Dan.

“Russian interference” is thisclose to topping French pop charts!

Slavery was an evil in which people from every continent and region participated. We should be honest about the whole history, not select the parts that are politically convenient today, especially given Britain's leading role in ending the transatlantic slave trade. If Caribbean countries are asking Britain for a formal apology for Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, will they also be asking the same of the descendants of African kingdoms, rulers and merchants who captured, sold and profited from the trade? On demands for reparations, whether through cash or debt relief, we have been down this track before. Twenty-five years ago, Jubilee 2000, Drop the Debt and Make Poverty History argued that cancelling the debts of poorer countries would give them a fresh start. More than $100 billion of debt was eventually written off, but many of those countries have since built up even bigger debts. Labour are already spending too much on Britain's welfare state, now is not the time for Andy Burnham to be providing global welfare. There is no reason British taxpayers today should be held financially responsible for things that happened generations before any of us were born. And I have even less patience for political elites in commonwealth countries who don’t know how to make their own citizens prosperous now looking for another opportunity to blame Britain. As Prime Minister, Andy Burnham should be Britain’s greatest defender. Instead, he is writing articles saying we need to confront our history (as if we haven't done enough of that) and considering another formal historical apology. Tony Blair already expressed Britain’s deep sorrow and regret for our role in the slave trade nearly twenty years ago. There is no need to do so again. This is all another navel-gazing distraction. The Commonwealth should be looking forward, not endlessly backwards. That means economic partnerships to make us all richer and deeper military and security cooperation against common threats. If every Commonwealth summit becomes an exercise in presenting Britain with demands for cash then we need to start asking if it is worth the effort.

Celebrity Traitors winners BOTH donate their winnings to very well-funded refugee charities The final I was not expecting #CelebrityTraitors

I was hoping to be able to announce this in my own time – but the media rumour mill is swirling, I'm being contacted by various reporters and others, and I don't like denying the truth, so ... I wrote my first "Economic Agenda" column in The Sunday Telegraph 27 years ago, under the editorship of Dominic Lawson – filling-in occasionally during the late-1990s, before being given my own weekly slot from 2003. Since then, while I've been heavily involved in television, and am perhaps better known as a broadcaster, penning "Economic Agenda" for The Sunday Telegraph each week has been the backbone of my journalistic life. On Thursday, the @Telegraph rang to tell me my column is being scrapped. I was asked, and have agreed, to write "Economic Agenda" until the end of November, as per my contract. After that, my Sunday Telegraph column will be no more. Why this decision has been made, and whether or not my columns were any good, is for others to judge. All I will say is that, as the first person in my family to attend university, sustaining a weekly column in a leading national newspaper for a quarter of a century has been a source of enormous pride for myself and my family. Lots of people have been asking me about the future of "Planet Normal" - the hugely-popular Telegraph podcast which I co-created and co-present with the brilliant @AllisonPearson "Planet Normal" has, over the last 330 weekly episodes, also become a major part of my professional life and my broader identity. With Allison reportedly leaving the Telegraph as well, there is a lot of speculation about whether or not the podcast will continue to impart "news and views from beyond the bubble" with our usual blend of sharp analysis, humour and occasional outrage ! Well, I am delighted to confirm that Co-Pilot Pearson and myself are deeply committed to our joint podcast – and, above all, to our beloved listeners. We will, as and when notice periods allow, continue our voyages through space every Thursday – perhaps to "Planet Normal", or maybe to another part of the solar system – so we can "gaze down each week at the madness of Planet Earth", as we have done since the Spring of 2020. So citizens of Planet Normal, stand ready ! The "rocket-of-right-thinking", the "flying refuge of reasoned views", will soon be launched once again 🚀🪐👨‍🏭👱‍♀️🎙️📺 I poured my heart and soul into "Economic Agenda" and "Planet Normal". The Telegraph's decision to scrap them is obviously a huge personal blow. But I will always be grateful for the opportunities the paper has given me. Above all, I would like to thank the illustrious list of successive Telegraph business editors I've worked with since the late-1990s, many of whom have become and remain good friends - including @Peston @RobertsDan @larmitstead @neilbenet @benjaminmarlow @cg_williams @kamalahmednews @MarkKleinmanSky @jamesrquinn (sorry if I've forgotten anyone, it's been a long time!) On Friday, even though I almost always write my column from elsewhere, and despite being extremely disappointed by the paper's decision, I decided to go into the Telegraph and write today's column sitting in the newsroom. I am glad I did - as being at the heart of the paper at such a difficult time allowed for lots of conversations, with everyone from junior production staff to senior reporters and executives, which reminded me that journalism, despite being an industry at the whim of seemingly endless and often brutal commercial and technological upheaval, is not only hugely important to our country, but full of talented, decent people. See picture below, having just filed my piece, as I was heading out the door ...

Así ha entrado Lavrov al G20 de Exteriores en Atlanta que preside Marco Rubio. No habrá foto de familia porque los europeos se niegan a aparecer con él. @EFEnoticias

Ukrainian soldier to Zelenskyy: “F*cking karma awaits you” Maybe the men who are left are finally getting it.

Says man who follows me and was all too happy to attend our July 4 party in DC this year 🤭🥂

The stand off around Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal is about restoring rule of law to an institution which had been politicised by the populist government which lost power in the election of 2023. Its president repeatedly broke the law by steering politically sensitive cases to hand-picked judges. It failed to pass its own budget,

If you don’t want to take part in Halloween, don’t answer the front door or decorate your house. It’s that simple. This is a tradition that goes back hundreds of years in Britain, most importantly it’s for kids! The need to design posters or have the police and councils issue statements is batshit left wing nonsense. It’s funny that the far-left defending this woke rubbish are the same groups that scream “globalise the intifada”, grind cities to a halt, constantly intimidate the public, defend police being attacked with a sledgehammer all for “Gaza”. The same people who think riots in France are justified. The same people who think dog walking in the countryside should be banned. It’s one night a year, it’s for kids, it’s our tradition, leave it alone. The vast majority of the British public think this kind of stuff is pathetic and a waste of authorities’ time and resources. Police forces and councils should get off social media, stop wasting time and money (which they are desperately short of) and actually do the job they are paid for.

You can cancel an election and ban the winner from running (Romania), you can ban your opponents from ever running again (Hungary), you can threaten to ban the main opposition party and subject it to relentless investigations by the secret police (Germany), you can threaten a ban on the leading presidential candidate and make them wear an ankle monitor (France), every member of your circle can be investigated for corruption (Spain), you can try and cancel local elections because you will lose them (Britain), and you can storm the constitutional court with riot police because you want to control it (Poland). You can just do all these things. The secret is you just have to be on the right side of the European Commission.

‼️ A COUP IS HAPPENING IN POLAND 🇵🇱 Poland's Constitutional Tribunal is being subjected to an extraordinary takeover operation by pro-EU Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Its official website has been taken over, an announcement has appeared removing its president and vice-president from their duties, and police have been deployed around the institution. The Tribunal's existing leadership has declared the operation illegal and accused those responsible of committing a coup d'état. The Constitutional Tribunal is the institution responsible for reviewing whether laws comply with the Constitution. It is broadly comparable to the constitutional-review function of the United States Supreme Court. Today, its website announced that President Bogdan Święczkowski and Vice-President Bartłomiej Sochański had been suspended for one month. The person now claiming authority over Poland's Constitutional Tribunal is Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, elected to the Tribunal by Donald Tusk's parliamentary majority in March 2026. But there is a fundamental legal problem: she has never taken her judicial oath before the President of Poland, Karol Nawrocki. Under Article 4 of the Act on the Status of Constitutional Tribunal Judges, newly elected judges must take their oath before the President of the Republic. Nawrocki refused to receive her oath. Instead, on April 9, Korwin-Piotrowska participated in an alternative swearing-in ceremony organised inside the Polish Parliament, without the President's presence or participation. The Presidential Chancellery explicitly declared that this procedure had no legal basis and could not confer judicial authority. The existing leadership of the Constitutional Tribunal maintains that she is therefore not legally a judge of the institution. And now, a woman whose authority to serve as a constitutional judge is rejected by the President and the Tribunal's existing leadership is being presented as the person entitled to take control of the entire court. Poland's Constitution does not give the prime minister or his government the power to dismiss the Constitutional Tribunal's leadership. Article 194 establishes the Tribunal's composition and the procedure for appointing its president. Article 195 guarantees the independence of its judges. The announcement of a suspension relies on Article 130 of the law governing ORDINARY COURTS. Invoking this article to suspend the leadership of the Constitutional Tribunal is a legally indefensible distortion of the law, revealing a staggering disregard for elementary constitutional principles. HOW DID POLAND GET HERE? Donald Tusk returned to power in December 2023, promising to reverse the judicial reforms introduced under the conservative Law and Justice government. Those reforms had been fiercely opposed by the European Commission, which initiated rule-of-law proceedings against Poland and linked access to European funding to judicial conditions. Tusk's government subsequently presented Brussels with a programme for restructuring the judiciary, including the Constitutional Tribunal. The European Commission welcomed that programme and ended its Article 7 proceedings against Poland in 2024. The methods used by the EU and its supporters undermine the very constitutional principles they claim to restore. President Karol Nawrocki has reportedly interrupted his journey to Senegal to return to Poland.

🚨 NEW: Laura Kuenssberg has revealed a Government Minister may have wanted a threesome with her after she arrived for an interview in his hotel room to find him on the bed shirtless with his partner waiting "It was very uncomfortable"

Albo wyprowadzicie ich za rok parlamentu, albo oni wyprowadzą nas z Unii Europejskiej.

A thirty second online search would show that Restore Britain has stood in multiple Conservative seats, and is standing in multiple upcoming Conservative defences. What you've stated is just factually inaccurate.

Rupert Lowe was a Brexit Party MEP for the West Midlands. But he withdrew as the party’s parliamentary candidate for the marginal Dudley seat in November 2019, the day of the nomination deadline. Why? Rupert had been dead keen on sitting in Parliament, and by all accounts he stood a fairly decent chance. But something weird happened in the weeks running up to that bizarre decision to withdraw on deadline day itself, which meant no alternate candidate could be submitted. He threw the race. In football terms, it was match fixing. But what possessed him, and does that same thing possess him now? In the run-up to that decision, a man by the name of Dougie Smith had been in touch with Lowe. It’s not known how long for. But the communication intensified in that period. Smith — who likes to be called “the wolf” and is known in the media as “Dr. No” because they’re afraid of naming him — has been a long time dark arts fixer for the Tory party. He ran Boris Johnson. He worked for Cameron. He ran Sunak. And he’s now in charge of Kemi Badenoch and Kevin Hollinrake. In fact, Dougie even introduced Kemi to her husband Hamish, in a little-known fact they’ve tried to keep quiet. And with good reason: Smith is a long-time sex party organizer. Just ask Michael Gove. Smith ran orgies for high-profile people, including many politicians, in the 90s and 2000s. So there’s lots of kompromat. But back to Lowe. Remember, this was 2019. It would be at least 5 more years until the big Farage fallout that caused Restore Britain to arrive on the scene and do precisely what Rupert claimed he didn’t want to do in that Dudley election: “split the vote.” At the time, in 2019, Farage called what Lowe did “disgusting behaviour” and said it was a double-cross of then Brexit Party leader Richard Tice. Lowe is believed to have met a senior Tory official that week, and his withdrawal had been arranged with the Conservatives. This episode sat within a wider set of claims by Farage about Conservative efforts to clear the field in key seats. Apparently, Rupert wasn’t the only target of this op. But he appears to have been the longest-running asset of Dougie Smith. You would recognise other names, too. But that’s for another time. Farage called out Dougie Smith as one of the figures involved in approaches to Brexit Party candidates that mixed inducements (the offer of peerages, jobs, and even a suggested knighthood) with pressure and intimidation. The latter being Smith’s forte. One account, reproduced in screenshots shared online, asserts that Lowe met Smith privately at a DoubleTree Hilton in London at 4:30 p.m. on 14 November and that the two men collaborated on a “Men and Measures” list mapping out Tory safe seats, peerages, or other positions for Brexit Party figures willing to stand down in favour of the Conservatives. This is precisely what Restore Britain has now been doing at a council level around the country. Men and Measures 2.0. And it makes even more sense when you consider the Dougie Smith-era Tories who are now working inside Restore Britain. Men like Scott Benton, who was also elected for the Tories in 2019. To this day, the Men and Measures playbook is being run. Where Tories stand to win at a council level, Restore Britain activists are pulled back, and candidates often not stood at all. If Reform are standing to win where the Tories can, Restore Britain floods the zone as hard as it can. Now these could all just be a massive series of coincidences. But add to it Lowe’s own words about the Tory party, and how he repeatedly refuses to say anything negative about Kemi Badenoch, despite most of his base blasting her as an “anchor baby.” “I could join the Tories tomorrow if I wanted to,” he told Newsnight in early 2025. “I don’t have an issue with the Tories.” That’s true. He doesn’t have an issue with the Tories. Because they control him. He’s the man. They’ve got the measures. And Dougie Smith is pulling the puppet strings.

Reform trying to spin council by-elections 🤔 Here are some more accurate figures 👇 Council by-election wins since 16 September: 🔵 Conservatives: 12 🔴 Labour: 10 🟠 Lib Dems: 4 🟦 Reform: 2

‘He’s a warmonger and cold-blooded killer.’ Defence Secretary Wes Streeting distrusts Putin’s assurance that he ‘doesn’t want war with Europe’.

I really enjoy a good high volume delivery slash myself. Often a bit sad when it’s over.

Will the Times’s leader column focus on this? Will @lewis_goodall? Will there be days of establishing teeth gnashing over this “Sri Lankan Strategy” deployed on the BBC by a literal war criminal? Or does the establishment only do all that when a brown man gets too lairy? 🤔

You know, I've been racking my brain trying to remember when else in history a great military power launched a war of aggression against a neighboring country, failed to defeat it on the battlefield for years -- and then the leadership of another great power (which the aggressor had regarded as its archenemy until just yesterday!!) engaged in petty, sordid collusion with the aggressor, made a complete 180-degree turn, and began actively working to force its undefeated victim into capitulation and extinction as a nation. I'm honestly trying to think of historical precedents -- but it seems that never before in the history of this world under the heavens has there been such a spectacular display of deranged idiocy.