Sherelle Jacobs

Sherelle Jacobs (born 1988) is a British journalist. She is the Assistant Comment Editor at The Daily Telegraph and has previously written for The Guardian.

Quotes

2018–2019

• Trump embodies unapologetic honesty.
• Trump's leadership style also consternates my fellow millennials, who feel more comfortable with elegant underachievers than graceless bulldozers who "get the job done".
  • "The Left's burning hatred Donald Trump isn't just about policies. It's frighteningly pathological", The Telegraph (13 July 2018)

• Leaver MPs grossly overestimate their opponents. Their centrist colleagues' masterplan for saving the Tories is little more than "suicide on autopilot" by an obsolete ruling class.
• Why haven't the ERG drilled into results from the recent local elections, which reveal Tories are haemorrhaging in “safe” areas from Essex to Somerset? The Brexiteers should use this evidence as a basis for arguing that it's no-deal or bust. Or they should do us all a favour, and defect to the Brexit Party.
  • "The only thing that can save the wretched Tory party now is a grassroots guerrilla war", The Telegraph (10 May 2019)

• This is why with a no-deal Brexit now "illegal" we are heading for a second referendum, and the Tory Party's obliteration.
  The problem with brilliant men in politics is that too often their brains go to their heads.
• Indeed, if Boris Johnson does the only thing he can feasibly do and resign, the big risk is that the Conservatives will tip back into civil war.
  • "With Boris Johnson snookered by Remainers, the Tory Party is almost certainly finished", The Telegraph (12 September 2019)
  • On 28 August 2019, the Houses of Parliament were ordered to be prorogued (suspended) from around 9/12 September to extend for five weeks. It was an attempt to prevent the 'no deal' option (for when the UK left the EU) becoming illegal via the the so-called 'Benn' Act; the deadline for agreement was then due at the end of October 2019. In R (Miller) v The Prime Minister and Cherry v Advocate General for Scotland, prorogation was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court. See 2019 British prorogation controversy.

2022–2023

• There is no point mincing words: Thatcherism and Reaganomics have been demolished by the very animal spirits of the free markets that, some 40 years ago, they unleashed in good faith. History has come full circle, with neoliberalism, like the mythical monster Ouroboros, devouring its own tail.
  • "The stagnant West must rediscover freedom to salvage its prosperity", The Telegraph (19 December 2022).

• It is time for the Leave camp to start saying the unsayable: the Tories have made such a hash of Brexit that the project is probably now unsalvageable.
  • "Britain is going to rejoin the EU far sooner than anyone now imagines", The Telegraph (16 January 2023).

• The mind boggles when it comes to Sadiq Khan. In many ways, he is a faceless phantom – a fascinatingly bland Labour apparatchik incapable of an original thought or phrase. And yet somehow he has managed to build himself into the consummate dictator-bureaucrat, London's own answer to Leonid Brezhnev or Raul Castro.
• [H]e is a genuinely disturbing political figure, spinning his own universe of deception out of London’s dystopian hellscape.
  • "London has crashed and burned under Sadiq Khan’s mayoralty" The Telegraph (21 August 2023).

• You've got to hand it to Liz Truss. It is customary for prime ministers to spend their retirement wasting into tragic figures.
• There’s something slightly different about Truss. Perhaps because she wasn't in office long enough to go mad, there has been no period of roving in the existential wilderness.
  • "Truss is right – but must she stand alone in the fight for freedom?", The Telegraph (18 September 2023).
  • Liz Truss, the former British prime minister, was in office for only 49 days.

2024–present

• The conventional attitude is that, if World War Three arose, it would be by accident. But we should entertain the possibility that autocratic leaders – tortured by the prospect of death in the event of their fall from power – will be willing to pursue survival strategies that, while irrational to us, appear deeply rational to them.
  • "World War Three is approaching fast, and too few are willing to admit why", The Telegraph (30 January 2024).

• Tory Brexiteers promised that leaving the EU would allow Britain to "take back control" of its waters, and enable our fishermen to feast on a "sea of opportunity".
• The question is why Brexit has spectacularly failed. Of course, the conventional Remainer wisdom is that it was doomed from the start. But this neglects the elephant in the room: as it turns out, Britain is terrified of freedom.
• Britain is equally terrified of free trade, lest it plunges us into a libertarian dystopia awash with cancerous meat and alcoholism. ... The new Brexit alcohol duty regime that links rates to specific alcohol strength outdoes Brussels in its convoluted paternalism.
  • "Britain is now irrationally terrified of freedom. It should just rejoin the EU", The Telegraph (1 April 2024)

• [Nigel] Farage has been mocked for espousing unpopular views. But an insurgent, mildly reckless party may be needed to break the stalemate. Reform may even be groping towards an innovative way of doing politics, which might be dubbed "paradoxical populism". The challenges of the day require charismatic leaders who can bank voter goodwill from populist achievements, such as bringing down immigration, in order to drive through less attractive but necessary projects, such as administering tough medicine to the economy or fixing healthcare.
  • "Reform understands politics in a way that today’s Tories never will", The Telegraph (10 June 2024)
  • The Brexit Party officially changed its name to Reform UK in January 2021.

• Trump looks set to prove a pivotal figure. His unimpeded energy, and wars against the legal-industrial complex offer a glimpse of a style of leadership that is willing to take on the biases and inefficiencies of the system.
• [P]erhaps Trump’s most striking "gangster" characteristic – and the one that has won him so many fans – is his bloody-minded focus. The reason we are mesmerised by the Hollywood gangster character – why we both fear him and deep down want to be him – is that he knows what he wants, and he goes out and gets it, not giving a damn about whatever or whoever stands in his way.
  • "Like it or not, Trumpism is the future of the Right across the declining West", The Telegraph (15 July 2024)