News Round-Up

• “Keir Starmer fights to save his skin after Angela Rayner’s ultimatum” – Angela Rayner has put Sir Keir Starmer on notice that he will face an imminent challenge to his leadership unless he takes “immediate action” to move Labour to the Left, reports the Times.
• “Angela Rayner launches bombshell attack on Keir Starmer’s Government saying he has to change ‘now’” – Angela Rayner has launched a devastating attack on Sir Keir Starmer’s Government saying things have to change “now”, according to the Standard.
• “Angela Rayner was all set for No.10 – but she’s just had the smile wiped off her face” – The battle to replace Sir Keir Starmer as Labour leader has started in earnest but Rayner, once the frontrunner, has three very serious problems, says Harvey Jones in the Express.
• “Five ways a Labour leadership contest plays out” – From a cabinet coup to challenges by Streeting or Rayner to a quiet resignation, the Times maps out every scenario facing a defiant Sir Keir Starmer – and none of them look particularly comfortable.
• “I’m ready to be next PM, Streeting tells Starmer” – The Health Secretary will not challenge his leader directly but “is preparing a case” should a contest be triggered, reports the Telegraph.
• “Labour Left panics over Streeting’s ‘first strike’ plan to oust PM” – Labour Left-wingers have hit the panic button over Wes Streeting plotting to succeed Sir Keir Starmer, says the Mail. They don’t want him to run before Burnham in an a position to run because they fear he’ll beat Angela Rayner in a two-horse race.
• “We need radicalism, energy, immense courage – and a new Prime Minister” – In the Times, Josh Simons writes that for Labour to rediscover its soul it must reckon with reality – and that means replacing the Prime Minister.
• “Keir Starmer’s just been mortally wounded – his latest dice roll is a slap in the face” – In the Express, Giles Sheldrick argues that after Labour’s electoral capitulation, Sir Keir Starmer has no cards left to play and his position is now effectively untenable.
• “The battle to oust Starmer: 81 MPs need to back one contender” – The arithmetic of a Labour leadership challenge is brutally clear – 81 MPs must unite behind a single challenger to trigger a vote, says the Mail.
• “I worked under Thatcher when she faced her ‘stalking horse’. This could be the end for Starmer” – In the Telegraph, Thatcher-era veteran Caroline Slocock draws on the 1989 Anthony Meyer challenge to argue that Sir Keir Starmer’s position is far more precarious than the Prime Minister is letting on.
• “I want to be PM for 10 years” – Sir Keir Starmer insists he wants to govern for a decade and vows closer ties with Europe – a pledge that will strike many as rather optimistic given the week he’s having, says the Telegraph.
• “Starmer to ‘put Britain at heart of Europe’ in scramble to save premiership” – Sir Keir has pinned his survival hopes on a closer EU relationship, declaring that this Labour Government will be “defined by” its ties with Europe, according to the Telegraph.
• “Sensible Tories need to start preparing for a coalition” – The local election results should finally end Conservative delusions of a solo comeback – and the grown-ups in the party need to start thinking hard about coalition arithmetic, says James Frayne in the Telegraph.
• “Tories and Reform trade blows despite pleas to ‘unite the Right’” – Shadow Housing Secretary James Cleverly insists the Conservatives’ default position is no deals with other parties – even as the electoral maths makes uncomfortable reading for both sides, reports the Mail.
• “Brexit Britain has deserted the Tories” – In the Spectator, John Curtice analyses the local election results and finds that the Conservatives have failed to demonstrate they are meeting the challenge posed by Reform.
• “Kemi says Tories will quit ECHR and restart drilling in the North Sea” – Kemi Badenoch has vowed to quit the ECHR, triple stop-and-search and restart North Sea drilling as part of an agenda laid out in an “alternative King’s Speech”, reports the Mail.
• “Cut welfare to help fund £50 billion defence boost, vows Badenoch” – The Tories would cut welfare spending to fund a £50 billion boost to defence, Kemi Badenoch will pledge in an “alternative King’s Speech” on Monday, says the Telegraph.
• “The simple truth at the heart of Reform’s success” – In the Spectator, Ameer Kotecha argues that voters want a politics rooted in home and community – not a Prime Minister posing for leaders’ family photos over a chilled glass of Chasselas.
• “Southbank Centre chief ‘compares Reform victory to Holocaust’” – Southbank Centre Chairman Misan Harriman has compared Reform’s election success to the Holocaust, reports the Telegraph.
• “Man and woman arrested after ‘arson attack’ on former synagogue” – Counter-terror police have arrested a 45 year-old man and 52 year-old woman on suspicion of conspiracy to commit arson after a former synagogue was targeted, says the Mail.
• “Men who ‘went to Stamford Hill to harass Jews’ convicted of hate crime” – Two men who filmed themselves verbally abusing a Jewish man in East London have been convicted of an antisemitic hate crime, reports the Mail.
• “Caricature posters portray Jews as ‘Labour’s monsters’” – Election posters depicting a “monstrous characterisation” of a religious Jewish man in military uniform with the words “Labour’s monsters” are now in the hands of police, says the Telegraph.
• “Labour minister is booed at rally against antisemitism” – Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden was greeted with shouts of “Shame” and “It’s your party’s fault” as he spoke at a rally against antisemitism in London, reports the Mail.
• “Britain fought fascism once. Now we must defeat the new anti-Jewish extremists” – In the Telegraph, Gideon Falter writes that just as the British people broke Mosley’s spell at Cable Street in 1936, it is now ordinary citizens – not politicians – who must demand action against Islamist extremism.
• “Britain’s blasphemy belt offers a glimpse into our fractured future” – ‘Palestinianism’ as an organising world view has become deeply embedded in towns across Lancashire and Yorkshire – and it is offering a disturbing glimpse of Britain’s fractured future, says Robin Simcox in the Telegraph.
• “Antisemitism feels more painful now” – In the Telegraph, 70s star Graham Gouldman sits down with George Chesterton to reflect on growing up Jewish, falling out with bandmates and why antisemitism today feels more raw than ever before.
• “Did antisemitism cost the Greens at the local elections?” – In the Spectator, Andrew Gilligan examines whether the Greens’ string of racist candidate scandals cost them a majority in Lambeth – one of the most favourable boroughs in the country for Team Polanski.
• “Zack Polanski falsely claimed to have worked at the Ministry of Justice” – The Green Party leader falsely claimed to have worked at the Ministry of Justice while campaigning for elected office, in yet another damaging revelation for a man who has had a difficult week, reveals the Telegraph.
• “I couldn’t wait for late Queen to kick the bucket” – A newly elected trans Green MSP previously posted online that he could not wait for Queen Elizabeth II to “kick the bucket”, reports the Telegraph.
• “The Muslim festival coming to a village near you” – In the Conservative Woman, Danny Lockwood reports on how the Ahmadiyya Ijtema – a mass gathering that draws tens of thousands of Muslims – is expanding quietly into rural English villages and small towns.
• “Village torn apart and terrified as travellers turn field into sea of gravel” – A community of a few hundred people in an Essex hamlet has been “torn apart” after travellers moved into a four-acre field and covered it in gravel, reports the Telegraph.
• “The Civil Service has replaced academia as the home of bourgeois idleness” – Taxpayers have been duped into bankrolling a truanting leisure class, says Michael Mosbacher in the Telegraph.
• “Housing benefits bill hits record £39 billion under Labour” – Britain’s housing benefits bill is set to hit a record £39 billion this year as the property crisis deepens, reports the Telegraph.
• “Parish council tax raid to cost residents £1 billion” – Parish councils are poised to rake in more than £1 billion from uncapped tax rises next year, with nine million households across England set to feel the pinch, says the Telegraph.
• “On Britain as a capitalist command economy” – In the Critic, Christopher Snowdon argues that Britain’s economy is now a strange hybrid – businesses stay in private hands, but the Government micromanages them so heavily it amounts to a command economy in all but name.
• “Aston Martin is as British as James Bond. But it could soon become Chinese” – Aston Martin, the carmaker beloved by the King and 007, is in deep financial trouble – and Chinese ownership is looking like a real possibility, according to the Telegraph.
• “Where would Sinn Féin fit in a new ‘anti-woke Left’ in the EU?” – In Gript, Tomás O’Reilly asks whether a stirring anti-woke Left in the European Parliament could offer Sinn Féin a new political home – or whether it would prove deeply uncomfortable company.
• “Understanding the reasons for the conviction of Päivi Räsänen” – In Christian Today, Martin Davie explains how Finland’s courts are now using legal power to shut down scientific discussion on sexuality – a development with grim implications for free speech across Europe.
• “Australia’s flame-haired Farage celebrates ‘bloodbath’ by-election win” – After three derided decades on the political fringes, Pauline Hanson’s Right-wing populism is very much in the ascendant in Australia – and the global pattern will not be lost on Nigel Farage, says Joe Barnes in the Telegraph.
• “Iranian double agent walked free after just three years behind bars” – A British soldier jailed for passing Nato secrets to Iran while serving as personal interpreter to the alliance’s top commander in Afghanistan is out of prison and teaching salsa to unsuspecting students in Brighton, reveals the Mail on Sunday.
• “Iran says Khamenei fully recovered from ‘scratch behind the ear’” – Iran claims that its new Supreme Leader has fully healed after sustaining injuries during a joint US-Israeli attack on the first day of the war earlier this year, according to the Mail.
• “I witnessed unimaginable horrors in Iran’s torture dungeons” – Shabnam Madadzadeh was 21 when she was arrested in Tehran in 2009 and sentenced to five years in prison for opposing the regime – and Eliana Silver’s account in the Mail of what she endured there is harrowing.
• “Bird flu found to be airborne in new study, raising outbreak risk” – Researchers warn that H5N1 has been detected in the air, raising the risk of wider outbreaks and broader modes of transmission, reports the Mail.
• “‘Hantavirus theatre’ is still playing to packed houses” – On the Trust the Evidence Substack, Prof Carl Heneghan and Dr Tom Jefferson argue that the media’s hantavirus coverage has become a theatre of panic rather than a sober assessment of an unusual cluster of cases.
• “Patients told they have cancer via NHS app” – Patients are discovering they have cancer, Parkinson’s and other life-limiting conditions online or via video call rather than in person, according to the Telegraph.
• “Meta will fight Ofcom over the math, just not the censorship” – In Reclaim the Net, Cindy Harper reveals that Meta – the company best placed to challenge Britain’s online speech regime – is instead asking a London court to use a different revenue column when calculating its fines.
• “Trump’s next weapon to wield his power on the world” – Since threatening to annex Greenland in January, Europe has been alert to Trump weaponising gas – and the Telegraph sets out what that threat now looks like in practice.
• “Net Zero parties annihilated by Trump-aligned candidates in British and Australian elections” – In Watts Up With That, Eric Worrall notes that voters in both Britain and Australia have just handed governing parties a very clear verdict on Net Zero – and it turns out they have other priorities.
• “Bring back coal to Moneypoint, closure was mistake, say engineers” – Gript reports that engineering experts are calling on the Irish Government to restore coal usage at Moneypoint to deal with what they describe as a perilous energy security situation.
• “90% subsidised – Bielefeld Germany’s €7 million hydrogen garbage truck fleet sits idle” – A German city spent €7 million on a hydrogen garbage truck fleet, 90% of it taxpayer-subsidised – and the vehicles are now sitting idle. Quite the return on investment, writes P. Gosselin on No Tricks Zone.
• “Antarctic ‘triple whammy’ paper lands just as the ice rebounds” – In Watts Up With That, Charles Rotter points out that by the time a new paper warning of unlikely Antarctic sea ice recovery went to press, the ice had already done exactly that – bouncing back in a single year.
• “Honda’s $11 billion EV factory in Canada is dead” – Honda’s $11 billion Canadian EV plant – already put on hold for two years – is now reported to be cancelled entirely, in the latest sign that the EV industry’s grand ambitions are colliding with reality, according to InsideEVs.
• “Renewable investment companies in denial” – On his Substack, David Turver argues that renewables investment companies are failing to properly evaluate the risks of abolishing carbon taxes and removing ROC subsidies – and investors should be paying attention.
• “Weather station” – In Climate Scepticism, Mark Hodgson invites readers to contribute their own climate and weather observations in an open thread – a reminder that ordinary people’s lived experience of the weather rarely matches the catastrophist headlines.
• “Trans athlete sparks protests at California girls’ track meet” – A biologically male trans student athlete who finished first in three jumping events at a California high school meet has prompted protests for the second year running, reports the Mail.
• “Thugs practice how to attack and kill women who reject their advances” – Young Brazilian men are sharing tips online for attacking women who spurn them – a disturbing trend that mirrors a country grappling with a surge in femicides, says the Mail.
• “Prince Harry sparks palace outrage with list of ‘Meghan demands’” – Prince Harry has presented the Palace with a list of demands on Meghan’s behalf as a condition of any rapprochement, reports the Express.
• “Donkeys banned from seaside resort as 100-year-old tradition ends” – Visitors have enjoyed donkey rides on Coney Beach in Porthcawl since 1918, but the council has now decided the animals can no longer plod along the shore, says the Mail.
• “I can’t abide this modern taste for outrage” – Timothy Spall was charm personified when he met the Telegraph’s Claire Allfree – right up to the point where the conversation turned to the modern taste for public outrage.
• “If this bird filed a paternity lawsuit against President Trump, it would win 100%” – On X, @thebestfigen identifies a bird that looks uncannily like Donald Trump.

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