|
Unlock this newsletter, plus full access to our website and app for less than £2 a month.
|
 |
Tony Diver Political Editor |
In some ways, Kemi Badenoch’s party conference speech this year delivered exactly what Conservatives were expecting.
In the hour-long address, plenty of space was devoted to attacking her opponents – the “Paddington Bear Prime Minister” Andy Burnham and “fishy” Nigel Farage – and to the Tories’ efforts to rebuild after the 2024 election disaster.
“I’m not someone who gets written off, and neither is the Conservative Party,” declared Badenoch, who is now far more popular with the electorate than her party.
Behind the boosterish rhetoric was a shift in emphasis that will define the Tories’ journey to the next general election.
Badenoch’s plan to abolish inheritance tax on family homes would represent a dramatic tax cut for wealthier voters, costing £6bn from 2029-30.
Conservative strategists believe the policy is part of a winning formula for attracting middle-income voters from Reform UK, the Lib Dems and Labour.
It also signals that the Tories are once again pitching to be the party of wealth and aspiration, after a drift towards bloated state spending, debt and tax rises in the final years of the last Tory government.
Defending tax cuts for the wealthy while cutting welfare for the poor will require skilled campaigning against Labour’s 1970s-style vision for the future. This is the new – albeit well-worn – divide in British politics. Get used to it.
This analysis is available only to subscribers.
Continue reading ➤
Full story: Badenoch pledges to fight for Tory values ➤
Tim Stanley: Kemi faces down race-baiters and far-Left as she tempts the middle class ➤
James Baxter-Derrington: The Tories promised to cut inheritance tax before. Why should we trust them this time? ➤ |
|
Allister Heath Nigel Farage suddenly has formidable competition on the Right Continue reading ➤
Simon Heffer I begged Jeffrey Archer to plead guilty, but he never listened Continue reading ➤
Ysenda Maxtone Graham There’s never been a worse time to be a vegan Continue reading ➤ |
To make sure you don’t miss our newsletters when they land in your inbox, click here. |
|
• The German spy accused of selling intelligence to a foreign power led a double life as a coach for an amateur football team, The Telegraph can reveal.
• The BBC pays white staff less on average than their ethnic minority colleagues in every pay band bar one, figures show. Black, Asian, mixed and other ethnic minority employees received higher median pay than white workers in the corporation’s lowest and top pay bands.
• University of Cambridge academics have demanded that the Jason Arday review considers the university’s culpability in promoting him as “a success story”.
• Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s allies have compared the circumstances surrounding his arrest to the treatment of Lord Brittan during Operation Midland.
• Andy Burnham is preparing to raise tariffs on Chinese electric cars as part of a closer relationship with the EU. The Prime Minister could increase levies from 10 per cent to the bloc’s 45 per cent. |
Lubna Speitan was behind the party’s radical ‘Zionism is racism’ motion |
Once the home of Birkenstock-wearing moderates, the Green Party is facing a ruthless hard-Left takeover. Ex-Corbynistas have deployed classic Trotskyist entryism to capture the party from within, passing a radical anti-Israel motion. With Zack Polanski, the party leader, under fire, activists are now plotting to unseat the leadership entirely after today’s Holborn and St Pancras by-election. For subscribers only ➤ |
|
When Jeremy Clarkson brought together the Hawkstone Farmers Choir, nobody imagined that it would go on to win Britain’s Got Talent. Now, 18 months on, the choir is releasing its debut album, This Is Home, before embarking on an 18-venue nationwide tour next spring. Peter Stanford finds out more about the financial and mental health issues that brought these isolated farmers together – and exactly who will be looking after the cows. Continue reading ➤ |
|
 |
Marine Le Pen’s newfound appetite for balancing the budget is not shared by French voters, who took to the streets this week to protest against cuts to public services and will choose a new president to replace Emmanuel Macron in April. Meanwhile, investors have looked at Le Pen’s previously extravagant promises – and at the polls that put her on course for victory – and don’t see a country planning to live within its means. So they have driven French bond yields – the cost of government borrowing – to their highest level in decades. Continue reading ➤ |
|
Paula Leeson, who loathed swimming, drowned fully clothed in a shallow pool in a remote Danish town. Her husband, Donald McPherson, took out £3.5m in life insurance policies before her death. Though a civil court ruled that he had unlawfully killed her, McPherson walked free after his criminal trial collapsed. He then vanished abroad, leaving a grieving family desperate for justice. Continue reading ➤ |
|
According to fitness coach Kate Rowe-Ham, working on the muscles that support the spine will help to prevent reoccurring back pain |
It’s tempting to try to banish the misery of back pain with a variety of quick fixes – but some of those may be doing little to help. In some cases, they may even make it worse. From taking the wrong painkillers to over-relying on a brace or belt, here are seven mistakes to avoid – and what really works instead.
Continue reading ➤
|
|
Few can imagine the agony of motor neurone disease (MND), a condition that causes muscles to waste away, leading to paralysis and respiratory failure. One in 300 of us will develop it, and there is currently no cure.
For the past 18 months, one courageous Telegraph reader, whose face we never see, has been living with MND. With the help of her family, she has recorded her battle against a condition that, as she writes so movingly, “does tend to make one feel that one is disappearing from the world”.
Our anonymous author writes:
I want to bring these meandering notes to a close, for now. I need to make the most of being able to move: the garden, out of the grip of drought, is demanding attention. If I spend the day at my desk, my left leg is perfectly content – until I stand up. It needs reminding that it is not yet time to give up.
In that spirit, I have had my bedroom decorated and made new curtains, badly. It is on the first floor, and I can still manage the stairs. I intend to for as long as I can.
We have had to think about downstairs – where I might sit, where I might sleep, when (not if). Our rooms are generous enough for a wheelchair. They are also lovely, looking out over the garden, and I do not want to spoil them with hospital beds and medicine bottles. So I sit in each in turn, picturing myself there, wondering which could best bear the insult.
I should like, too, to join one of the drug trials. MND is beginning to attract real attention, and I may as well put this ridiculous affliction to some use.
Through all of it I have been carried by remarkable people – Lucy, Ruth, and the rest. Almost without exception, they are women. Exceptional women. I thank them.
I thank you, too, for reading, and for your kind comments. It has brought me real comfort to know that these diaries have helped explain this disease to those with no experience of it, and brought some comfort and fellow feeling to those who know it all too well. Who knows, perhaps this won’t be the last word.
If you have been moved by the snippets of this diary over the past few weeks, you can read it in full here. |
Sweet peasWhile Orlando Bird, our loyal Reader Correspondent, is away, Kate Moore is on hand to share an off-piste topic that has brought out the best of your opinions and stories. Kate writes...
As I tuck into my sardine and pea pasta this evening, I can be hopeful of an uninterrupted night. Lettuce might be the more famous soporific in Beatrix Potter, but it’s peas that put Timmy Willie to sleep in The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse. Some scientific basis appears to exist for this, as fibrous legumes such as peas have been shown to reduce the risk of sleep disorders.
Now, however, both lettuce and pea crops are struggling in the wake of the summer’s intense heat, while pea consumption has dropped by an alarming 75 per cent in the past 50 years.
For some readers, this was not bad news. “I seem to recall that every time we ate out in the 1960s and 1970s we were served peas,” wrote Jean Hotchkiss. “Consequently, since then they have been largely missing from my dining table.”
Certainly in their industrial form – that is to say, boiled hard as bullets and dolloped on the side of a plate, they can be rather unappetising. Things have improved in recent years, partly thanks to better blanch and freeze methods.
“As the father of a 16-month-old who regards peas as one of the great culinary achievements of civilisation, I was surprised to read that Britain is falling out of love with them,” wrote Jamie Lines.
“Perhaps we should stop confusing fashionable with better. The humble frozen pea is cheap, British, nutritious and remarkably versatile. It has survived generations of school dinners, Sunday roasts and fish suppers without needing a celebrity chef or an Instagram campaign to tell us how good it is.”
Even so, dinnertimes with young children can be fraught. “My mother always told me that we ceased having peas at dinner when I was about two years old as I insisted on pushing them up my nose, and the regular visits to children’s A&E on a Sunday afternoon became too much,” Michael Upton recalled.
Mike Ellis had a different struggle, though successfully overcome: “I solved the problem of my 10-year-old son refusing to eat his peas by challenging him to see which of us could stick the most peas on a fork of mashed potato and eat them… Of course, I let him win.”
For Susan Martin, however, all that effort had a significant downside: “Wanting my small sons to eat more vegetables, I foolishly showed them how sweet peas are when picked and eaten straight out of the garden. I never found a further pea to pick.” Are you a member of the Peas Corp? Let us know here.
Please confirm in your reply that you are happy to be featured and that we have your permission to use your name. |
|
1959 | The Conservatives, led by Harold Macmillan, win the general election (see our coverage on the front page of the following day’s paper)
1967 | Che Guevara and his men are captured in Bolivia
2004 | Martha Stewart begins her prison sentence for insider trading and obstruction of justice
2023 | Israel formally declares war on Hamas
Birthdays: Sadiq Khan (56), Matt Damon (56), Ursula von der Leyen (68), Sigourney Weaver (77)
Also, in this week’s news, the AA has issued guidance for drivers to tackle fuel costs amid the diesel crisis. What did it suggest? 1. Drive slower than the speed limit
2. Accelerate gently
3. Skip gears from second to fourth
4. Don’t use the heating to defrost the windscreen
Click one of the options to reveal the answer... |
|
Find as many words as you can in today’s Panagram, including the nine-letter solution. Visit Telegraph Puzzles to play a range of head-scratching games, including The 1% Club, Cogs, and Quick, Mini or Cryptic Crosswords.
Yesterday’s Panagram was DOWNRIGHT. Come back tomorrow for the solution to today’s puzzle. |
Thank you for reading. Have a fulfilling day and I hope to see you tomorrow. Chris Evans, Editor
I’d love to hear what you think of this newsletter. You can email me your feedback at fromtheeditor@telegraph.co.uk. |
|
Unlock this newsletter, plus full access to our website and app for less than £2 a month.
|
|
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg )
%20(1).jpg)
%20(1).jpg )
%20(1).png)
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire