Keir Starmer's authority has vanished. What's the point of this Government? When the time comes the British people will kick him into orbit: Read BORIS JOHNSON's devastating verdict a year on from Labour's loveless landslide
So that's it. Pffft! With a long sibilant farting efflatus as if from a punctured balloon the last of Keir Starmer 's authority has vanished to the four winds.
He can't control his backbenchers. He can't deliver on his election promises. His flagship welfare reform Bill – once hailed as the superdreadnought of the Labour fleet – has run up the white flag at the first whiff of gunfire and vanished back to port.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
34 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Record numbers expected at Budapest Pride march despite attempts to ban it
Update: Date: 2025-06-28T07:20:58.000Z Title: Budapest Pride expected to be a rallying cry against Orbán's rollback of rights Content: Good morning and welcome to the Europe live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I'll be bringing you all the latest news lines. We start with news that record numbers of people are expected to take part in Budapest Pride on Saturday. Hungarians will join forces with campaigners and politicians from across Europe in the march that has become a potent symbol of pushback against the Hungarian government's steady rollback of rights. 'This weekend, all eyes are on Budapest,' Hadja Lahbib, the European commissioner for equality, told reporters in the Hungarian capital on Friday. 'This is bigger than one Pride celebration, one Pride march. It is about the right to be who you are, to love who you want, whether it is in Budapest, in Brussels or anywhere else.' The country's main Pride march was cast into doubt earlier this year after the country's ruling Fidesz party – led by the rightwing populist Viktor Orbán – backed legislation that created a legal basis for Pride to be banned, citing a widely criticised need to protect children. The government also said it would use facial recognition software to identify people attending any banned events, potentially fining them up to €500 (£425). The move caused outrage from within Hungary and beyond, turning Budapest Pride into a rallying cry against a government that has long faced criticism for weakening democratic institutions and gradually undermining the rule of law. Read the full story here: In other developments: Severe weather warnings have been issued across southern Europe, including in Italy, Spain and Portugal, with temperatures expected to get close to or locally even above 40C this weekend, prompting concerns about health hazards and wildfires (14:32). Expected temperatures on early Saturday afternoon: Madrid 38C, Thessaloníki 38C, Florence 38C, Rome 37C, Lisbon 36C, Tirana 36C, Athens 35C. It will be hot in Paris (32C) and still warm in London and Berlin 28C, and in Brussels 27C. European leaders failed to agree on the latest, 18th, package of sanctions at last night's European Council meeting in Brussels, with Hungary and Slovakia holding firm in their opposition to the proposed measures. But it's worth noting that the EU has agreed on rolling over the already existing sanctions against Russia, which were due to expire. In Germany, lawmakers agreed to suspend family reunification rights for refugees without asylum status as conservative chancellor Friedrich Merz's government pursues a crackdown on immigration. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Estonia's stated intention to let Nato allies' nuclear-capable aircraft use its territory was a direct threat to Moscow.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
How Trump's ‘revenge tax' brought the world to its knees
When Donald Trump unveiled his 'One Big Beautiful Bill' last month, all the focus was on how the president's trillions of tax cuts might blow out America's budget bottom line. But hidden within the bill's 1,000-plus pages was a clause that set alarm bells ringing in boardrooms at many of Britain's biggest companies. In section 899 of the bill, Trump proposed what has become known as a 'revenge tax', which gave him a new power to punish countries that had tax regimes he didn't like. If Britain's taxes displeased him – and they do – he could ratchet up US taxes on British companies' American operations to blood-curdling levels. Every year, British companies would face an extra 5pc tax hit on earnings from their US operations, with the rate maxing out at 50pc. The threat was a devastating one. British companies with big US exposure include the food giant Compass, the big pharma pair GSK and AstraZeneca, Barclays, British American Tobacco, drinks conglomerate Diageo, goods manufacturer Reckitt Benckiser and Intercontinental Hotels Group. All are listed on the London Stock Exchange, meaning Trump's threat could have been devastating for the already beleaguered index. The response was immediate. Business leaders and lobby groups quickly began knocking on Rachel Reeves's door, sounding the alarm and urging the Chancellor to get on the case with Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary. Reeves got the message. She raised the S899 tax threat with Bessent when he came to London for trade talks with the Chinese in early June. By then, though, the bill was breezing through the House of Representatives and into the Senate, with the only change being a tweak to ensure investors in US Treasury bonds weren't affected by the 'revenge tax'. Businesses began weighing up Plan B. All the options for coping with the revenge tax were expensive and disruptive, ranging from pulling money out of the US to beat the higher rate to scaling back US investments, or dual-listing their stock in New York. Some even considered the nuclear option of spinning off their American businesses altogether. Fearing Trump's wrath The public debate on S899 hasn't matched the anxiety behind closed doors. Companies were reluctant to speak out, fearing Trump's wrath. But the clock was ticking. Trump wants his Big Beautiful Bill to become law by July 4. With less than a week to go, there was still no public sign that his team, or the Republicans in Congress, were ready to compromise. On Thursday night, though, the tax bloodbath was averted. Bessent announced that he'd extracted surrender terms from the finance ministers of the G7 – Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada – and told Congress to drop section 899. 'It's a big relief,' says Emanuel Adam, a Washington-based executive director at the lobby group British American Business. CS Venkatakrishnan, the Barclays chief, called it 'welcome progress, and a significant outcome for a great many UK companies like Barclays that invest in the US'. But a deal with Trump always comes at a price. The main target of s899 was efforts to impose a global minimum corporation tax, part of a OECD-led initiative, and in particular the Under-Taxed Profits Rule (UTPR). This aims to ensure that multinational companies always pay a tax rate of at least 15pc on their earnings, rather than being able to shelter profits in lower-tax countries. Bessent says the G7 will now not impose that levy on US businesses. The risk now, observers say, is that an American exemption to the UTPR could start to unravel that whole process, sending the world back into the rabbit warren of widespread tax avoidance. 'The biggest success has been to get a load of low-tax or no-tax countries, like the Gulf states and most of the island tax havens, to up their company tax rate to 15pc,' says Tim Sarson, the head of tax policy at KPMG UK. 'If they think they can reduce that rate and attract US companies to their jurisdiction, that might start to unpick the new system more widely.' Digital services taxes, which were one of Trump's explicit targets of s899, are still on the table. The president sees these as unfair imposts on American tech giants, but The Telegraph understands these will be fought over as part of his trade negotiations with individual countries, rather than as part of this deal. Closer to home, there's the question of whether the s899 deal will deliver yet another blow to Reeves's already shattered Budget. The Office for Budget Responsibility has estimated that the OECD 'Pillar Two' deal, which includes the global minimum tax rate and the UTPR, would deliver £1.3bn of extra revenue this financial year and next, climbing to £1.5bn by 2029-30. Most of this, though, would come from a different part of Pillar Two, which targets UK companies with subsidiaries in offshore tax havens, rather than US businesses. Tax experts say revenue from the UTPR, which the UK would collect from foreign companies, would be difficult to model and likely have only a small impact on the OBR's forecast. Price worth paying Even if there is a hit to Britain's tax take, it may have been a price worth paying to shield Britain's corporate A-list from Trump's brutal tax. With many blue chip companies reporting their annual or half-yearly results next month, boards were preparing and planning for the inevitable questions from alarmed shareholders. Many were evaluating what could be done to minimise the impact in the short term, in the hope that the political weather in the US might change after the Congressional midterm elections next year and the presidential election in 2028. 'I don't think companies would have retracted their investments or stalled major plans, but it would create additional friction. Projects might have taken longer,' British American Business's Adam says. 'Companies are agile, and companies know how to adjust. But this would have consumed resources and money that could be spent on other things.' Damage to confidence Although the immediate crisis seems to have passed, the Trump administration may have inflicted some lingering damage on the confidence that UK companies and investors have in the US as a place to do business. It just doesn't look quite like the safe, secure and stable proposition it used to be. Joe Dabrowski, of the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association, says that when you add the s899 scare to the tariff threats, Trump's fight with Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman, and his radical surgery on corporate governance, the sum total is much greater uncertainty. 'It all creates an environment where investors just have to tread more carefully. There is a lot more thinking and due diligence and risk you have to factor in,' he says. 'Some of it might just be white noise and political posturing, but at times it's very difficult to tell the difference between that and reality.' And although Reeves probably had little choice but to yield to Trump, the G7's readiness to give way has probably only increased that risk. 'There's the fear, which I'm sure UK Treasury has as well, that if you give the Americans this, then the next time they're unhappy about something, they'll try the same trick,' says KPMG's Sarson. With the mercurial Trump barely started on his four-year term, British businesses should probably just put those contingency plans in a drawer, rather than feed them to the shredder.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
The gold-plated pensions costing taxpayers £400m a year
Taxpayers are spending more than £400m a year on gold-plated pensions for just 10,600 judges, new analysis shows. The average member of the Judicial Pension Scheme now receives £37,000 in pension contributions for each year of work, before being handed almost £40,000 a year in retirement. They have built up £4.5bn in taxpayer-funded pension entitlements, but pay up to 7pc towards the cost of their retirements. The figures come despite major reforms to public sector pensions in 2015 after rising costs pushed the Government to act. The Taxpayers' Alliance said judges should be moved into defined contribution schemes, while the Intergenerational Foundation said the 'profligate pension promises' would be funded by young people. There were 10,578 members of the Judicial Pension Scheme at the end of 2023-24, according to a Freedom of Information request made by The Telegraph. Judicial salaries ranged from £106,563 to £312,510 during the year, according to the Ministry of Justice. As public sector workers, they are entitled to guaranteed, inflation-linked pensions for life. The scheme's 6,162 working judges paid in 4.1pc of their salary on average. As their employer, the Ministry of Justice then added another 51.1pc at a cost of £229m. The required employer contribution increased to 62.6pc from April last year to keep pace with the rising costs of the scheme, but the amount paid in by employees has remained the same. Before 2012, judges did not have to contribute to their personal pensions and only paid towards benefits for their dependants. The scheme's pension payouts are also more generous than other key public sector schemes, with retirees receiving £39,400 on average – costing taxpayers another £180m a year, taking the total bill to £409m. By comparison, the average pension was around £16,600 for teachers and £12,300 for Armed Forces personnel, falling to £11,400 for NHS workers and £9,900 for retired civil servants. Liz Emerson, of the Intergenerational Foundation, said: 'Younger generations can only dream of similar pensions, but they will end up paying for these profligate promises via higher taxation, later retirements and lower pensions themselves. 'At the very least, the Government should levy National Insurance contributions on annual pensions that are higher than the average earnings of working-age adults.' Public sector pensions already cost the UK £54.3bn a year, despite being moved away from final salary schemes in 2015 amid fears they had become unaffordable. Payments are now based on a worker's average earnings, but the final salary entitlement for existing members was extended to 2022 after a legal challenge from members of the judicial and firefighters' pension schemes. Under the new system, judges have 2.5pc of their salary added to their pension each year, which is more than teachers, civil servants, NHS workers and Armed Forces personnel. John O'Connell, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: ' Public sector pensions are extraordinarily generous with employer contributions, often outstripping those in the private sector. 'But what makes them particularly generous is the fact that they are gold-plated schemes, not based on the value of a pension pot, but on the average earnings of the employee, meaning they get topped up above and beyond what has already been contributed. 'On top of this, they are unfunded, coming not from an investment scheme, but general taxation. At the very least, ministers should be moving all public sector workers onto fully-funded, defined contribution schemes which are based on monies actually paid in.' A report published last year by the University College London Judicial Institute revealed that more than one in three judges planned to quit the profession within five years, citing poor working conditions and a continual loss of net earnings amid a backlog in the country's courts. The Senior Salaries Review body recommended a 4.75pc pay rise for members of the judiciary for 2025-26, but the Lord Chancellor reduced it to 4pc. A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: 'The Judicial Pension Scheme 2022 is designed to encourage top legal professionals to become judges who are vital to keeping the justice system running.'
