Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

Kemi Badenoch calls for ‘dangerous’ Lord Hermer to go after his apology for ECHR comments 30 May 2025  Daily Telegraph  Link Sir Keir Starmer is facing pressure to sack his Attorney General after he compared calls to leave the European Convention on Human Rights to the rise of Nazism. Lord Hermer was forced to apologise on Friday for his “clumsy” remarks that likened politicians wanting to leave the ECHR to legal experts in 1930s Germany, who rejected international law and human rights in favour of state power. Following an outcry from Conservative and Reform MPs, Lord Hermer’s spokesman said he acknowledged that “his choice of words was clumsy and regrets having used this reference”, in an apology released by Downing Street. The row, an attack on the Tories and Reform, is a particular headache for Sir Keir as it comes less than a week before the Scottish Parliament by-election in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, where Nigel Farage’s party will challenge Labour, a month afte...

Supermarkets pass on costs of National Insurance raid and minimum wage rises Daily Telegraph  27/05/25 Link Food inflation is accelerating as supermarkets pass on the cost of Rachel Reeves’s tax raid. Figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and NielsenIQ showed food price inflation rose to 2.8pc in May, up from 2.6pc in April. It marks the fourth month in a row of rising food inflation. Helen Dickinson, the chief executive of the BRC, said the acceleration was driven by retailers passing on increased labour costs after measures from the Chancellor’s October Budget took effect last month. Ms Dickinson said: “With retailers now absorbing the additional £5bn in costs from April’s increased employer National Insurance contributions (NICs) and National Living Wage, it is no surprise that inflation is rearing its head once again.” Fresh food was the main driver of higher prices during the month, with the produce inflation rate jumping from 1.8pc to 2.4pc in May. The cost of stea...

John McDonnell is toying with the idea of a putsch – or failing that, a green, socialist, Islamist alliance 29 May 2025  Daily Telegraph  Link Politicians are adrift. They don’t know how to tell people the truth without frightening the horses – and perhaps it’s not surprising. Countries with ageing populations, low growth and high migration are unhappy ones, especially if, like Britain, they are running a trade deficit, debt at nearly 100 per cent of GDP, and a budget deficit all at once. We spend more on servicing our debt than on defence. This is unsustainable. Sooner rather than later, the bailiffs will come with the bill. Enter Labour. Its solution to these problems, during last year’s election campaign, was a single word: change. Or, to put it another way, throw out the Conservatives. Once they’ve gone, renewal can begin. Not just because Labour values are better than Tory ones, but because Labour people are, too. Nicer, kinder, gentler, they would – by their mere presenc...

The Reform leader is used to being maligned. But what he is about to face will be on a different scale 28 May 2025  Daily Telegraph  Link Britain has crossed the Rubicon. Nigel Farage is no longer the leader of a protest party. At the age of 61, he has graduated to being prime minister-in-waiting. His announcements are setting the agenda. He is ahead in the polls. He is winning by-elections. He controls his party with an iron fist. He boasts a huge following on social media. He is still as loathed as he is loved, but in terms of raw magnetism, of pure charisma, of presence, he is the only politician of the past 30 years in the same league as Tony Blair and Boris Johnson. Farage’s critics thought his ceiling was 15 per cent, then 20 per cent, then 25 per cent. He is now breaching 30 per cent as voters decide it’s “Nigel’s turn” and that backing Reform no longer means a wasted vote. He could top 35 per cent if he squeezes the Tories down to their 2019 Euros nadir, enough to win ...

Officialdom wants to manage what we know, say and think about this tragedy. 27th May 2025 Spiked  Link It was supposed to be a day of celebration. Tens of thousands of fans of Liverpool FC flooded into the city centre yesterday to celebrate their team winning the Premier League. Then, around 6pm, horror struck. A car ploughed into the crowds lining the streets for a victory parade. Almost 50 people were injured, four of them children. Mercifully, no one has died so far. Unusually, within just two hours of the incident, Merseyside Police issued a statement about the suspect, revealing that they had arrested a ‘53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area’. While much about the tragedy remains unclear, the police also confirmed that this is not being treated as a terrorism-related incident. The authorities’ eagerness to release this information – and to release it quickly – stands in stark contrast with their handling of that other infamous tragedy in Merseyside: the murder ...

Pressure on PM to loosen purse strings threatens to squeeze public finances 26 May 2025  Daily Telegraph  Link Sir Keir Starmer risks blowing a £5bn black hole in the public finances after U-turning on benefit cuts in the face of a backbench rebellion. The Prime Minister will cost the Treasury as much as £1.5 billion by bringing back winter fuel payments for most pensioners, while up to £3.5 billion more will be lost if he axes the two-child benefit cap. A planned reduction in net migration could cost the Treasury £7 billion more, according to Britain’s fiscal watchdog. It comes as Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, braces for another bleak set of forecasts amid speculation that she will be forced to raise taxes in her autumn Budget. Left-wing Labour MPs are clamouring for the Government to loosen the purse strings, with whips seeking to head off a potentially major rebellion. Meanwhile Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, will this week attempt to outflank Labour on welfare by cal...

As Prime Minister, Nigel Farage will unwind every line of this betrayal. That prospect looks ever more likely, there is hope for our country. We could not do any of it without you, our members.  What a week this was… The week when Starmer brought Britain to its knees Reform’s mission could not be clearer after a week that will be remembered as the moment Labour chose Brussels over Britain. Sir Keir Starmer - the man who brags he’d rather be in Davos than Westminster - has shown us exactly where his loyalties lie: the EU, foreign courts and the same corporate globalism that has so hollowed out our country. Monday: he handed over our fishing rights, handing EU trawlers twelve more years to plunder British waters and flinging the door wide open to another wave of mass immigration.  A Reform UK government will shred that deal on day one. Thursday: Starmer popped back on your screens to surrender the Chagos Islands. Diego Garcia is a cornerstone of our security, yet he’s paying Mau...

Housing Secretary triggers record number of applications as reforms backfire 13 May 2025 Daily Telegraph  Link Right to Buy applications are projected to reach a two-decade high ahead of Labour’s dramatic overhaul of the scheme, analysis suggests. The number of council tenants using Right to Buy will rocket by 162pc, with 18,500 homes changing hands in 2025-26, according to local authority predictions. But experts warned the surge would effectively undermine Angela Rayner’s home building ambitions. She previously pledged to build 18,000 new social homes by 2029. Right to Buy, a flagship policy of Margaret Thatcher, allows tenants who have lived in a council property for three years or more to purchase it from their local authority at a discounted rate. The requirement will rise to 10 years under reforms led by Ms Rayner, the Housing Secretary, who benefited from the Right to Buy scheme herself. Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, also cut the maximum discount available from £136,000 to ...

Unionists and grass roots look to regain power after years of playing second fiddle to Blairites Angela Rayner is the most obvious candidate when the Labour leadership is next up for grabs 22 May 2025  Daily Telegraph  Link Two hours after The Telegraph broke the story of the Angela Rayner memo on Tuesday night, the following WhatsApp message arrived from a Left-wing Labour MP: “Is this leak a sign that the battle for the succession is starting to break out?” It provides a neat insight into what that tribe is thinking now. Talk of a leadership coup is, to be clear, premature. There is no credible threat to Sir Keir Starmer’s supremacy as top dog in the Labour Party and the Government. He is less than a year into his premiership, still able to point back to the biggest Labour majority since Sir Tony Blair. Plus, even if there was a sufficient degree of discord to act, the Labour rulebook lacks the “no confidence” mechanism that was so ruthlessly used by the Tories to force a vo...

 Fingers point to Reeves after tax raid piled pressure on both businesses and consumers Daily Telegraph  Link Inflation has jumped to its highest rate in more than a year following a sharp increase in household bills. Prices, as measured by the consumer prices index, rose by 3.5pc in the year to April, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Statisticians blamed one-off increases in gas, electricity and water bills for the steep rise. However, businesses have warned that Rachel Reeves’s record tax raid will force them to raise prices further, piling more pressure on households and keeping interest rates higher for longer. Inflation above 3pc will force Andrew Bailey, the Governor of the Bank of England, to write a letter to the Chancellor to explain the overshoot. The Bank is worried that steeper price rises later this year could keep pushing up pay demands. While it cut interest rates from 4.5pc to 4.25pc this month, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) that set...

  How Labour’s political choices are bringing about their own demise Matt Goodwin May 20 2025 Here’s a question I never thought I’d ask. Is Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer deliberately trying to increase support for Nigel Farage and Reform? Because that’s the only conclusion one would draw after looking at the choices being made by Starmer and his team, many of which appear to have come straight out of the handbook on how to inflame a populist revolt against the system. Take yesterday’s ‘reset deal’ between Labour and the European Union (EU). Curiously, Starmer and his team have decided to respond to the rise of a pro-Brexit, anti-immigration party that draws much of its strength from the working-class and disillusioned voters in coastal towns by presiding over a deal that appears hard-wired to push even more of these voters straight into Farage’s arms. For a start, Starmer just sold the working-class fishing industry down the river, handing the EU twelve years of guaranteed acc...

His ‘reset’ with the EU is an assault on the sovereign longing of the British people. 19th May 2025 Spiked 19/5/25 Link Keir Starmer doth protest too much. He’s been yapping all day about how his ‘reset’ with the EU is not a dilution of Brexit. He assures us he’s not crossing any of the ‘red lines’ set out in Labour’s manifesto about never rejoining the Single Market or the Customs Union. He’s ladling it on. It’s almost theatrical. Noisy denial after noisy denial that his cosying up to the Brussels machine represents a backtracking on the clean break Britons voted for nine years ago. People who engage in this amount of histrionic gainsaying usually have something to hide. And Sir Keir certainly does. He knows the truth. He knows his ‘major reset’ is just that: a major reset. It is unquestionably a knife in the heart of the spirit of Brexit. Standing alongside the Marie Antoinette of the Brussels oligarchy (Ursula von der Leyen), Starmer unveiled the new UK-EU deal with the knowing grin...

PM insists his deal will benefit UK, but critics warn it will ‘open the floodgates’ for European migrants 17 May 2025 Daily Telegraph  Link Sir Keir Starmer has promised that his plan to reset relations with the European Union will be “good for our borders” despite warnings that tens of thousands of migrants will flood into the country. The Government is locked in negotiations to determine how long young Europeans will be able to live and work in the UK as part of a deal to be announced on Monday. The Telegraph understands that the EU is pushing for a Youth Mobility Scheme to allow migrants aged between 18 and 30 to stay in the UK for as long as three years. Labour’s minister for EU relations said that the reset would see Britain “standing side by side with the EU”. However, MPs from Labour’s Red Wall have warned that the deal amounts to a reversal of Brexit and will alienate voters. The party is battling to fend off the threat from Reform UK, which has vowed to reverse any deal. S...

Lenders warn that cutting the tax-free allowance would punish pensioners and hurt growth 16 May 2025  Daily Telegraph  Link Banks have urged the Chancellor to drop her plans to cut the tax-free Isa savings allowance. Rachel Reeves has been lobbied by City executives to “leave Isas alone” as she prepares to overhaul the savings product used by millions. Isas allow people to save up to £20,000 each year with no tax charged on any interest or capital gains earned from the account. Savers mostly keep their money in either cash or stocks-and-shares Isa accounts and can spread the annual allowance across them. The Chancellor is considering lowering the annual tax-free allowance for cash Isas, which are held by 18m people, in an effort to push more people to invest in shares. She has considered lowering the allowance to as little as £4,000. The change would mean millions would be able to save less each year tax-free and would face a choice between putting money into savings accounts ...

Significant concession to allow European boats access to British waters is branded ‘a shameful surrender’ Deal for EU access to UK fishing waters negotiated after Brexit is due to expire 13 May 2025  Link Sir Keir Starmer is preparing to cave in to the European Union and agree a deal which guarantees European fishing boats access to British waters for four years. In a significant concession ahead of a UK-EU summit, the Prime Minister hopes the compromise will break the deadlock with Brussels as he tries to secure his much-vaunted Brexit reset. Lord Frost, the former Brexit negotiator has described the move as “a shameful surrender of fishing communities’ rights”. A deal over fishing rights at his meeting with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission and Antonio Costa, president of the European Council, in London next week would allow British arms manufacturers to sell billions of pounds of weapons to cross-channel allies. It would also cut red tape on food and...