Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

The Prime Minister is aware his Government is flailing, but a lack of ideas will make reform difficult Source - Daily Telegraph 02/12/24 When you are planning a relaunch just five months into your new Government, you know things are not going as well as you had hoped.  The resignation of the Transport Secretary – over an issue the Prime Minister had known about for years but did not act on – is just the latest in a litany of mis-steps and calamities. Keir Starmer will attempt to reassure his increasingly restless MPs this week that he is the man to lead them out of the morass. After 150 days of clown car, the Prime Minister’s “Plan for Change” project will have to do some heavy lifting.  Targets will be set on people’s incomes (not much to do with the state), NHS waiting times, house building, childcare, clean energy (controversial) and cutting crime. Quite what the “targets” should be on immigration and asylum, a priority for the public, are matters that are still undercooked...

The demise of cars, flights and cafes are just the start of Britain’s slump towards full-blown recession 30 November 2024 Daily Telegraph  The car manufacturing giant Stellantis is closing a factory. EasyJet is slashing the number of flights around the UK. Even the chairman of Gail’s has said that some of his businesses may have to close. If you want to buy a new car or take a Christmas break, it is about to get a lot harder. In reality, there is a common theme to all those stories: they are all part of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s shrinking economy. And from retail chains to pubs and restaurant groups it is going to get a lot worse over the next few months. For anyone who was expecting the UK to be emerging as the “fastest-growing economy in the G7” by now, as the Labour Party promised during the election campaign, it has turned into a sobering week. Stellantis announced it was closing its van-making plant in Luton, mainly in response to the Government’s crazy targets to ban the sal...