Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

Matt Goodwin Mar 29 There are some images that come to symbol a much wider crisis. And in the years ahead the image you can see above will become one such symbol. What does it show? It shows six police offices in the county of Hertfordshire, England, approaching the front door of a house to arrest two parents. And what was their alleged crime? Did they assault somebody? Did they steal something? Were they shoplifting? Did they ram their car into a crowded market? No. They complained about their local school in a parents’ WhatsApp group. I’m not joking. I’m deadly serious. Prior to being arrested by no less than six police officers from Hertfordshire Constabulary —which, like other police authorities across England, is struggling to solve burglaries, stop shoplifting and end a surge of violent crime—the parents had dared to question the process through which their local school was recruiting a headteacher and appeared critical of school governors in a WhatsApp group. All this, apparentl...

Rachel Reeves’s decision to raise rates dramatically backfires as investors sell up Daily Telegraph  Link The Chancellor’s decision to raise capital gains tax will leave a £23bn hole in the public purse, the budget watchdog has warned. Rachel Reeves increased the top rate of capital gains tax by 4 percentage points in her maiden Budget last year while stripping back relief offered to those selling companies or shares. However, analysis of official forecasts suggest the tax raid has backfired as investors raced to sell up their assets before the new rates come into effect. Following Wednesday’s Spring Statement, the Office for Budget Responsibility downgraded its forecast for capital gains tax intake for every year for the next five years, wiping £23bn off the projected tax intake by 2030. Immediately following the announcement in October, the main rates of capital gains tax rose from 10pc to 18pc for basic-rate taxpayers, and from 20pc to 24pc for higher-rate taxpayers. There will ...

The Chancellor’s tinkering this week will do nothing to allay the growing threat of an economic crisis David Frost Daily Telegraph  Link What to say about Wednesday’s Spring Statement? The truth is that it barely matters. The Government has achieved its primary aim, which is to match one very large predicted number, ie, that of taxation, with another, spending, in 2030. It’s all guesswork. No one really believes in the welfare savings, the growth figures, or much else. But the numbers add up somehow. One side gives it ritual support, the other ritual opposition. And the world moves on. The event is meaningless, not because things are going well, but because they are going very badly indeed. If they are honest with themselves, Starmer and Reeves will be staring in alarm at what their stewardship has done so far to the British economy. They remind me of nothing so much as two incompetent magicians – the Incredible Starmo and his glamorous assistant Rachel – who have been doing the Sm...

Retirees approach ‘bizarre tax cliff-edge’ as thresholds remain frozen under Rachel Reeves Daily Telegraph  Link Almost three quarters of a million more retirees could be forced to pay income tax from next year, analysis suggests. Around 8.5 million people aged 66 and over already pay tax each year, but this could rise to 9.2 million from April 2026, Sir Steve Webb, the former pensions minister, said. The figures come after a new forecast, released this week by the Office for Budget Responsibility, suggested that the state pension will rise by 4.6pc next year in line with the triple lock. Anyone on the full new state pension would start paying tax after just £46 of additional income. The benefit itself is on course to become taxable by 2027 – a phenomenon the Conservatives dubbed “Labour’s retirement tax” in last year’s general election campaign. The state pension rises each year by the highest of wages, inflation or 2.5pc under the triple lock. According to the Office for Budget R...

 Thoughts on today's Spring Statement Matt Goodwin Mar 26 Britain’s economy, in case you haven’t noticed, is in the toilet. Growth has collapsed. Productivity is poor. Living standards have suffered one of the sharpest declines in recent history. Confidence has slumped. And prosperity feels like a distant dream. I don’t know about you but when I walk around the streets of Britain these days I feel a mix of depression and embarrassment. The streets are dirty. Public transport rarely works and when it does arrive it’s worn down. Petty crime has basically been legalised, leaving a mood of fear and anxiety hanging the air. Public services are a joke. London is dead. People are visibly struggling. And nothing seems to work. The only thing I do feel certain about is that while the present is already worse than the past, the future looks set to be even worse. And I’m clearly not the only one to feel this way. Wealth creators, entrepreneurs and investors are now fleeing Britain in much lar...

Thatcher/Lawson, Blair/Brown, Johnson/Sunak – the history of Downing St relations is not a happy one Daily Telegraph  Link Supporters of Rachel Reeves may be a dwindling band even inside the Labour Party but those who remain loyal believe she is being traduced because she is a woman. They say that compared to her male predecessors in the Treasury she is the victim of subliminal, or even overt, misogyny. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is proud to be the first female occupant of the post but her allies detect in the criticism of her first eight months the sort of snide comments that would not be aimed at a man. The classic putdown is to call her “Rachel from Accounts”, a somewhat belittling description designed to emphasise that she was not the Bank of England economics guru that we might have imagined from her CV. Criticism goes with the job and if you are too thin-skinned to take it then you would be better off pursuing another career. After all, she is by no means the first Chanc...

I hope everyone will #BeKind and affirm her new identity. Especially those on the Left Daily Telegraph  Michael Deacon Link   A 36-year-old glamour model from Germany has announced that she’s planning to emigrate to Africa – because she’s black. Admittedly she wasn’t born black. She was born with white skin, and blonde hair, to white parents. None the less, black is how she now identifies. To this end, she has had injections of a synthetic hormone called Melanotan, which has significantly darkened her pale skin. In addition, she has changed her name from Martina Adam to Malaika Kubwa, which is Swahili for “Big Angel”. What an inspiring story. All I can say is, I hope that everyone will affirm her identity. In particular, progressives. After all, it would be terrible if progressives were to say that she isn’t black. That you can’t just “identify” as something you’re not. That this woman must be delusional. That it’s obvious just from glancing at her that she isn’t what she clai...

 Manufacturing sector on track for three years of falling employment Daily Telegraph  Link Britain faces years of industrial decline as net zero sends factory energy prices rocketing, economists have warned. EY Item Club said Britain’s manufacturing sector was on track for three years of falling employment in the face of energy costs that are four times as high as those in the US, and 50pc more than those paid by factories in France and Germany. Factory output is also expected to shrink by 0.6pc this year, the influential forecaster predicted. Peter Arnold, the UK chief economist at EY, said the sky-high energy costs were the result of running down fossil fuels without a reliable replacement. He said: “UK businesses currently pay the highest electricity prices in the developed world. This has been driven by high and volatile global energy prices, particularly for gas, which has left the UK exposed given its reliance on gas for electricity and heating and, combined with declini...

Airport bosses faces accusations that back-up power failed to kick in after they replaced diesel generator with biomass version Daily Telegraph Link Heathrow is facing accusations that it was forced to shut down because it replaced its diesel generator with a net zero-compliant biomass alternative. More than 1,300 flights to and from the UK’s busiest airport were cancelled or turned away after it was forced to close following a fire that knocked out a electricity substation. Richard Tice, the deputy leader of Reform UK, said he had been told by an industry expert that the airport changed its back-up systems from a diesel generator to an environmentally friendly biomass version. He said the biomass generator appeared to have failed because it was designed only to work alongside the National Grid, and not independently if the Grid was shut off. The T2 energy centre at Heathrow, which opened in 2012, heats terminals 2 and 5 using 25,000 tonnes of wood chips per year, sourced from sustaina...

Labour MPs who oppose the Government’s cuts want more money for the benefits system, but ignore the obvious solution Daily Telegraph  Link I’m about to write a sentence that you might be surprised to read in The Telegraph before. But maybe Left-wing MPs have a point. No, come on, bear with me. Let’s say that Left-wing MPs are right to claim – as they did in the Commons on Tuesday – that the Government’s cuts to welfare have left their constituents “absolutely terrified”. Let’s say the cuts will indeed cause “pain and difficulty” to “millions”. Let’s even say that, in the words of Jeremy Corbyn’s old friend John McDonnell, the cuts will result not just in “immense suffering” but in “loss of life”. For the sake of argument, we’ll take these Left-wing MPs at their word. But only if they’re willing to consider an extremely uncomfortable fact. Liz Kendall, the minister behind the cuts, boasts that by 2030 they’ll save the country £5 billion. To put that figure in context: it’s less than...

Today’s something for nothing benefit system has little in common with Beveridge’s original vision Daily Telegraph Link Forgive me if I don’t subscribe to the apotheosis of St Keir the Convert, who won the Labour leadership just five years ago on an avowedly Left-wing platform. I simply do not believe he has suddenly morphed into a neo-Thatcherite, small-state, low-tax, regulation-hating, enterprise-friendly, economically liberal politician and, to be fair, neither does the prime minister himself. He remains an old-style collectivist driven towards public sector reform by the need to find savings in parlous fiscal circumstances, not an apostate ready to abandon his cherished socialist nostrums. Those who detect a rightward shift in Labour’s approach to welfare reform and the NHS need to define what they mean. Sir Keir believes the answer is more “active government” while many of his backbenchers don’t want any cuts. But there are some signs that a burning bush was encountered on the ro...

David Lammy says a blockade on humanitarian aid is illegal – the first such claim by a British government Daily Telegraph  Link The UK on Monday night accused Israel of breaking international law for the first time since the start of the conflict in Gaza. David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, said Benjamin Netanyahu’s country had committed “a breach of international law”, in a significant hardening of the British position. Over the past two weeks, Mr Netanyahu’s government has blocked humanitarian aid including food, fuel and medicine from entering Gaza, putting further pressure on Hamas to abide by a fragile ceasefire. In 2024, the Government suspended around 30 arms export licences to Israel for use in military operations in Gaza, after a review of Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law. Mr Lammy’s comments during a debate in Parliament were the first time the UK has explicitly accused Israel of a breach. Rupa Huq, the Labour MP for Ealing Central and Acton, used h...

We must adopt a realistic view of so-called international law. The first step is to free ourselves from a body that has lost its way 15 March 2025 3:00pm GMT Link International law is not all it’s cracked up to be. Most democracies around the world will readily resile from their international “obligations” if it suits them. They recognise, unlike the British government, that international law is secondary to national interests. This is why Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, deeply fearful of Russian aggression, has recently said that Poland will withdraw from the 1997 Ottawa Convention which bans the use of anti-personnel mines. Poland will become the first EU state to withdraw from this treaty. The Poles’ intent is probably to place landmines along the Polish borders with Russia, Belarus and Kaliningrad to deter a Russian invasion. Lithuania has also said in the last few days that it will leave a 2008 convention which bans cluster munitions. When the future of their country is at stak...

If we want to increase the defence budget, public spending must be cut – starting with welfare Source - Daily Telegraph 09/03/25 Link We often hear that our national debt is uncomfortably high, running at about 100pc of GDP. But in fact, this debt isn’t really “national” at all. It is more accurately described as public, that is to say, it is owed by the UK Government. Admittedly, some of this debt is held by foreigners but most of it isn’t. Most of it we owe to ourselves, mainly pension funds and insurance companies, as well as to some private individuals. The real national debt is rather the liabilities that we (the whole country, not just the Government) owe to foreigners. It is best to measure this net of our assets held abroad. The history of this national debt is, if anything, more dramatic than the history of public debt. It makes for a sorry tale. For most of the 19th century, we were accumulating considerable foreign assets. By the outbreak of the First World War, we had a sur...

On the latest polling to rock British politics Matt Goodwin Mar 14 It’s been a funny old week. On social media, after the very public spat between Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe, a handful of journalists and anonymous accounts are confidently declaring Reform is “no longer a serious party”, is “finished”, and “the party’s over”. But out there, in reality —where voters are too busy with work and looking after their families to spend every hour of every waking day online—it’s a very different story. In the very latest national polls—as I pointed out on X—Nigel Farage and Reform are now averaging 26% of the national vote. That’s 12-points up on what Reform polled at the general election last year. It’s 5-points higher than what Kemi Badenoch and the hapless Tories are polling. And it’s just 6-points short of what Reform need to win a majority in their own right. Indeed, of the last ten polls in British politics, Nigel Farage and Reform have finished ahead of the established parties in nearl...