Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

 Faced with a competent opponent, he is scrambling for an alternative message – and seemingly failing Source - Daily Telegraph - 13/04/23 Link To win the next election, Rishi Sunak needs three miracles. The first is for the small boats to stop, which now looks possible after the Albania deportations. Next, he needs to turn the widely predicted recession into recovery – which he may still do. But the third factor is one that he has no control over: he needs Keir Starmer to miss the historic opportunity in front of him and squander what was once a 30-point opinion poll lead. On that front, so far so good. You might have missed it, but today is “pensions day” in Labour’s attack schedule, critiquing Sunak’s decision to remove the £1 million tax-free limit on pension pots. This helps the rich, says Angela Rayner. The average worker would take 400 years to save such a sum! She’s right, but this reform is only needed because NHS doctors are paid so much – and the taxpayers are contributin...

On the back of the Prime Minister’s successes, the appetite for Johnson’s return is fast dissipating even among his diehard supporters Source - Daily Telegraph - 12/04/23 Link Boris Johnson’s political career has already been the subject of at least three docu-dramas. That is quite an achievement for any politician and serves to illustrate just how viewer-friendly the antics of the former prime minister are to playwrites and audiences. But close observers of Johnson’s career are not convinced that the melodrama is over yet; they have reasons to believe that a final (or possibly penultimate) instalment may yet be commissioned, one that depicts his unlikely (yet in some ways inevitable) return to Downing Street in order to save his party from electoral wipeout and his country from the horrors of a Labour government. That would certainly play to the vision the once and future prime minister has of himself; after all, didn’t his hero, Winston Churchill, yo-yo in and out of government, retu...

 As the election approaches, Sir Keir Starmer's record as Director of Public Prosecutions will be a legitimate target Source - Daily Telegraph 11/04/23 Lin k For a party that claims to be cruising to victory at the next election, Labour seems to be in something of a panic. Its decision to mount a series of personal attacks on Rishi Sunak has left some senior figures feeling uncomfortable with tactics normally associated with US politics. One ad hominem advert accuses the Prime Minister, on the basis of no evidence, of not wanting to jail child sex offenders. Governments are, of course, responsible for promulgating laws that determine sentencing terms, but many of those in place today were passed during the period of the last Labour government. More than that, one leading political figure who has been personally responsible for decisions in these areas is not Mr Sunak but Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader. He was the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and sat on the Sentencing ...

  The green shoots of Conservative recovery in opinion polls mean the idea of an autumn 2024 general election is emerging Source - Daily Telegraph 10/04/23 Link When Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden shake hands this week in Northern Ireland, they do so before a UK political backdrop much changed from their first substantial talks as leaders. Back in balmy Bali in mid-November, the US President and UK Prime Minister began to forge a relationship at the G7 summit when Mr Sunak was less than a month into the job. The warning signs were flashing on the UK economy. The Prime Minister and Jeremy Hunt were yet to unveil their emergency package for repairing the missteps of the seven-week Liz Truss tenure. Could Mr Sunak bring together a warring Tory party? Could he secure a Brexit deal that pleased London, Brussels and Washington? Would his economic medicine actually work? As the six-month mark approaches for his premiership, Downing Street believes progress has been made on all three – and what...

 As Biden visits NI, it’s vital to remember the UK is an independent nation with its own divergent priorities Source - Daily Telegraph 09/04/23 Link   After the vote to leave the EU, and following the election of Donald Trump, a former White House adviser told me: “If any other Republican president were in office, they would say, ‘We don’t agree with Brexit, but you’re our strongest ally. You can have a trade deal with us, and on terms you’ll find helpful’.” But Trump’s was no normal presidency. “Nobody but Trump would have been pro-Brexit,” my friend said. “But if you want a trade deal he will try to screw you with your pants still on.” This was just one reason why a trade agreement with America was neither likely nor desirable. Unusually, official figures show Britain enjoys a trade surplus with America, and Trump would have seen a trade deal as a moment to squeeze us hard. There was also the role of Congress in negotiations – never likely to be helpful – and controversies i...

 Berlin has become shamefully addicted to autocrats Source - Daily Telegraph 08/04/23 Link Over the past 75 years, the Germans have rebuilt Europe in their own image. With its coalition politics, mercantile economics, green ideology and woke culture, the EU is in many ways the Federal Republic writ larg So why is Germany, which likes to proclaim its liberal values and European virtues, locked in a toxic love affair with Russian and Chinese autocrats? The reception in Berlin for King Charles and Queen Camilla earlier this month was genuinely warm. Germans admire the British monarchy and most might even welcome an end to the EU’s vindictive treatment of the UK since Brexit. German MPs appreciated the King’s speech to the Bundestag and applauded when he said that the UK and Germany had together shown “vital leadership” over Ukraine. The reality in Berlin, however, is less reassuring. In Ukraine, the King’s host, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, was seen as so pro-Russian that a year...

 If the Tories choose the right candidate, grassroots fury at the mayor’s anti-car agenda could finish him Source - Daily Telegraph - 05/04/23 Link London’s political winds are shifting and the consequences could be devastating for Sadiq Khan. There is now a real chance that the two-term, Ulez-loving, car-hating mayor could be booted out in next year’s elections, shattering the complacent assumptions of a Left-liberal establishment that sees the capital as its impregnable heartland. With the right Tory candidate, this could provide an extraordinary opportunity for Rishi Sunak to retake the city, drastically changing the national political narrative. The first reason for optimism is the little-noticed but hugely significant abolition of the transferable voting system for the mayoral elections, a Blairite wheeze that favoured Labour; the second is the remarkable, spontaneous grassroots fury at Khan’s war on cars; and the third is the mayor’s staggering incompetence in all his core re...