Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

On the spy trial scandal and Jewish football fans ban, ministers shrugged and went all Basil Fawlty Daily Telegraph 20/10/25 link How long can a pair of ministers keep rising in the Commons to give the same answer: that they dislike a contentious situation as much as anyone but there is nothing they can do? For Dan Jarvis, answering an urgent question on the non-prosecution of alleged spies for China, and Lisa Nandy, who had one on Jewish football fans being banned from Villa Park, the answer was about an hour each. The “don’t blame us, we’re only the Government” strategy was a good work-out for the Jarvis-Nandy knees but a touch of tetchiness crept in as they discovered that MPs wouldn’t take “I agree, it’s rubbish” for an answer. It was like Basil Fawlty receiving a complaint about Manuel’s service. “You only have to eat here, we have to live with it.” Jarvis wanted everyone to know how gutted he was that the trial of two men suspected of spying had collapsed. “Extremely dis...

Disaster for Starmer after party surrenders 100-year hold on Welsh heartland with Reform in second Daily Telegraph link Labour has lost its 100-year hold on a key heartland in a historic shift in Welsh politics. In a disastrous result for Sir Keir Starmer, the party was beaten at a pivotal Senedd by-election by Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru. It is the first time Labour has lost a parliamentary vote in the former mining town of Caerphilly in more than a century, signalling a collapse in support that will fray nerves in Downing Street. It will also be seen as a disappointing result for Reform UK, who were polling slightly ahead and would have hailed a victory as a sign they were on track to unseat Labour at the Welsh elections next year. Nigel Farage, the Reform leader, did not appear at the count, despite joining the campaign trail on the day. The party is expected to blame tactical voting for the defeat. However, it will doubtless be buoyed by a clear surge in support havin...

Former deputy prime minister suggests others could be caught out by same ‘complex’ rules she broke daily Telegraph - Link Angela Rayner has said she hopes other families will learn from the “honestly made mistake” that allowed her to avoid a £40,000 tax bill. The former deputy prime minister, who was forced to resign over the scandal, suggested others could be caught out by the same “complex” rules that she broke when purchasing her second home. Ms Rayner quit her government roles last month after The Telegraph revealed she underpaid stamp duty on her new £800,000 seaside flat in Hove, East Sussex. At first, her team was adamant that she had done nothing wrong, insisting she had paid all tax due. However, following sustained pressure from the media, she later admitted that she had made a “mistake” and had not paid the full amount of tax. Ms Rayner bought the Hove flat after selling a 25 per cent share of the family home in her Ashton-under-Lyne constituency for £162,500. The bu...

The London Mayor appeared to dismiss the suggestion that grooming gangs had been operating in the capital during a fiery City Hall exchange earlier this year GB News 20/10/25 link Sir Sadiq Khan has been accused of "turning a blind eye" to rape gangs in London after a new investigation claimed to find evidence of a "cover-up" in the capital. The investigation, conducted by The Daily Express and My London, revealed young girls had been raped in hotels by groups of men. However, Sir Sadiq was accused of ignoring concerns about grooming gangs operating in London following a spat with City Hall Conservative Susan Hall. The details of at least six potential victims were documented in the pages of four different His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services reports from 2016 to 2025. The cases ranged from a 15-year-old girl being raped by "numerous men" after going missing for four days to a 17-year-old being given alcoho...

Twenty-eight people have pleaded not guilty after being charged under anti-terrorism laws with allegedly supporting the banned group Palestine Action. BBC News 15/10/25 link In the first of a series of complex hearings on Wednesday, Westminster Magistrates' Court heard about 2,000 people are likely to be charged with showing support in demonstrations for the group proscribed as a terrorist organisation in July. Judges face trying to find time and courtrooms to hold 400 trials of those accused of taking part in protests. While the judge began setting provisional trial dates for March, there is no certainty they can take place before the end of 2026 because of the ongoing legal battle over the group's proscription. The government proscribed Palestine Action under anti-terrorism legislation in July, after activists broke into an RAF base and damaged two military aircraft earlier in the year. Since that ban more than 2,100 people have been arrested at demonstrations in ...

Good morning. This week has exposed the moral weakness of Sir Keir Starmer. Our virtue-signalling Prime Minister has raised the white flag to the enemies of Britain both within and outside our borders. Surely even he can’t be proud of the nation he is building? Allister Heath, Sunday Telegraph Editor 18/10/25 Did Sir Keir go into politics to suck up to China? Is this really why Sir Keir Starmer went into politics? To suck up to the Chinese Communist Party, and to preside over a country defiled by rampant anti-Semitism and sectarianism? A virtue-signaller extraordinaire, a holier-than-thou human rights lawyer, the PM has always seen himself as a social justice warrior. Yet after just 14 months in office, how does Starmer reconcile his erstwhile sanctimony and supposed commitment to anti-racist and humanist principles with the grubby reality of what Labour Britain is turning into? Our country has crossed the Rubicon with the ban on supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv from attending ...

West Midlands Police’s stance is a shaming moment for the UK and exposes sorry state of public order in this country link Daily Telegraph 16 October 2025 9:59pm BST So now we have it spelt out in black and white: an admission by a British police force that it is effectively unable to protect visiting Jewish football fans on British soil. This is, however you slice it, a shaming moment. Only last weekend, within hours of the Gaza ceasefire coming into effect, huge amounts of police resources were diverted to protecting pro-Palestine marches in the heart of London, attended by tens of thousands. But as for ensuring the safety of a few hundred Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters on the streets of Birmingham? All too much bother. It is a level of inconsistency that makes your head spin. On learning of the extraordinary move by West Midlands Police to advise the shutting out of Maccabi fans from next month’s Europa League match at Aston Villa, Baroness Fox lamented how she had “sat for hou...

It seems highly likely that Labour allowed a major trial to collapse for political reasons. Spiked 16/10/25 Link Keir Starmer’s Labour Party used to love to give lectures about respecting the rule of law. Quite literally, in the case of UK attorney general Lord Hermer. In October 2024, Hermer delivered a widely publicised Bingham Lecture, entitled ‘The Rule of Law in an Age of Populism’, in which he criticised calls to abandon institutions such as the European Convention on Human Rights. He argued that the rule of law ‘is not the preserve of arid constitutional theory’ and is the ‘bedrock’ on which democracy rests. Earlier this year, Hermer claimed that anyone who publicly criticises a judge or objects to a court decision is a ‘threat to the rule of law’. It’s not just Lord Hermer, of course. During the Brexit years, whenever Conservatives objected to legal decisions that seemed to favour the Remainers, Labour and its supporters reacted with outrage, slamming Brexiteers as enem...

Brussels’ big bet on monetary union has brought little benefit and nearly ended in disaster 13 October 2025 Daily Telegraph  Link Back in January, many commentators believed that this would be the year the EU outshone the United States in economic performance. After all, America was apparently going to be governed by a madman who was going to implement all sorts of destructive policies with dire effects, not only on the world, but especially on the US economy. Meanwhile, in Europe, Germany was finally going to abandon its ultra-tough fiscal policy, enabling it to expand its borrowing to finance much increased spending, including on defence. To many, it seemed as though the EU was finally coming of age. But events have not exactly followed this script. For a start, the American economy has done remarkably well. Inflation has not shot up in response to Donald Trump’s tariffs. Admittedly, stiff increases in goods prices may be yet to come through. But a slowdown in services inflation ...

Michael Deacon If a Reform councillor can get reported to police just for saying she was ‘born and bred here’, we’re all in trouble 14 October 2025  Daily Telegraph  Link About 10 years ago, the Left-wing comedian Stewart Lee performed a stand-up routine about a London taxi driver who’d said to him: “These days, you get arrested and thrown in jail if you say you’re English, don’t you?” Naturally, this quote gave Mr Lee’s audience a good chuckle. Stupid cabbie. Clearly he was one of those frightful, Sun-reading, lower-class gammon who are always moaning about “PC gone mad”. In hindsight, though, perhaps that taxi driver was simply ahead of his time. Last week a Reform councillor named Claire Mackie-Brown gave a TV interview in which she said that unrest over asylum hotels was “scary” for her, as “somebody who was born and bred here”. And, believe it or not, these words got her reported to the police for alleged “hate crime”. If you’re wondering why, here’s what the anonymous pe...

Why so many in the West turned their backs on the Jews seized by Hamas. 13th October 2025 Spiked 13/10/25 Link They’re home. After 738 days in hellish captivity, the last living Israeli hostages are free. After more than two years in the cruel bondage of that army of anti-Semites, they have tasted liberty again. Twenty souls returned to their families, and to a nation that prayed for their release. When they are ready they will tell of the horrors they endured in Hamas’s tunnels, those dank lairs of Jew hatred. But for now, in Israel and those parts of the civilised world not yet lost to Israelophobia, the emotion people will be feeling is joy. There are 20 of them, all men. They include twin brothers: Gali and Ziv Berman, 28, taken from Kibbutz Kfar Aza. And brothers Ariel and David Cunio, 28 and 35, abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz. Ariel’s partner, Arbel Yehud, was also kidnapped, then released in January this year. In a chilling testament to the barbarous cruelty of Hamas’s pogrom, Dav...

  Another week, and another political conference! It kicked off with day two of the Tory conference, and it was the turn of Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride to deliver his speech (who, you may be asking…?!) As he took to the stage, the auditorium was almost empty. I counted about 55 people there. You could probably fit the whole lot in the back of a coach! It seems not even the Tories are interested in the Tories anymore. From people I have spoken to, the mood was definitely downbeat, with delegates deserting the main hall for the various bars to drown their sorrows.     After 14 years of a Conservative government, Britain’s small businesses are still being crushed by taxes, red tape, and now a Labour government that doesn’t care. Reform UK is the only party that gets it, because we actually listen to the people who run businesses. And many of us in the senior team have also run businesses.    If you own a small or medium-sized business, we want to hear from you. Ta...