Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

 Labour has relied on a report from the think tank to justify its flagship tax policy 28 November 2024 Daily Telegraph  Labour’s private school tax raid will not make “any real difference to the amount of money available” for state schools, the head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has admitted. Paul Johnson, director of the think tank, added that the 20pc levy on school fees would raise “tiny, tiny amounts of money” in an unearthed video published in November 2023. Labour has heavily relied on the work of the IFS to justify its private school tax raid after it published a report in July 2023 which claimed it would raise up to £1.5bn each year. Sir Keir Starmer and other ministers repeatedly cited the report when defending their plan to charge VAT on private school fees, which is due to come into effect from January 1, and said this money would be used to fund 6,500 new teachers in state schools. However, in a 90-second video in which Mr Johnson “lays out the facts”, ...

Party officials for Labour and the Conservatives shouldn’t be surprised if voters pick a third choice at the next election 28 November 2024 Daily Telegraph  Britain’s political system is often thought of as a two-party alternating majority government. The Conservatives are in power for a while, backed by a parliamentary majority. But sooner or later the electorate become unhappy with their performance and Labour are voted into office with a Commons majority.  They in turn eventually lose the confidence of voters and are displaced by a majority Conservative government. And so, the pendulum of alternating majority governments endlessly swings back and forth. At first glance, this year’s general election looks like a classic instance of this system working as expected. After 14 years in power the Conservatives had become deeply unpopular and were replaced by a Labour government backed by a landslide majority. Voters were able to hold those in power to account by voting them out o...

Housing Ministry analysis also predicts Angela Rayner’s flagship Bill could lead to some property owners leaving the sector 30 November 2024 Daily Telegraph  Link Angela Rayner’s Renters’ Rights Bill is likely to drive up rents despite being intended to make life easier for tenants in the private sector, the Government has admitted. The flagship Bill, now making its way through the House of Commons, will ban no-fault evictions and rent rises considered to be unreasonable, as well as introducing more regulation. But an impact assessment of the policy released this week revealed that it will probably add to financial pressures on tenants, according to the Government’s own analysis. The impact assessment, conducted by Ms Rayner’s Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, said: “It is likely that landlords will pass through some costs of new policies to tenants in the form of higher rents – to offset those costs and maintain a degree of profit. “Landlords will likely offs...

    Source - Matt Goodwin 06/11/24 Earlier this week, I attended the Spectator Awards, a key event for London’s media class, where I watched a triumphant Nigel Farage win Newcomer of the Year, having finally been elected to the House of Commons back in July. I’ve known Nigel Farage for a long time and so I know that, for him, receiving this award, at this particular event, in front of this particular crowd, was a big deal. Fifteen years ago, when he first attended the Spectator Awards as leader of UKIP, he was laughed out the room. The media class thought Farage was a joke. But as he said in his victory speech this week, they’re not laughing now. Having consistently failed to diagnose the mood of the nation, the media class has been forced to watch Nigel Farage completely transform the country, from Brexit to establishing a beachhead in parliament with four million votes and five MPs. And now, as he warned them in his speech, they’re going to have to watch him lead another maj...

This is the most dangerous government for generations. Will Nigel Farage be the winner from its collapse? Source - Daily Telegraph 04/12/24 Link Keir Starmer has been in office for only five months, but it is already clear that his Government will be the worst in half a century. The die is cast: the Prime Minister is doubling down on every mistake, every prejudice, every tenet of the failed orthodoxy that has ruined Britain, probably because he is a true believer. He cannot and won’t change, seemingly oblivious to his abominable poll ratings, yet his inability to get anything right is truly staggering.  Even those of us who predicted Starmer would be a disaster have been stunned by the speed of his implosion, the lies, the shamelessness of his pandering to the public sector unions, his lack of basic political skills, his ineffectual communications, his abysmal strategy and tactics and the low calibre of many of his ministers.  His relaunch this week will merely prove that he h...

The Prime Minister is aware his Government is flailing, but a lack of ideas will make reform difficult Source - Daily Telegraph 02/12/24 When you are planning a relaunch just five months into your new Government, you know things are not going as well as you had hoped.  The resignation of the Transport Secretary – over an issue the Prime Minister had known about for years but did not act on – is just the latest in a litany of mis-steps and calamities. Keir Starmer will attempt to reassure his increasingly restless MPs this week that he is the man to lead them out of the morass. After 150 days of clown car, the Prime Minister’s “Plan for Change” project will have to do some heavy lifting.  Targets will be set on people’s incomes (not much to do with the state), NHS waiting times, house building, childcare, clean energy (controversial) and cutting crime. Quite what the “targets” should be on immigration and asylum, a priority for the public, are matters that are still undercooked...

The demise of cars, flights and cafes are just the start of Britain’s slump towards full-blown recession 30 November 2024 Daily Telegraph  The car manufacturing giant Stellantis is closing a factory. EasyJet is slashing the number of flights around the UK. Even the chairman of Gail’s has said that some of his businesses may have to close. If you want to buy a new car or take a Christmas break, it is about to get a lot harder. In reality, there is a common theme to all those stories: they are all part of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s shrinking economy. And from retail chains to pubs and restaurant groups it is going to get a lot worse over the next few months. For anyone who was expecting the UK to be emerging as the “fastest-growing economy in the G7” by now, as the Labour Party promised during the election campaign, it has turned into a sobering week. Stellantis announced it was closing its van-making plant in Luton, mainly in response to the Government’s crazy targets to ban the sal...