News Round-Up

• “US could review Britain’s claim to Falkland Islands” – A leaked Pentagon email has revealed that the Trump administration is considering withdrawing US support for British sovereignty over the Falklands as punishment for the UK’s refusal to back American military operations in Iran, reports the Telegraph.
• “UK insists control of Falklands ‘not in question’ despite US memo” – Downing Street has reassured the public that British sovereignty over the Falklands remains secure, says the Times.
• “Fury at ‘bully’ Trump threatening to help Argentina’s Falklands claim” – Ministers and commentators have reacted with outrage after it emerged that Washington could review its longstanding support for British sovereignty over the South Atlantic islands, according to the Mail.
• “Trump threatens Starmer with ‘big tariff’ over tech tax” – Donald Trump has warned that he will impose sweeping tariffs on Britain unless Sir Keir Starmer scraps the digital services tax, which the US President views as an unfair levy targeting American technology giants, reports the Telegraph.
• “Starmer: I’ll move to ban IRGC within weeks” – Sir Keir Starmer has given in to Lords’ pressure to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation, a move the Government has resisted for years despite mounting evidence of Iranian plots on British soil, says the Telegraph.
• “Why on earth have we not already banned the IRGC?” – Iran has mounted a series of terror attacks on British soil through its notorious IRGC, s0 why has it taken the Government so long to act, asks Sir John Jenkins in the Telegraph.
• “Cancer patients face drug shortages as prices soar” – The Iran war has driven up medicine prices and disrupted supply chains, leaving cancer patients without vital treatments and exposing a dangerous vulnerability in Britain’s pharmaceutical supply, reveals the Telegraph.
• “Labour MPs plot swift toppling of Starmer” – Backbenchers have begun planning to remove the Prime Minister after the May local elections, according to the Telegraph.
• “Starmer summons supporters to ‘survival summit’” – The Prime Minister invited key allies to Chequer last night for emergency talks in a bid to fend off imminent leadership challenges as pressure grows on him to resign, reports the Mail.
• “Panicking Labour MPs push Starmer to ‘anoint’ Andy Burnham” – The mood among Labour backbenchers and cabinet ministers is mutinous, says the Mail.
• “Farage ‘to face down riots, protests and strikes to cut welfare bill’” – Nigel Farage says he’s prepared to withstand protests, strikes and even riots in pursuit of deep cuts to Britain’s benefits bill if Reform UK takes power, according to the Mail.
• “Farage in ‘ruthless’ plan to unseat Ed Miliband and Yvette Cooper” – Reform UK has drawn up a new constituency-targeting strategy aimed at ousting senior Government figures including the Energy Secretary and Home Secretary, reports the Mail.
• “Nigel Farage is winning the battle for the soul of my beloved Wales” – A visit to Aberdare, the historic birthplace of the Labour Party, has revealed how completely Reform UK has supplanted Labour in its old Welsh heartlands, writes Allison Pearson in the Telegraph.
• “Reform candidate is a diversity champion” – Nigel Farage’s party has found itself in an awkward position after standing by a candidate whose background as a DEI champion sits in stark tension with the party’s pledge to abolish such roles from public bodies, notes the Telegraph.
• “The end of assisted dying? Controversial Bill set to fail” – The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill has fallen without a vote in the House of Lords, in a significant setback for those seeking to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales, says the Mail.
• “Kim Leadbeater: Assisted dying should be a choice like gay marriage” – The Labour MP behind the assisted dying bill has argued that the right to end one’s life should be treated as a matter of individual conscience, comparable to the legalisation of same-sex marriage, according to the Telegraph.
• “Sectarian Muslim candidates poised to make local election breakthrough” – A think tank has warned that Gaza-supporting independents could win seats across 30 local authorities at next month’s elections, reports the Telegraph.
• “Leading Jewish school saved after raising £12 million to fight Labour’s VAT raid” – Britain’s foremost Jewish independent school has secured enough donations to stave off closure after Labour’s decision to impose VAT on private school fees threatened its survival, says the Telegraph.
• “The Civil Service has many problems, but the worst is rudderless politicians” – In the Civil Service, laziness and overstaffing are compounded by a political class too weak and directionless to impose any coherent discipline, writes Charles Moore in the Telegraph.
• “If you don’t think the Greens are mainstreaming Jew-hate, read their candidates’ posts” – An investigation has exposed a pattern of antisemitic content shared by Green Party candidates ahead of next month’s local elections, raising fresh questions about whether the party is doing enough to confront the problem, says Danny Cohen in Telegraph.
• “Christian pastor is arrested for ‘criticising Islam’ in Watford” – Steve Maile, 66, has been arrested after speaking publicly in Watford town centre about violence within Islam, reports the Mail.
• “DUP Cllr suspended for linking LGBT community with Hamas support” – Colin Kennedy, an elected councillor, has been suspended from the Democratic Unionist Party by a standards watchdog after making comments suggesting some supporters of the LGBT movement might also support for Hamas, according to the BBC.
• “British Labour Party operative Imran Ahmed now key cog in Democrats’ censorship machinery” – On his Disinformation Chronicles Substack, Paul Thacker reveals the vast array of Democrat-supporting lawyers that are fighting the deportation of Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate.
• “Greg Lukianoff on free speech fights” – Andrew Sullivan interviews FIRE President Greg Lukianoff for a wide-ranging discussion on how the First Amendment is now under assault from both the Left and the Right, with the threat to freedom of expression greater than at any time in recent American history, writes Andrew Sullivan in the Weekly Dish.
• “Rowling vows to help female prisoner ‘sexually assaulted by trans murderer’” – JK Rowling has pledged to assist a female inmate to sue the Scottish Government after she was sexually assaulted by a trans murderer held in the same prison, reports the Telegraph.
• “The awkward case of the ‘miracle’ autistic author Woody Brown” – Questions have been raised about the remarkable story of Woody Brown, a severely autistic and largely non-verbal 28-year-old whose published writing has sparked widespread controversy over how the work was produced, notes the Telegraph.
• “Self-checkouts fuelling shoplifting crisis, says M&S boss” – Marks & Spencer chairman Archie Norman has claimed that self-checkout technology has normalised theft among otherwise honest customers, putting Britain’s retail sector under severe strain, reports the Telegraph.
• “Middle-class professionals are proudly shoplifting as an act of political resistance” – A wave of educated, affluent “microlooters” across London and New York has taken to theft as a form of anti-capitalist protest, exposing a troubling new strain of elite lawlessness, says the Telegraph.
• “On plastic patriots and being frightened to fly the flag” – Laura Dodsworth has examined polling showing that more than half of ethnic minority adults and over a third of white adults now regard the St George’s Cross as a racist symbol, and asks how England’s own flag became an object of fear?
• “Stark warning for the West as South Korean women shun sex and marriage” – Thousands of South Korean women have abandoned relationships with men, embracing celibacy and independence in a social revolution that Ian Birrell in the Mail argues carries a stark lesson for Western societies sleepwalking towards the same demographic crisis.
• “Devil Wears Prada 2 faces boycott over Asian ‘caricature’” – The sequel to The Devil Wears Prada has become embroiled in a racism row after critics accused the filmmakers of reducing Anne Hathaway’s Asian assistant to an offensive stereotype, says the Telegraph.
• “Hybrid drivers face pay-per-mile tax hit despite proof they rarely use electric mode” – Plug-in hybrid car owners have been told they will have to pay Rachel Reeves’s new electric road tax from 2028, with each mile attracting a 1.5p charge, says the Telegraph.
• “Britain in talks to sell Rolls-Royce mini nuclear reactors to Sweden” – Advanced negotiations are under way on a deal that would see Rolls-Royce supply pioneering small modular reactors to Sweden, notes the Telegraph.
• “Pubs ban climate change councillors who ended free parking” – Landlords in a Kent seaside town have refused to serve the local councillors responsible for imposing parking charges on what had been a free public car park, reports the Telegraph.
• “Britain must learn from its energy crises” – The Iran war has sent wholesale gas prices surging and exposed the incoherence of Britain’s energy policy, says John Browne in the Spectator.
• “Brace yourself for a super El Niño, scientists warn” – Researchers have warned that the world could be on course for an unusually powerful El Niño weather event that would push global temperatures to record highs and intensify extreme weather across the planet, according to the Mail.
• “Here’s why $96 million worth of electric buses sit idle across South Florida” – An investigation has found that a fleet of electric buses worth $96 million has been left out of service across South Florida, mirroring similar failures in other American cities and raising serious questions about the viability of electric public transport, reports the Climate Change Dispatch.
• “The evil of the Brighton beach gang rape” – In the Spectator, Tom Slater argues that the gang rape of a woman on Brighton beach represents a moral failure not just of the perpetrators but of a wider culture that has allowed such violence to flourish after dark on Britain’s seafronts.
• “How a Reform victory could destroy Britain” – A new book set in the near future imagines what Britain might look like three years after a Reform UK election win, according to the Telegraph.
• “Healthy British mother dies at Swiss suicide clinic aged 56” – Wendy Duffy used her life savings of £10,000 to die at the Pegasos clinic in Basel following the death of her son in a tragic accident, reports the Mail.
• “Piers Morgan asked Russell Brand which passages were relevant to him when he brought a Bible into court” – The comedian-turned-podcaster struggles to find the passage in the Bible he quoted in court on Piers Morgan: Uncensored.

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