Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

A year after tax rises removed thousands of jobs from the economy, businesses are braced for a new set of disastrous Labour measures Daily Telegraph 20/03/26 With just a fortnight to go, the reality of a new slate of socialist measures which will land on the heads of business in Labour’s “April Armageddon” is setting in. What started a year ago when the rise in employer National Insurance contributions kicked in and thousands of jobs were kicked out of the economy will continue this April when the next set of measures come crashing down on businesses. The broader economic context could not be worse. One in six young people are now unable to find a job, GDP per capita is falling, and gilt yields are rising as we battle stubbornly high inflation and rising oil prices. Even after a year of job cuts and hiring freezes, Labour’s choices have business confidence stuck at levels not seen since the global pandemic. All of this is down primarily to a Cabinet that neither understands nor ca...

The pathway to long term employment has been disrupted by the Government’s punitive taxation changes Daily Telegraph 17/03/26 We need to talk about Neets. For the first time in over a decade, the number of 16- to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training has crept back towards the million mark. That’s roughly one in eight young people. And the details are more troubling still. Around 57 per cent are economically inactive – not working and not even looking for work. Nearly half say they have a health condition related to mental health: in just five years the number of young people claiming disability benefits has almost doubled. Our youth unemployment rate, now about 16.1 per cent, sits awkwardly above the European average. However one chooses to dress it up, this is not a healthy picture. We have a crisis. The truth is that much of this was predictable. A string of policy choices has quietly raised the cost – and risk – of hiring. The rise in employers’ National Insur...

The infection is not a random airborne hazard. There will not be a national epidemic Daily Telegraph 17/03/26 The Covid pandemic has left a heightened state of anxiety about any outbreak of infectious disease. This is easily inflated into mass panic, as we are seeing with the outbreak of meningitis among young people in the Canterbury area. Health Secretary Wes Streeting has gone as far as saying it is “unprecedented”. It isn’t. Yes, meningitis is a potentially serious, and – as we have tragically seen in recent days – even fatal infection, but it is well understood. Responses should be proportionate. An inflammation of tissues surrounding the brain, it can be caused by several viruses and bacteria. The bacteria are quite common in the UK population – around 10 per cent of us carry them at any one time. That figure is perhaps 20 per cent for teenagers and young people. These bacteria are transmitted by prolonged or close contact, such as sharing a household or kissing. People li...

Property Industry Eye 11/03/26 With rental supply remaining tight across the capital, London’s buy-to-let market is presenting renewed opportunities for investors, with rents and yields rising in several parts of the city. That is according to Jeremy Leaf, a north London estate agent and former residential chairman of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. He said: “Conditions for letting property are favourable at present given the level of stock being sold and demand remaining strong in most areas, so many longer-term landlords are taking advantage.” However, Leaf added that many landlords are choosing to leave the market rather than benefit from current conditions, citing tighter regulation and higher taxes – a trend reflected in the latest Savills report, which found that the UK’s private rented sector recorded its largest value decline this century in 2025, falling by £48bn. Leaf explained: “The reason why many are leaving the sector is the looming Renters’ Rights Ac...

Everywhere you go outside of the cities, you can feel the impact of Starmer’s policies Daily Telegraph 15/03/26 The narrative goes that Sir Keir Starmer is the most un-ideological Prime Minister that Britain has ever had. Try telling that to its rural communities. While the government has been buffeted around by a series of economic, diplomatic and internal crises, one part of its agenda appears to have remained perfectly consistent since the last General Election: a committed and unrelenting campaign to render rural life unviable. If one was in a forgiving mood, you might put it down to ignorance. Not a single member of Starmer’s cabinet represents a rural seat. Labour’s voter base is predominantly urban. For a Prime Minister who by own admission prefers the society of Davos’s “anywheres” to fellow countrymen and women in Parliament, England’s green and pleasant land and its inhabitants are unlikely to hold any particular charm. Perhaps the war on neighbourhood planning, or the...

Recent attempts by Labour and the Greens to appeal to Muslim voters reflect a major demographic shift that goes beyond politics Daily Telegraph Sam Ashworth-Hayes 14 March 2026 6:00am GMT The central principle of democracy is that power is vested in the people and expressed by their elected representatives. We expect that governments will seek to align themselves with the views and opinions of the people, while protecting the views and opinions of minorities. Yet Britain is currently demonstrating a different phenomenon: at times, and under the right circumstances, governments are seeking to align themselves with the views and opinions of minorities while failing to protect the views and opinions of the people. Take this Labour Government, which at present appears to be in a blind panic. With local elections approaching, Sir Keir Starmer and his colleagues are desperate to win back the approval of Muslim voters they had long taken for granted. The results of this risk going b...

Two years ago, Farage had fewer donations than the Communists. Now, after a blitz of defections, his war chest has eclipsed his rivals’ As he filmed his 2024 New Year’s Eve message in the opulent surroundings of Blenheim Palace, Nigel Farage had much to feel optimistic about. The Reform leader could look back on 12 months that saw his nascent party come of age, as his return from political retirement culminated in a Commons breakthrough. Under his renewed leadership, it had leapfrogged the Liberal Democrats into third place in votes received in that year’s general election and crucially returned five MPs, himself included. It was the bar that Farage had tried – and conspicuously failed – to clear so many times throughout his years at the head of the UK Independence Party (Ukip). But even as he spoke proudly about that “bridgehead” in Parliament, the veteran campaigner knew that his latest upstart movement had a problem on its hands. For he was acutely aware that in the three month...

Party to launch eight-week consultation in last ditch attempt to garner public support for policy Daily Telegraph 10/03/26 Labour is setting up a “people’s panel” on digital ID in a last-ditch attempt to turn public opinion in favour of the policy. Ministers have started an eight-week consultation on plans to create a new digital ID for government services, which were watered down after a rebellion of Labour MPs. Darren Jones, the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, has pledged to create a system of “Government by app” and compared the service to the introduction of online banking. Ministers will also run a “people’s panel” on the policy, which the Government said would “bring together people across the country from different backgrounds” to have “in-depth discussions” and find “ways to move forward”. The panel will be formed of 100 randomly selected people from across the country in an attempt to secure public support for the policy after months of criticism. Polling shows...

Telegraph Politics 11/03/26 The signs that this tranche of Peter Papers would be politically combustible were there at PMQs, two hours before release. Keir Starmer repeatedly tried to emphasise his superior judgment in a series of fiery exchanges with Kemi Badenoch. He came to the bear pit determined to lambast the Leader of the Opposition for making the wrong call on joining the US-Israeli strikes on Iran and to accuse her of political caprice. Badenoch simply wanted to press him on fuel duty – a sensible line of attack given mounting public concern over the economic fallout from the Iran conflict. Starmer’s real message was that, when it matters – war – his judgment is sound. Puffing himself up, he took on the Statesman cosplay. The public should see him as a steady hand: serious, forensic, with solid instincts. Unfortunately the Mandelson files have swiftly trashed that claim. What they show, in black and white, is that the risks surrounding the appointment were not obscure, hid...

When does a political stunt become a gimmick? Not today. Daily Telegraph politics 10/03/26 Even Reform’s detractors must give credit where credit is due: the party managed to pull off cut-price fuel at a petrol station in deepest Derbyshire, as lorries rolled past tooting their horns approvingly. Ed Miliband’s Stone or Kinnock: The Movie this was not. Alongside Robert Jenrick, one of Nigel Farage’s newest MPs, the Reform leader filled punters’ tanks with the “cheapest” fuel in Britain, in an attempt to give voters a flavour of what life under the party might feel like. “Reform rates,” Jenrick quipped, as he manually adjusted the prices on a totem sign. Farage and Jenrick pictured today at petrol station in Derbyshire Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick have reduced petrol prices at the Newhaven services, near Buxton Beneath the theatre was some policy: the party has promised to reinstate the 5p cut to fuel duty in its first budget, paid for using £12bn savings from the green energy ...

Labour has raised taxes to a near post-war high – its language on raising living standards is just rhetoric Daily Telegraph 04/03/26 Listening to the Chancellor’s Spring Statement in isolation would give the impression that the Government is running an efficient economy with a realistic promise of improving living standards. Unfortunately, I don’t think that this was likely to be the case for most of us, even before we had the uncertainty imposed on us by international events. Improved living standards rely principally on the ability of the Government to do so through economic growth. This in turn relies on greater business investment and improved productivity. On taking office, Rachel Reeves declared that economic growth was to be her priority, but it has not worked out that way. A combination of the increase in employers’ National Insurance, business rates, and changes to the minimum wage has placed a heavy burden on business and reduced their incentive to take on addition...

Fear not, Zack Polanski’s seismic by-election success will ultimately spell his downfall Daily Telegraph 04/03/26 What a rollercoaster week it’s been for supporters of the Green Party. One day they win a historic by-election. Then, a day later, the Supreme Leader of Iran is killed. From ecstasy to despair, in one fell swoop. The poor things will have been weeping into their ginger kombucha. Still, now they’re on the up again because a seismic YouGov poll has shown that they’ve overtaken both Labour and the Tories – with only Reform narrowly ahead. Even more astoundingly, the poll reveals that the Greens are the most popular party with all age groups under 50. At this rate, they must be dreaming of winning not just by-elections – but the next general election, too. Unfortunately for the Greens, however, this extraordinary upturn in their fortunes does have a downside. Which is that, at very long last, they’re starting to come under some actual scrutiny. And they clearly don’t like i...

Delivering a Spring Statement is preferable to announcing policy for flip-flopping Labour Daily Telegraph 03/03/26 The Commons was mostly empty for the Foreign Office Questions that preceded the Spring Statement. Quite understandable. Once all the gangsters, tax exiles and make-up influencers have been repatriated from Dubai, our parliamentarians can do little to affect World War Three. Instead, it makes sense for them to focus on where they can make a real difference: shouting at each other across the benches. And there are few better opportunities for guffawing than the Spring Statement, perhaps the most pointless parliamentary session of the year. So they steadily filed in, enduring the tedium of questions on irrelevant side issues such as Chagos, Hong Kong and the multi-state war Britain had just joined in the Middle East, while they waited for the main event. As the Budget’s little brother no longer includes anachronistic fripperies such as “policy”, it is purely a homework-...

The PM is unable to respond to the implosion of the global status quo other than by incanting Leftist platitudes Daily Telegraph 04/03/26 What happened to us? How did we fall so far, so quickly? Where is our moral compass, our self-respect, our pride? Sir Keir Starmer’s Britain stands alone, but for the most deplorable of reasons, unwilling to fight back when our bases are hit by drones, incapable of deploying what is left of the Royal Navy, unable to respond to the implosion of the old world order other than by incanting Leftist platitudes, debilitated, humiliated and disgraced. America and Israel are waging a moral and just war to punish an evil, millenarianist, Iranian Islamist regime that kills and maims, and yet Britain is a no-show, pathetically asserting the war violates “international law”, sabotaging Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s heroic efforts at every opportunity. Starmer’s non-response to the attack on our base in Cyprus by Iranian proxies is an act of such br...