crusade to make Britain the global leader on climate change it is already clear that a civil war within Labour is about to break out over net zero – and the battle will be a vicious one.  At a crunch meeting later this week, the car-makers will tell the Transport Secretary Louise Haigh and the Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds that thousands of jobs in the industry will soon be lost because of the unrealistic targets to sell Electric Vehicles.  The companies already have to make sure that 22 per cent...

Luxury property sales slumped amid uncertainty around tax changes, analysis reveals 18 November 2024 - Daily Telegraph  Link Uncertainty ahead of Labour’s Budget sparked a slump in luxury property sales – costing the Treasury £140m in lost stamp duty, analysis shows. Nervousness around how the Chancellor would target wealth deterred investors from buying homes worth more than £5m, experts said. Research by Knight Frank, the estate agents, found there was a shortfall of 107 property sales worth between £5m and £10m between March and October. For properties worth over £10m, there was a shortfall of 35 sales. The loss equated to £140.3m in stamp duty revenue, Knight Frank said. It comes as Labour faces criticism for its failure to stamp out rumours ahead of the October 30 Budget around what could have been included. Reports ahead of the event speculated that Rachel Reeves was about to impose a number of drastic changes to capital gains tax, stamp duty and the non-dom regime. She also ...

Despite compelling CCTV footage, the Crown Prosecution Service has not charged anyone over Manchester Airport attack 17 November 2024- Daily Telegraph  Link Policing by consent has always been central to Britain’s model of policing, since the days of Robert Peel, the founder of the Metropolitan Police. Critically this means having public approval and support, trust in officers, as well as community-based relationships. The unspoken part of this contract is that it relies on officers serving by consent, putting themselves in harm’s way, usually unarmed. Officers trust that they will be fairly protected and looked after when trouble occurs. They know they will be held accountable and must hold themselves to a higher standard of behaviour and performance. Everything breaks down if that trust is broken and officers fear they will be abandoned, or used as cannon fodder to suit the political motive of their bosses, other authorities and mainstream politicians. Experienced officers will l...

The Welsh government has been on a crusade to rid Wales of racism, largely the imaginary kind. spiked -  15th November 2024 Link In the eyes of every Welsh public body, quango and activist group, Wales is apparently dominated by ever-more insidious forms of racism. Since 2020 and the rise of Black Lives Matter, the Welsh state has been engaged in a farcical attempt to find racism in every nook and cranny, encouraging various third-sector organisations to join in the hunt. In August, it emerged that the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals now views the names of various Welsh buildings as a potential source of racial enmity. Allegedly, pubs with names like The Buccaneer Inn – due to pirates’ liminal association with the slave trade – ‘represent a racist legacy’. Now a new potential source of discrimination has been identified. Namely, dog-walking. This, at least, is the implication made by a report by environmental group Climate Cymru BAME, submitted to the W...

Starmer’s ministers are imbued with the Marxist poison they inculcated at Britain’s fetid universities The spiteful remark of John McTernan, a former Labour adviser, about “doing to the farmers what Margaret Thatcher did to the miners” reflects an unwelcome change in the character of the Left.  The remark has brought out into the open what some of us suspected already: that a significant part of the Left is more driven by hatred of the rich than by love and concern for the poor. McTernan’s remark included nothing about any public benefit. It was all about hurting family farms. It reflected a desire for vengeance. The imposition of VAT on private school fees was this attitude in action. The tax will raise less than first thought. The Labour Party appears not to have thought in advance about the extra cost to the state of providing schooling for those children priced out of private education. It did not care that the overall level of education in this country would be harmed by the t...

 The Chancellor’s pig-headedness will ruin her party – and her country Source - Daily Telegraph  Link As the Budget continues to cast its horrific spell over the UK economy, it is becoming increasingly clear Chancellor Rachel Reeves did not put enough thought and effort into it. If she insists she did her due diligence, then she stands accused of putting ideology before economic reality. The real danger is that thanks to Ms Reeves’s decisions, the wealth-creating private sector will not generate the economic growth that is required to generate the tax revenues the Government is relying upon – forcing the Chancellor to come back with more plans for higher taxes and greater borrowing to cover the shortfall. Either she did her homework but came up with the wrong answers – or she listened to all the wrong people and is stubbornly refusing to make it right.  Neither is a good look and must surely drive support away from the Government – which polling already suggests is happen...

 Now even newspaper columnists are being investigated for their tweets. Spiked 13th November 2024 Link As she was getting ready for a Remembrance Sunday memorial last weekend, Telegraph journalist Allison Pearson heard a knock at her door. Two policemen had turned up, she claims in an article published last night, to accuse her of a ‘non-crime hate incident’ – a tool used by police to record accusations of ‘hateful’ speech, even when no law has been broken. When she asked what tweet this was regarding, and who had made the complaint against her, she was rebuffed by the officers, according to her account. A newspaper columnist being visited by the police, over tweets? It sounds like the stuff of dystopian fiction. And yet it is all too real. Following Pearson’s revelations last night, Essex Police have confirmed that they are investigating her under the Public Order Act, which criminalises material ‘likely or intended to cause racial hatred’. It seems that this is being treated as a...

What I told the People's Army --my full 30-minute speech Matt Goodwin’s Substack 12/11/24 As I said a few days ago, when it comes to predicting what will happen in global politics we have a remarkably good track record. We said Kamala Harris would be a disaster. We said Donald Trump would win by a landslide. We said Trump would do so while ‘realigning’ his coalition. Back in July, we said the British Tories would collapse. We said the new Labour government would quickly be one of the most unpopular on record. And we said that Nigel Farage and Reform, like national populists across Europe, would surge, which they did, winning four million voters, five MPs, and taking one in four Tory voters. Which is why today I feel confident in making another prediction. Two years from now, in 2026, the same global realignment that just swept Donald Trump back into the White House, will deliver another seismic shock in British politics before going on to reshape the country’s politics at the 2029 ...

Tax rises threaten to turn high streets into ‘ghost towns’ as businesses grapple with higher costs Daily Telegraph 11 November 2024  Link Rachel Reeves’s tax raid risks turning high streets into “ghost towns” for much of the week, as pubs, restaurants and shops prepare to shut earlier and open on fewer days. Retail and hospitality chiefs said they were actively looking at reducing opening hours in response to Ms Reeves’s decision to raise employers’ National Insurance contributions. It raises fears that the Budget will worsen problems for Britain’s high streets and leave town centres largely shuttered outside the busiest shopping days of the week. Luke Johnson, the chairman of bakery chain Gail’s, said Ms Reeves’s decision to raise the cost of doing business “only adds to the decline of town and city centres”. The Night Time Industries Association (NTIA), which represents bars and clubs, warned that four in 10 of its members were at risk of closing down within six months. Michael K...