Transport for London has done a screeching U-turn after accidentally banning a week-long Greenpeace campaign urging Rachel Reeves to tax the super-rich. Old habits banning ads die hard…
Greenpeace had snapped up ad space at Westminster Tube Station from October 23rd to 28th, just in time for the Budget. The ad, with Reeves’ face alongside the tagline, “They have the money. She has the power,” demanded a 2.5% “National Renewal Tax” on fortunes over £10 million. Though when Greenpeace went to see their handiwork, TfL had quietly given it the axe…
According to The Standard, TfL’s initial excuse was they couldn’t run it without Reeves’ “written permission” unless she’d publicly aligned herself with the statement. The Committee of Advertising Practice confirmed no permission was needed, since the ad wasn’t portraying Reeves negatively (free-marketeers would disagree). They must have realised that Reeves is preparing to hammer ‘non-working’ people on six-figure salaries in her Budget tomorrow anyway. The ads will now be running on the network – a bit late. Greenpeace doing the Chancellor’s PR for her…
Labour’s communcations operation has been in overdrive over the last week to control doom and gloom of its own making ahead of the budget. Panicked party officials are insisting there will be “no rabbit” as Reeves and Starmer release the major measures to the media…
As bond yields rise past the levels at which Truss “crashed the economy” the gilt market is wobbling ahead of a massive rise in borrowing. The Health Secretary told Times Radio this morning that the recent raft of budget announcements and fiscal rule changes are “important to make sure that this budget lands in the right context with the financial markets.” An admission of concern…
10-year gilt yields got to 4.29% on Monday – above mini-budget territory. Streeting says “we saw what happened with Truss and Kwarteng when they ignored the Office for Budget Responsibility and sidelined them when they took the markets by surprise.” Labour has coralled the OBR into producing a “review” of the Tories’ £22 billion “black hole” to support its messaging tomorrow…
The Guardian is already lined up to blame “bond market vigilantes” for a bad reaction to tomorrow’s Budget. Expectation management deployed…
Keir Starmer’s popularity is plummeting faster than a lead balloon, setting a record-breaking slide for any Prime Minister’s approval rating so soon after winning an election. According to a More in Common poll, back in July, Sir Keir held an 11-point approval high, fresh from Labour’s 174-seat sweep. Now, just a few months on, Starmer’s approval has nosedived to a catastrophic -38, marking a 49-point collapse. Donation scandals, looming tax raids, and an uptick in Channel migrants may have something to do with it…
Guido recalls when Starmer was dubbed “Blair without the flair,” though judging by these numbers, even that seems too generous—Blair hit a +46 approval rating after his 1997 landslide and didn’t see red on approval until three years later. With Rachel Reeves teeing up fresh tax raids tomorrow, Starmer’s popularity won’t be catching its breath anytime soon, especially considering the majority of Britons prioritise low taxes. Things are only likely to get worse for Labour…
The Guardian published a cloying piece yesterday on Marianna Spring, the BBC’s Head of Disinformation. As expected, it was full of the usual hand-wringing about truth and integrity in journalism. In the interview, Spring admits to the one time she fell for fake news herself. Wombat memes…
Apparently, back when Australia was ablaze with wildfires, Spring began circulating memes on her Instagram showing, as she puts it, “I want to say… wombats? They were very cute and very big, and they were hiding other baby animals from the flames. I sent them to my friends, these wombats, but it later transpired the story was just complete rubbish.” She went on to lament, “It’s easy to be tricked…”
It’s not the only time Spring has been taken in by misinformation. Guido remembers when her ‘top scoop’ about Trump supporters supposedly crafting “deepfakes portraying black people as supporting the former president” turned out to just be images from a parody account. If the BBC’s disinformation guru is fooled by wombat memes, it’s hardly a shock she’s been duped by plenty more besides…
Rachel Reeves is set on Wednesday to break her party’s manifesto pledge, which states: “Labour will not increase taxes on working people.” The Chancellor and PM have offered many definitions for who ‘working people‘ are. Before the election Reeves said “Working people are people who go out to work and work for their incomes.”
Rachel says she resigned from Halifax Bank of Scotland in December 2009, where she worked – as Guido revealed last week – in a mundane support department managing administration matters. This has been confirmed by her team, who, when Guido asked where she worked instead, said she stood as a parliamentary candidate. An unpaid role, which means that Reeves spent around 150 days as a non-working person before the election in May…
Westminster sources say six months is a long time to be a parliamentary candidate without another job. They point out that Leeds West was a highly safe Labour seat at the time and didn’t demand intensive campaigning. Reeves was already the prospective parliamentary candidate from the summer…
Gordon Brown announced the election on 6th April 2010 – long after Reeves became a full-time unpaid campaigner. Testimony from sources who worked in the bank during this period say that after Lloyds took over HBOS personnel from several departments left in agreement with the firm. How did she manage as a non-working person for six months without an expense account?
Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden last night had the usual left-wing suspects frothing at the mouth. Seizing on the fact that there was a pro-Nazi rally in the same venue back in 1939, Sky News dutifully cranked out a long piece under its “eyewitness” section, titled: “Was Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally an evocation of Nazism?”. The first sentences peddles the ‘Trump neo-Nazi’ line:
“An evocation of Nazism? Of course it was, and of course it wasn’t. Like everything else in this election, the narrative cuts both ways.”
The Guardian couldn’t resist piling on either:
“Anger and vitriol took centre stage at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday night, as Donald Trump and a cabal of campaign surrogates held a rally marked by racist comments, coarse insults, and dangerous threats about immigrants.”
The Independent came up with its own sensational headline: “Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally was an orgy of fascism.” In the liberal elite’s rush to smear, they conveniently leave out the fact that Madison Square Garden has hosted no shortage of political titans over the decades. Here’s just a few:
Meanwhile, Trump is in the lead in the polls. Just 8 days to go…
Red Wall Labour backbencher Jonathan Brash told GB News that Starmer should resign:
“I’m completely fed up about it, and I think it’s got to the point now where I genuinely think that, as far as the Prime Minister is concerned, it’s not a case of if, it’s when.”