News Round-Up

• “Shabana Mahmood: ‘There’s still a moment of reckoning to come’ on grooming gangs” – In the Spectator, Michael Gove interviews the Lord Chancellor, Shabana Mahmood, who says that because so many looked the other way on grooming gangs, “there’s still a moment of reckoning to come”.
• “UK suffers biggest fall in billionaires after Reeves’ tax crackdown” – The UK has suffered the biggest fall in billionaires on record after Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s recent tax raid on nom-doms and British businesses, reports the Mail.
• “The rich are fleeing – what next?” – It’s not just arrivals that should give Keir Starmer sleepless nights, says Michael Simmons in the Spectator. It’s the number of people leaving, too – and taking their massive tax payments with them.
• “Rayner’s workers’ rights reforms ‘will make Britain like jobless Spain’” – Companies will be “less willing to employ people” due to Rayner’s reforms, the CBI’s President has warned.
• “Farage: Make me PM and I’ll scrap Starmer’s Brexit deal” – In the Telegraph, Nigel Farage warns that the Government’s new EU pact (to be unveiled Monday) is a slippery slope to rejoining the bloc.
• “Why Europe came to regret its ‘crippling’ nuclear power shutdown” – As Denmark overturns its 40-year ban on nuclear energy with barely a murmur of dissent, it’s clear Europe is starting to take a more pragmatic approach to atomic energy, says the Telegraph.
• “Ed Miliband’s Net Zero fantasy is turning into a real-life nightmare” – The Energy Secretary’s green fanaticism exposes Britain to the risk of Chinese sabotage, says the Telegraph‘s Ben Marlow.
• “China has installed kill switches in solar panels sold to the West” – Engineers have discovered ‘kill switches’ embedded in Chinese-manufactured parts on American solar farms, raising fears Beijing could manipulate supplies or ‘physically destroy’ grids across the US, UK and Europe, reports the Mail.
• “How conservation groups squeeze taxpayer millions by pleading poverty” – It is in the nature of rich, large organisations to be greedy, says Ian Coghill in the Mail. “If they can get away with finding someone else to pay, they are going to do it.”
• “Death by a Thousand Cut Corners” – Dr David McGrogan on the coming competence apocalypse.
• “Behind the scenes: How Freedom of Information works” – Rebekah Barnett with a case study of Australia’s TGA’s transparency problem.
• “The ‘Godfather’ gang wars tearing Scotland apart” – As feuding crime families fight for control of the drugs market, the streets of Glasgow and Edinburgh are in the grip of a wave of violence, reports the Telegraph.
• “Britain’s police are restricting speech in worrying ways” – Muddled laws are giving police wide discretion that they are too often using to limit speech, says the Economist.
• “Europeans are becoming less free to say what they think” – It’s becoming dangerous to anger minority groups and politicians, says the Economist.
• “Europe’s free-speech problem” – More from the Economist: “J. D. Vance was right.”
• “SNP bill for ‘humiliating’ Supreme Court defeat over definition of woman revealed” – SNP ministers spent almost £160,000 of public money on the party’s failed Supreme Court case over the definition of a woman, reveals the Scotsman.
• “Misogyny: the manosphere and online content” – The Women and Equalities Committee of the Commons has launched an inquiry to examine how the ‘manosphere’ and other online content is fuelling misogyny (still no grooming gangs inquiry?) “The inquiry will examine the impact of this content on attitudes and behaviour both online and offline, and what can be done to tackle it.” Submit evidence here.
• “Waitrose rules out American beef and chicken despite US trade deal” – Waitrose has ruled out buying American beef and chicken as it insisted it would stand “shoulder-to-shoulder with our farmers” after Sir Keir Starmer’s US trade deal, reports the Telegraph.
• “The Kurds have finally given in to Erdogan” – One of the longest wars in the Middle East, between Turkey and Kurdish separatists, may finally be over, says Paul Wood in the Spectator.
• “How English are you really?” – Following the declaration by Germany’s spy agency that the AfD is “Right-wing extremist” due to some of its members’ ideas about German ethnicity, Lionel Shriver probes the race question in the Spectator.
• “Why is the BBC obsessed with rap?” – Why do BBC bosses feel the need to promote rap, asks Nigel Jones in the Spectator.
• “Britain is squeezing its population out of existence” – The car-seat prophylactic is a perfect metaphor for our stifling welfare state, says Sam Ashworth-Hayes in the Telegraph.
• “Trump claims he’s the reason why Taylor Swift is ‘no longer hot’” – President Donald Trump has fired off a new barrage ridiculing megastar Taylor Swift, reports the Mail.
• “The end of ‘Pfizergate’ – now what About Ursula and BioNTech?” – “Pfizergate” has ended with something of a whimper. But the problem with ‘Pfizergate’ from the start, says the Brussels Signal, was how the controversy, far from promoting transparency, actually created more obscurity by hiding the role of the other beneficiary of the €35 billion COVID-19 vaccine contracts.
• “There was this attempt to sort of put her in this box of a nasty immigrant hater” – Watch our own Laurie Wastell on GB News revealing an “extraordinary moment” from inside the courtroom during Lucy Connolly’s sentence appeal.

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