The TaxPayers’ Alliance: Your Toxic Solutions
- February 14, 2019
- by
- Matt
It’s been known for some time, for those who want to look, that the lobbying organisation the Taxpayers’ Alliance is not what it says it is. On its website the TPA presents itself as a ‘non-partisan, grassroots campaign for lower taxes, government transparency and an end to wasteful government spending.
Founded in 2003 by Matthew Elliott – the future chief executive of the Vote Leave campaign during the referendum – the TPA is one of various astroturf lobbying organisations based in Elliott’s 55 Tufton Street stable. Its influence has grown in the last few years, thanks...
All the Devils Are Here
- February 09, 2019
- by
- Matt
It’s been a hell of a week, hasn’t it? It’s fine for us to compare the EU to Hitler, the Soviet Union, the mafia, and a dictatorship. It’s ok to accuse the EU of torturing us by ‘administering punishment beatings’, as the sixth form yob who bizarrely became our last foreign secretary once declared.
It was...
Turning Point: All the Young (Alt-Right) Dudes
- February 05, 2019
- by
- Matt
As we sleepwalk towards the Brexit iceberg on 29 March, we should remember that the hardright ‘populists’ who have been dreaming of this outcome for so long don’t see it as an end, but as part of an ongoing process.
For some of them it’s a famous victory in a wider ethnonationalist assault on the international...
Immigration: Stop Pandering
- February 02, 2019
- by
- Matt
If there is one thing British politicians always seem able to agree on, it’s that they must respond to public concerns about immigration.
Rarely, if ever, do the politicians who seek to placate these concerns consider their validity. Is it true that Romanians and Bulgarians are all poor and therefore likely to be criminals – an...
Parliament Passes the Bomb
- January 30, 2019
- by
- Matt
Some of you may remember the family game called Pass the Bomb. For those haven’t played it, the rules are simple: You pass a ticking bomb back and forth between the group and try to make sure you aren’t the one holding it when it ‘explodes’.
This is what parliament did yesterday, in a monumental dereliction...
Brexit: The Stab-in-the-Back
- January 24, 2019
- by
- Matt
It’s now becoming increasingly clear, even to its most ardent defenders, that Brexit is not going swimmingly. Having inflicted the most comprehensive parliamentary defeat ever inflicted on a British prime minister, parliament is in a state of fevered chaos, with MPs frantically trying to prevent the country from sliding towards no deal, yet unable to...
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