
BEL MOONEY: As a British Jew, I have never felt so terrified as I do now
Dear Bel,
I feel my whole world has turned into a dystopian nightmare. What prompted me to write was that video made by Dawn French. She put on a babyish, whinging voice to mock the agony Jewish people are going through, and reduced the horrors of October 7, 2023 to 'a bad thing'.

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Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Headmaster of 125-year-old prep school reveals Labour has cost them £2m
The headmaster of one of Britain's most prestigious private schools has revealed how Labour's tax rises have already cost them £2m. Malvern College, which counts C.S. Lewis and Jeremy Paxman among its alumni, this week announced it was being forced to move its prep school, The Downs Malvern, from its 125-year-old site. The Victorian building was where poet W.H. Auden wrote some of his poems while teaching at the school between 1932 and 1935. Pupils will now be moved to the same building as the seniors. Keith Metcalfe, the headmaster, who looks after the whole family of schools, said the introduction of VAT on fees in January has cost around £1m as a result of pupils leaving and the increased expense of providing bursaries. These losses were compounded in April by a rise in National Insurance and the loss of business rates relief which the school estimated has cost a further £1m. Mr Metcalfe told The Telegraph: 'We are seeing schools close and hearing others that are cutting back, and it's sad to see. 'Education is one of Britain's greatest exports. There's a certain amount of soft power in high quality education that goes around the world. 'You can see that in the growth of international schools where they are following a British curriculum teaching them about the values of nationhood, politics, democracy and human rights. I think it's such a powerful tool for us as a nation and it's got to be seen in the round.' Malvern College, founded in 1865, will increase its fees in September to £59,295 a year for boarders and £40,245 for day pupils – a rise of 20pc compared with a year previous. The Downs Malvern, which was founded in 1900, charges up to £25,000 per year for day pupils and £33,000 for boarders. Malvern decided to pass on the net VAT uplift directly to parents meaning the £1m loss, which accounts for the senior and prep schools, is solely down to pupils leaving and the increase in additional bursary and hardship funding. Rob Breare, chief operating officer, said: 'One of the frustrations in the sector is that people have looked at each cost in isolation rather than to say it is a perfect storm of them together that makes it very difficult to mitigate against. 'The three big building blocks are VAT, the loss of business rates relief and then the combination of National Insurance and national minimum wage increasing.' Parents of the prep school were told on Wednesday evening about the school's move, which is due to take place by the end of the 2026-27 academic year. Malvern will renovate old boarding houses for the prep school to move into, using the sale of its existing building to help fund the move. And while this will go some way to offsetting the outlay, Malvern said it is taking a calculated risk by choosing to invest heavily at a time when other prep schools are closing. Mr Metcalfe said: 'It's a strategic decision based on the fact that down the line it's going to become harder and harder [for prep schools to attract pupils]. 'The last few years have been pretty tough on any school, but particularly those smaller, more rural schools where the market is changing. 'You can see in our region prep schools have got smaller. There have been examples of some closing. This is therefore an opportunity for us, rather than cutting back costs to save money, we can invest in the school by bringing them over here and we all benefit from that.' More than 25 schools have announced their closure since January when the Government began imposing a 20pc VAT levy on school fees – a large proportion of which have been prep schools. These schools are less able to take advantage of reclaiming VAT on capital expenditure and tend to be smaller than secondary schools. Last week, two prep schools in London announced their closure, blaming the VAT levy for a loss in pupil numbers.


Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Mel Stride: We will never do a deal with Reform
Sir Mel Stride has vowed the Tories will never make a pact with Reform as he attacked the party's 'fantasy economics'. The shadow chancellor said Nigel Farage's party would put the economy on 'the road to ruin' and said: 'I don't want to be a populist that runs around saying we can do this, that and everything else for you without any plan behind it. I just think that's recklessness.' Sir Mel also attacked Rachel Reeves's 'huge borrowing splurge' to fund spending plans until the next election, but warned that Reform's pledges were even more 'dangerous'. While some influential Tories have called for the parties to work more closely together, Sir Mel said the Conservatives would never strike a deal under his watch. 'I don't want to get involved with a party that peddles fantasy economics,' he told The Telegraph. 'Why would I want to do that? I want to be with a party that is going to be four-square behind fiscal responsibility and manage our economy in a way that doesn't imperil the livelihoods of people up and down our country.' His comments come as the Conservatives seek to fight back against Reform, which has surged past the party in the polls to take the position of Labour's de facto main opposition. Many observers believe the Tories are still paying the price of Liz Truss's mini-Budget of unfunded tax cuts, which triggered the market chaos that led to her downfall. The Conservatives' polling numbers collapsed in the wake of the crisis and have never recovered. Sir Mel has chosen to disavow the policies of Ms Truss as the Conservatives seek to rebuild. He also warned that a Reform victory may lead to a sequel. Reform's central election pledge is to raise the amount people can earn before they start paying tax to £20,000. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has estimated this could cost up to £80bn, although Reform has insisted its plans would be fully funded by sweeping cuts to Whitehall departments and said it would not cut taxes until it had slashed spending first. However, raising the tax threshold is just one of several costly promises made by Mr Farage's party. Reform has also pledged to cut corporation tax and abolish the two-child benefit cap that restricts payments to families with three or more children. Sir Mel said: '[They're] promising everybody everything they want to hear, without any credible plan as to how they're going to pay for any of this. Certainly, if Reform were in No 10 now, I think the economy would be in a very dangerous position.' While he now spends much of his time in attack mode, Sir Mel offers up little of substance when it comes to policies of his own. He says Britain is failing the young and suggests the Government should do more to crack down on Mickey Mouse degrees that do little to increase people's job prospects. But just as he suggests universities may have a role in sharing the financial burden of dead-end degrees, he stops himself to insist the proposal is just 'blue-sky thinking in an interview'. This caution has allowed Reform to steal the limelight with its eye-catching proposals as the Tories struggle to get their mojo back. Sir Mel, who almost lost his Central Devon seat at the last election, admits his party 'lost connection entirely with the British electorate and we have to win that back – and that will take time'. For now, he believes the best way to do that is by highlighting the flaws in Reform's policy platform. 'What we've got to do is be out there making the case that people need to think long and hard about whether the numbers add up, because if they don't, that is the road to ruin,' Sir Mel says. 'Right now, Reform is ahead in the polls [and] they are out there saying they will take everybody out of tax up to £20,000 at a cost of £50bn to £80bn – about a third of what we spend on the NHS every year, with its 1.3m employees. Really? How are they going to fund that?' The Conservatives' slump in the polls had to put pressure on Kemi Badenoch but Sir Mel said she was 'absolutely' the right person to lead the party. This is Sir Mel's 11th interview of the day and he's only halfway through his commitments. Stationed in the shadow cabinet room in Westminster, he's armed with two copies of the cornflower blue spending review book, one of which is covered in scribbled notes that include a reminder to talk about GDP figures out that morning to attack lines such as 'summer of speculation, fear of what will come'. Sir Mel, a self-confessed history buff, suggests the Tories would be prepared to take the tough decisions to slash the size of the state if they got back into power. The man who led a series of sweeping reforms to the benefits system insists 'we need to get a grip on welfare' as he opened the door to a conversation about the NHS. While qualifying that the health service is an 'absolutely vital part of what we are as a civilised society', he signals there will be choices to come 'around what the health service does'. Sir Mel says: 'What is possible at different points in time changes. For example, the idea of my grandparents going to hospital, getting both hips replaced and leaping around like a mountain goat within weeks would have been entirely fancy. We have drugs today that can do things that we didn't have the drugs to do in the past. So it will be an evolving terrain. 'But my fundamental point is that if you run a health service that is not productive, that is consuming ever larger levels of resources and is not really producing in the way that it can, then you're not serving the British people properly.' While he is reluctant to talk specific policies, he suggests one of his priorities is to address tax traps that can leave people facing punishing tax rates for every extra hour worked, including the so-called 60pc trap where people who earn above £100,000 gradually have their personal allowance withdrawn. 'There are definitely aspects of the complications within the tax system that slow economic activity,' he says. 'The personal allowance gets withdrawn above a certain level of income and that leads to high marginal tax rates. 'The interaction with the benefit system can produce similar effects to the withdrawal of child benefit where you can actually reach marginal tax rates of 70pc or more. So there are all sorts of things that we need to think very deeply about within our tax system.' Young people are also firmly on his mind, with Sir Mel frequently citing the fact that the average Tory voter is 63. He wants to change that. 'We have to have a big, bold, credible offer that shows younger people that they can have the opportunities that I had as a young man. The education that will lead to higher-paying jobs so they can get on the housing ladder.' He has put forward a proposal for a 'Headstart' scheme under which a person in their first job would see their first £5,000 of National Insurance paid not to HMRC but into a personal savings pot which they could use as a down-payment for a house. Before he can be drawn on detail, he steps back again, saying the proposal is 'just one idea we're discussing'. 'We will have the answers through time,' he insists. 'I'm not the Chancellor, I'm not in the Treasury.' Judging by the polls, he will have to work hard to change that.