News Round-Up

• “How Islamism infiltrated Downing Street” – An alarming piece by David Rose, UnHerd’s chief investigative reporter, on the Islamists who are close to Sir Keir Starmer and other member of the Government.
• “Union tells teachers to bring ‘Palestine struggle’ into schools” – Britain’s biggest teaching union is coaching its members on how to indoctrinate schoolchildren about the “Palestinian struggle”, reports the Telegraph.
• “The ICC’s Tainted Case Against Benjamin Netanyahu” – The Wall St Journal uncovers some unsavoury stories about Karim Khan, the prosecutor at the ICC leading the charge against the Prime Minister of Israel.
• “Inside Muslim-majority town where ‘there’s no point speaking English’” – The Mail visits Nelson, a Northern town where more than 10% of the population doesn’t speak English.
• “Asylum hotel fires blamed on migrant couriers’ e-bikes” – Warnings have been issued over the dangers of lithium batteries after it was revealed that fire crews have been called to deal with six fires at the same London hotel, all caused by the batteries in the bicycles of food delivery workers, says the Telegraph.
• “Iranians accused of spying in UK were asylum seekers” – The three Iranians charged with engaging in conduct likely to assist a foreign intelligence service are all asylum seekers, reveals the Telegraph.
• “Iran refugee may be first woman to head Church” – Currently the Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Francis-Dehqani, an Iranian refugee, is the favourite to become the next Archbishop of Canterbury, according to the Mail.
• “Co-op votes to boycott Israel” – The board of the Co-Op has been urged by a majority of the Co-Op’s members to show “moral courage and leadership” by removing Israeli products from supermarket shelves, reports the Telegraph.
• “Lucy Connolly poses no risk to anyone – let her go!” – Lucy Connolly, the childminder serving 31 months for a tweet, has been let down by our two-tier justice system after judges delayed ruling on her appeal, writes Allison Pearson in the Telegraph.
• “Suella Braverman: Arrest of ex-special constable over tweet is national embarrassment” – The former Home Secretary has hit out at “woke policing” and says Julian Foulkes’ ordeal was an attack on free speech, says the Telegraph.
• “From enlightenment to inquisition: the decline of Scottish justice in the age of offence” – The 2018 conviction of a man for making a tasteless joke may have seemed unremarkable at the time, but it marked the moment when the state declared that speech, not violence, was its greatest concern, writes CJ Strachan on his Substack.
• “Why I changed my mind about multiculturalism” – When Blackburn MP Adnan Hussain complains about an opponent believing “free speech means protecting the right to offend Muslims”, you feel an instinctive response gathering in your throat – you’re damn right it does, says Stephen Daisley in the Spectator.
• “Emily Maitlis doesn’t understand grooming gangs” – Steerpike in the Spectator takes Emily Maitlis to task for denouncing Rupert Lowe as a ‘racist’ because he talked about the number of Pakistani men in rap gangs on her News Agents podcast.
• “Andrew Norfolk truly was righteous among men” – The grooming gangs scandal was the most toxic story in Britain, but Andrew Norfolk, the Times journalist who blew the story wide open, walked right into the heart of it and stayed there, writes Janice Turner in a tribute to her late colleague in the Times.
• “Starmer’s immigration ‘crackdown’ is a triumph for the quangos” – Keir Starmer appeared to be making all the right noises when he unveiled his immigration crackdown this week, but the only beneficiaries will be quangocrats, says Jake Scott in the Spectator.
• “Don’t believe a word Sir Sheer Squirmer says” – Writing in the Mail, Peter Hitchens says he doesn’t believe the PM wants to do anything to cut immigration.
• “Starmer: EU reset is good for our borders” – The PM insists his EU deal will benefit the UK, but critics warn it will “open the floodgates” for European migrants, reports the Telegraph.
• “Labour has spent 10 years trying to sabotage Brexit. Now it is finally getting its way” – “Boris Johnson and I fought tooth and nail to liberate the UK from EU control – now Starmer threatens to undo all our hard work,” writes David Frost in the Telegraph.
• “Don’t believe Starmer. He is about to betray Brexit” – This ‘surrender summit’ already has all the hallmarks of another bad deal, says Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph.
• “Britain holds all the cards in the EU ‘reset’. There is no reason to give Brussels anything” – Remainers such as Sir Keir have a deep-seated need to atone for the sin of Brexit, by giving away everything Brussels asks for, writes Dan Hannan in the Telegraph.
• “PM accused of ‘rank hypocrisy’ over £102,000 bill for domestic flights” – Sir Keir Starmer has spent over £100,000 on domestic flights in the last 10 months, m ore than double what Rishi Sunak spent in the equivalent period when he was PM, says the Mail.
• “Want to help the poor? Don’t chase out the rich” – Taxing the wealthy sounds like an easy way to fix inequality, but as Rachel Reeves is discovering, it’s not as simple as that, writes Fraser Nelson in the Times.
• “Rich List tycoons tell Rachel Reeves her tax will kill family firms” – Proposed increases in capital gains and inheritance tax will destroy family businesses, the Chancellor has been told by tycoons on the Sunday Times’ Rich List.
• “We Spent £220 Billion on Decarbonisation and Saw Zero Financial Benefits” – Kathryn Porter, a leading critic of Net Zero, is interviewed on Britain’s Thought Leaders by Lee Hall.
• “Saint Packham of Fitzrovia: The Blasphemy the Radio Times Is Proud Of” – On his Substack, CJ Strachan marvels at the BBC literally turning Chris Packham into a saint.
• “Ed Miliband’s net zero crusade is adding billions to Britons’ energy bills” – The Energy Secretary has been accused of inflating households’ costs without proper scrutiny, writes Jonathan Leake in the Telegraph.
• “The giant solar farm the size of Durham – thanks to Red Ed” – This week, a solar panel firm has been given the go-ahead by the Government to carpet more than 3,000 acres of East Yorkshire countryside in giant panels, reports the Mail.
• “Miliband could axe pylons to fight Reform threat” – Ed Miliband is considering scaling back plans to erect thousands of pylons across the countryside in the hope of stemming the flow of votes from Labour to Reform in key Labour battlegrounds, says the Telegraph.
• “I refuse to live in Ed Miliband’s grim future, without showers or kettles” – In the Telegraph, Zoe Strimpel takes aim at Red Ed’s fanaticism.
• “A 10mph speed limit is preposterous” – The Road Safety Foundation has been captured by anti-capitalist haters of motor cars, writes Andrew Tettenborn in the Spectator.
• “Dimming the Sun ‘not the way to fight climate change’” – A new survey has revealed just how sceptical the public is about ‘climate tinkering’ as the Government allocates another £57 million to cooling projects, according to the Telegraph.
• “Now even Greenpeace is worried about North Sea oil jobs” – We are told Net zzro will create employment, but there’s no sign of it happening – and even Greenpeace is concerned about the disappearance of North Sea oil jobs, writes Matthew Lynn in the Telegraph.
• “Lisa Nandy’s Culture Department faces axe” – Rumours about the axing of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which first appeared in the Sunday Times a couple of weeks ago, appear to be true, according to the Telegraph.
• “Gary Lineker is a joke” – In the Spectator, Julie Burchill reveals her trick for controlling her rage over virtue-signalling mid-wits like Gary Lineker.
• “What does Gary Lineker know about Zionism?” – This week’s instalment of Lineker vs Nuance involves his sharing a video produced by a group called ‘Palestine Lobby’, featuring a rat, writes Jonathan Sacerdoti in the Spectator.
• “Gender-critical views banned from Pride celebration” – Stroud Pride has been accused of acting illegally for refusing to allow performers who hold “harmful views”, i.e., people who live in the reality-based community when it comes to sex and gender, reports Craig Simpson in the Telegraph.
• “Why cis women are bad at sports” – In the Critic, intersectional feminist and slam poet Titania McGrath explains the real reason women object to having to compete against biological men in women’s sports – cis women are just really bad at sport.
• “Trump ‘making plan to move a million Palestinians to Africa’” – The US is talking to Libya about taking in a million Palestinians, according to the Telegraph.
• “Donald Trump has set a trap for the Left… and they’ve just walked right into it” – The row over white refugees from South Africa plays straight into the President’s hands, writes Michael Deacon in the Telegraph.
• “Senior Tory embroiled in ‘furry’ sex scandal” – A senior Conservative politician accidentally sent a photograph of himself dressed as a dog being led on a leash to a group of work colleagues on WhatsApp, reveals the Mail.
• “Reform could save private schools at risk under Labour’s tax raid” – In the Telegraph, Richard Tice says emergency funding could mitigate the damage of Labour’s “catastrophic” VAT raid on private schools.
• “Private school exodus of 13,000 dwarfs ministers’ predictions” – The drop in private school pupil numbers, being blamed on VAT being added to fees, is the biggest since the Independent Schools Council began tracking the figures in 2012, reports the Sunday Times.
• “‘Home Guard’ to protect UK from infrastructure attack” – Thousands may be recruited into a civilian force to guard vital facilities such as airports and nuclear plants under new proposals by the Government, says the Sunday Times.
• “Publisher of New York Sun launches fresh bid to buy Telegraph” – Dovid Efune is reviving his bid for the Telegraph, this time backed by Jeremy Hosking, a Brexiteer businessman, according to the Telegraph.
• “The death of the university may soon be upon us. Good riddance” – ChatGPT has made coursework essays and online exams completely pointless, but progressive academics are still in denial, writes Len Shackleton in the Telegraph.
• “Salman Rushdie pulls out as Cali college commencement speaker over protest threats” – Salman Rushdie will no longer deliver the commencement address at Claremont McKenna College after some students objected that his presence might offend Muslims, reports the Independent.
• “London was defiled by yestreday’s hate march – an orgy of seething and loathing” – On X, Habibi has compiled a thread featuring some of the most offensive placards held up by pro-Palestinian protestors in yesterday’s march through the capital.

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