Reeves plots

Reeves plots £1.7bn tax on businesses

Rachel Reeves is plotting a £1.7 billion tax raid in the autumn which retailers have warned will accelerate the decline of high streets.


Is this Britain's most depressing ghost town?

Nowhere sums up the decline of the British high street quite as graphically as Burslem.

Once a thriving, mega-rich market town, it is now so dominated by boarded-up buildings that there seem to be more empty storefronts than occupied ones.

Breaking the away day curse

Starmer aims to break cabinet away day curse

Sir Keir Starmer was hoping to break the curse of the cabinet away day as he summoned his ministers to Chequers for the launch of a summer "refresh" of his troubled government.

The aim: to plot a course for a recovery during Labour's second year in power after a first 12 months blighted by economic woes, rows over freebies, humiliating U-turns and rebellions.

In the past, the away day rules from the No 10 high command have included no woolly jumpers and no sandwiches. This time, the rule to ministers was: "Don't call it a reset."


Lifting the curse is simple.

An away day is far too short.

An away year would lift the curse.

Privilege denied

Donald Trump may be denied privilege of addressing parliament on UK state visit

The fact that that parliament isn't sitting for much of September could help resolve a potentially awkward issue.

Donald Trump may be denied the honour of addressing parliament on his state visit to the UK later this year, with no formal request yet submitted for him to be given that privilege.


Strewth, the transparent language they use to spin their nonsense.

Whatever privilege there is will occur if one or two of the failures, grifters, loons, charlatans, dullards, professional whiners, creeps and deranged ideologues were to learn a lasting lesson about leadership and realpolitik.

Won't happen.

Net Zero Won't Fix This

Inside London’s school closures crisis as more than 30 primaries set to shut or merge within weeks

London is one of the busiest cities in the world. A major global metropolis home to nearly nine million people, with 22.7 per cent of those people under the age of 18, according to the most recent census data. And yet, many of the city’s primary school children have only a handful of classmates.

An investigation by the Standard has found that at least 30 primary schools could shut or merge across the capital by the end of the academic year, with politicians warning that the problem “is only going to get worse” as families continue to be driven out of the city...

Last September, the Education Policy Institute predicted that there would be another drop of around 52,000 primary school-aged children in London by 2028. In Lambeth alone, there are nearly 1,000 fewer children in local primary schools compared to 10 years ago, council figures show. Over in Wandsworth, as few as eight children have been turning up to start reception in some schools last year.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, the issue has become so bad that the maternity unit at one of the capital’s biggest hospitals, the Royal Free Hospital in north London, was forced to close due to falling birth rates.

You fellows are all doomed

Heat deaths in England and Wales could surge 50-fold, study warns

It comes as areas of the UK face another heatwave, with temperatures over the next few days forecast to be above average and exceed 30C (86F) for many.

Annual heat-related deaths might climb into the tens of thousands in the coming decades, according to research by University College London (UCL) and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

They say today's baseline figure of 634 heat deaths a year could hit 10,317 in the 2050s and, in a worst-case scenario, 34,027 in the 2070s.


“Nothing can be more certain,” he continued, “if corn con­tinues to be imported from America, in a hundred years from now there won’t be a single peasant left in all France. Do you think that our land can contend with yonder one? Long before we have had time to put these new plans in practice, the foreigners will have inundated us with grain. I have read a book which tells all about it. You fellows are all doomed—”

Emile Zola - La Terre (1887)

England's worst motorway

England's worst motorway revealed as 193-miles road used by thousands every day tops the list

England's worst motorway has been revealed in a new survey which also finds that overall driver satisfaction has declined over the last year.

The M1 is officially the country's least-favourite motorway, with just 57 per cent of drivers satisfied with their journey on the road.

Perhaps the M1 was an early example of turbocharging.

Cheerleaders for the ECHR

Joseph Dinnage has a useful CAPX piece on the history of the EHCR and how it has been sold to us.


Churchill would be no cheerleader for the modern ECHR

• Our continued membership of the ECHR is based on historical lies
• The idea that Britain would slide into despotism if we left the ECHR is for the birds
• We have arrived at a constitutional crossroads – let's choose parliamentary sovereignty

We have much to thank Winston Churchill for. Not only did he save us from fascist tyranny, but evoking his memory now is always guaranteed to incense left-wingers. One thing you might never have thought of crediting Churchill for, however, is laying the foundations for the creation, and our membership of, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Yet according to a version of history told by those who view our membership of the ECHR positively – including Keir Starmer and his Attorney General Richard Hermer – Churchill was a huge fan, and that means we should be too. The story goes that Churchill, embodying the nation’s trauma following the Second World War, advocated for a supranational ‘Charter of Human Rights’, to be enforced by a European court, to ensure that future atrocities do not go unpunished. After the ECHR was formed in 1950, Clement Attlee ratified it into British law.

Yet as a Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) report authored by Peter Lilley points out, this amounts to a creation myth. In actuality, concerns about the body’s potential for judicial overreach were voiced from the start.

The whole piece is well worth reading as yet another example of institutional decline. 

As Dinnage says, there is no reason to think that we would slide into despotism if we left the ECHR. We might add to that and suggest that membership of the ECHR is one of the factors contributing to the slide.