I am a very law-abiding family man. I’ve always worked hard, have a good job, pay a lot of tax. I believe strongly in manners, respect and tradition. The fact that I feel as if the state is against me and would likely lock me up for my views is terrifying. The UK is utterly lost.

Seems to be quite a significant proportion of rent-a-gobs shilling for Reform on here.

Leaving aside the fact that's exactly what Reform have been doing for weeks, given they're both competing for the same voters, it probably makes sense to highlight their differences and then let people decide for themselves?

Wonderful to see the turnout for Restore campaigning in Makerfield. Normal, decent, British people. I wish them all the very best.

I’m not sure bragging about visiting a school of under 11s and how they’ve been politicised to dislike the state’s political opponents is a great look - certainly gives credence to those that say schools are becoming left wing indoctrination camps.

Musk does not have $1T in the bank - it’s company valuation. He employs 150,000 people and has made thousands of millionaires. He invests billions in R&D which will benefit humanity in countless ways. He built the factories, took the risks, created something.

Very sad to hear this. Bradford's finest!

I’m quite liking this dip we’ve just had. Feel like it was needed. We’d been going vertical for about 10 weeks. People were taking profits. These weeks are needed to cool things off, shake out the weak hands and reset. Provided Space X doesn’t dump and pull the market with it, I’d hope we now slowly grind back upward. Let’s see.

If only the UK could defend the country as passionately as it does the welfare budget.

I recently found out my Portuguese path to citizenship was being changed from 5 years, which I applied with in good faith, to 10 years. It's frustrating but I respect their decision - Portugal should do whatever is in the interest of their nation - I have no right to be upset.

This is a deeply suspicious and unnatural statement.

Good to see the the media have learned absolutely nothing. Blanket coverage of pointing fingers at the native population, the “far right” and how to preventing people from hearing about these awful crimes, instead of dealing with the core issue. They will never back down.

It's sad to see everybody repeatedly saying 'enough' after every incident. We all know it's gone way too far and we're hoping each incident will become the real watershed moment, but nothing ever happens. Everybody is waiting for someone else to do something.

Labour risks being forced to seek emergency help from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as Britain lurches toward a debt crisis, leading economists are now warning. Former IMF chief economist Ken Rogoff says, in a new interview, that there is “more than 50:50 chance” of a major UK debt crisis before the end of this decade. He is joined by Sir Charlie Bean, a former senior official at both the Bank of England and the Office for Budget Responsibility, who says the need for an IMF bail-out is now a “material risk” for the British economy. I not only firmly agree with Ken Rogoff and Sir Charlie Bean – but have been repeatedly issuing the very same warnings for a very long time. Because the grave risk of a major fiscal meltdown has been apparent for at least the last two years – to anyone who combines serious knowledge of UK economics and politics and global debt markets with an open mind. The UK's public finances were already fragile when Labour took office back in July 2024. But this government's misguided, ideologically-driven statist policies have made a bad situation much worse, seriously increasing the danger of a deep fiscal crisis - which would cause a disastrous state funding shortfall and a very nasty inflation spike. That would result in Downing Street being forced to follow the orders of unelected technocrats flown in from Washington and elsewhere. It would be a very major national humiliation combined with a deep economic slump and an even more intense cost-of-living crisis – in which low-income households, as ever, would suffer the most. Yet those of us that have shown the brains and courage to point out these inconvenient truths over recent months and years have long been dismissed and derided for our trouble - not only by ignorant politicians and approval-seeking journalists but also the overwhelming majority of "leading economists". Ahead of the general election in mid-2024, with Labour on course to win, the conventional wisdom among the great sages of broadsheet journalism and the economics establishment was that "the adults would soon be back in charge" ... Labour would "get lucky with the economy" ... and "Britain would now enjoy an extended period of political and fiscal stability". I thought that was total nonsense – not least as I was well aware Labour's plans irresponsibly to increase borrowing and spending would be met with deep scepticism by the global pensions funds, insurance companies and other institutional investors that lend governments serious money. My weekly @Telegraph "Economic Agenda" column of 23rd June 2024, a fortnight ahead of the general election, was a total outlier. I recounted the disaster of 1976 – when Britain was forced to go "cap in hand" to the IMF for a bailout – and warned that "The Ghosts of the 1970s" would haunt Labour's (so-called) economic resurrection". Six months later, after the October 2024 "Hallowen" budget in which Chancellor Rachel Reeves did indeed sharply hike borrowing and spending, I assessed the market reaction then doubled-down – warning more assertively in my column of 12th January 2025 that "The UK risks a return to 1976 unless Reeves changes course". And then again on 20th July 2025, as Labour's policies raised the costs of doing business, translating into price pressures which pushed up government borrowing costs even more, I again cautioned that "Inflation risks are taking Britain to the debt-crisis cliff edge". "It’s now screamingly obvious that Labour’s crude Keynesianism – “pump priming” the economy by upping state borrowing and spending – isn’t working," I wrote in that column last July. "Worse than that, this Government’s actions are pushing Britain towards a budgetary crisis every bit as serious as that in 1976 – when the UK was forced to go “cap in hand” to the IMF for a bail-out". It's been a lonely task issuing these warnings. I've been hounded in public debates, slagged off by senior civil servants and often dismissed by "leading economists" as "alarmist". So what do these same "leading economists" now say to Rogoff (Harvard Professor, Former IMF Chief Economist) and Bean (LSE Professor and Former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England)? The "economics establishment" – with very few honourable exceptions, the brilliant @jagjit_chadha among them – has been and remains extremely reluctant to point out the deeply unsustainable nature of this government's addiction to ever more borrowing. The systemic fiscal dangers of evermore "tax and spend" – and the prospect of a serious spike in gilt yields and related fiscal meltdown – are now so real and present as to be completely undeniable. Yet the UK government is about to shift even further to the left, pushing up borrowing and spending even more under a new leader, in a bid to appease the massed ranks of economic illiterates among Labour's Parliamentary party and activist base – making those dangers even more acute. Yet, still, the silence among "public intellectual" economists is deafening. I'm glad the likes of Ken Rogoff and Charlie Bean are now issuing clear warnings. So where is the rest of the "economics establishment" - those who purport to understand fiscal management and financial markets, and often funded by taxpayers' money? Britain is now clearly in the crosshairs of a very serious danger. The government's creditors are increasingly fickle and based overseas – with no regulatory or cultural obligations to lend money to the UK government. Those holding UK gilts are increasingly "speculative" rather than "strategic" long-term investors – looking for quick returns, financing their government bond purchases with "leverage" (money borrowed from elsewhere), which will quickly be withdrawn when senitment decisively shifts, causing a plunge in gilt prices and a sharp additional surge in government borrowing costs, setting up a vicious circle. The UK government is very heavily indebted – and the global investors we rely on to bankroll a huge slice of our state spending are alarmed that of the £132bn the government borrowed last year, no less than £110bn was spent on debt interest – as I wrote in a column on 17th May 2026, "As Labour lurches further left, the markets are calling time". Global investors are alarmed the UK has consistently had the highest inflation in the G7 (which pushes up borrowing costs) and has easily the highest share of index-linked debt (which magnifies the burden of inflation on the state's balance sheet). And they are deeply, deeply alarmed that when Labour came to power in mid-2024, the Office for Budget Responsibility was forecasting additional state borrowing of £323bn by 2029, the scheduled end of this Parliament. But Labour’s runaway spending and growth-crushing tax rises mean that the same five-year borrowing forecast is now £583bn – 80pc higher. And still, the trade unions, MPs and Labour activists who will choose Starmer’s successor now want even more. It is not too late to pull the UK back from the fiscal brink, to avoid the extremely painful and deep, lingering damage of being forced to go to the IMF and perhaps other multi-lateral creditors for a bailout. It is not too late to avoid the inflation surge, the currency crash, the shocking blow to consumer and business confidence alongside the sky-high interest rates that will seriously whack our economy – or the perhaps even deeper damage of yet more of the British electorate losing faith in the ability of our establishment to manage the country in a manner that avoids imposing serious hardship on so many hard-working people simply trying to make their way. But our political and media class needs to start acknowledging the economic and financial truth – that the UK government is borrowing and spending too much, taxation is now so high that it's hammering growth and employment, and that trying to finally get the economy moving by "moving further left", borrowing and spending even more, will result in a fiscal collapse. Smart, experienced, high-profile economists need to start speaking out – as Rogoff and Bean just have – raising the alarm in a bid to force the broader establishment to face reality. Before it's too late. If you've read this far, you clearly think this analysis is worthwhile and important. So please like and share. And for more, read my "Economic Agenda" column in The Sunday Telegraph each week – and subscribe to "When The Facts Change: Economics and Politics in a fast-moving world, with Liam Halligan"

Davey supported all the mad bullshit over BLM, convicted criminal George Floyd, ‘structural racism’ and all the maddest bullshit from the maddest parts of California’s communist loony bin. He supported all the changes to police and every other institution which have made us an international joke. He supported the Boriswave and the importing of thousands of sex criminals. He supported the continued coverup of the grooming Gangs which is why he wants to ban X and impose censorship. Davey Starmer etc need censorship so they can continue importing millions from Africa and the worst parts of South Asia. Until we retire them they will continue wrecking the country

The Henry Nowak case - and especially the muted reaction to it of the political establishment - says so much about what is wrong with our country. I feel that, like Southport, it will, in years to come, be seen as a pivotal moment causing a shift in the public mood. People can see what’s going on, and they are growing more and more angry.

Blair’s head is in the clouds… It’s well worth reading Blair’s essay - if for no other reason but to illustrate that Tony is still stuck in the past. Littered with generalisms about Britain’s standing in the world, European alignment, our place at the table etc there is no detail whatsoever about how the material needs of the British will be met or improved. All of the important questions remain unanswered: How will cheap grid energy actually be generated and supplied and by who? How will the housing crisis - unmentioned - be solved? Who will build the houses and how will this be financed? How can we rebuild domestic industries while practicing ‘free’ trade with China? How can we start to correct our present impoverished ‘vassal’ status with the US? How can the disastrous debt-ridden utilities privatisations be dealt with? In the increasingly Balkanised and divided society that Blair and his progressive friends created - how can we avoid civil conflict? I would say that the correction of most our these problems requires far greater degrees of autonomy and national independent action than our political class has hitherto been capable of. We need, in other words, the very insularity which Blair decries.

Air conditioning in the home is horrible to use. It’s the heating equivalent of white lights. Cold, dry air creates a miserable environment. Give me a fan any day of the week.

Britain’s heading for a cliff and there are four ways this ends. 1/ We fix it and get rich 2/ We drift and slowly get poorer 3/ The bond market wipes us out 4/ Or we wake up in a country where a handful of people own the lot, the dole is just buying votes, immigration tops up the voter base, and anyone with half a chance has already packed up and gone. Three things you can do about it. With your money: dump UK government bonds, buy gold and the firms wiring up the AI boom, and stuff your pension and ISA/tax wrappers while you still can. With your family: leave, move out of London, sort the kids’ schools, split your time between countries, or stay and dig in. Leaving is the easy bit. Staying is for the country and your kids and their kids, not for you. With your politics: Labour’s finished, the Tories are finished, the Greens are a joke. The SDP has the brains. Restore has Lowe. Reform has the votes. The job is getting electorally viable Reform to employ sensible (eg SDP’s) ideas before the bond market does it the hard way. Three of the four endings are worse than anyone wants to admit. This is about stopping the worst one. If you want anything to stay the same, something has to change. open.substack.com/pub/anglof…

After months of dealing with AIMA in Portugal, we're now beginning to deal with the Finanças office. All the same; long queues, broken systems, angry staff, wasting everyone's time. I know Portugal is known for being bureaucratic, but surely people want to change this?