News Round-Up

• “King vs plumber” – Self-styled ‘King of the North’ Andy Burnham will take on Reform’s local plumber Robert Kenyon in the Makerfield by-election, reports the Mail.
• “Andy Burnham is ‘King of the U-turns’ after double reversal in one day” – Andy Burnham made two major U-turns in a matter of hours – backing away from rejoining the EU and signalling that he would stick to Rachel Reeves’s borrowing rules – amid growing concern that his Left-wing agenda will wreck the economy, says the Mail.
• “Burnham’s plans won’t survive contact with the Treasury” – Burnham’s plans for greater public ownership are based on tax and borrowing proposals the Treasury will easily be able to argue against, writes Adam Smith in the Telegraph.
• “Andy Burnham is making Keir Starmer look good at politics” – In the Spectator, Katy Balls says one of the many complaints levelled against Sir Keir Starmer is that he is fundamentally bad at politics, but on current showing he is a darned sight better than Andy Burnham.
• “Beware the ‘Burnham premium’” – We’re all paying for Labour’s chaos as markets price in the risk of a hard-Left successor to Keir Starmer, writes Mark Sidwell on the CapX Substack.
• “Wes’s hopes of becoming PM are destroyed by Labour supporters” – Wes Streeting’s hopes of becoming the next Labour Prime Minister have taken a blow after a poll of members roundly rejected him, according to the Mail.
• “Reeves urges supermarkets to cap grocery prices” – Rachel Reeves is pressuring supermarkets to cap food prices in an attempt to limit inflation, reports the Telegraph.
• “Labour plots death tax on homes” – Grieving families will be forced to pay Labour’s new “mansion tax” under plans to target inheritances, says the Telegraph.
• “Unemployment hits 5% as job market crumbles amid Labour infighting” – Britain is facing a brutal jobs cull as “Trumpflation” and Labour’s tax hikes heap pain on businesses, reports the Mail.
• “Speed of HS2 trains reduced to control ‘obscene’ £100 billion bill” – HS2 trains will run slower than originally planned, in an effort to keep down rising construction costs, says ITV News.
• “Bregrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention” – On Substack, Dr David McGrogan argues that Brexit remains necessary but not sufficient to rescue Britain from its current malaise.
• “Why we must scrap the Online Safety Act I helped shape” – In the Mail, Nadine Dorries advocates scrapping the Online Safety Act she helped pilot through Parliament, arguing it has become a tool for censorship.
• “New Green Mayor linked to imams with extreme views” – The newly elected Green Mayor of Lewisham has a close association with Lewisham Islamic Centre, led by Shakeel Begg, who was labelled an “extremist” by a High Court judge in 2016, reveals the Times.
• “Israeli visitor to London attacked by Arabic-speaking gang” – Police are investigating an alleged antisemitic attack after an Israeli man visiting London was beaten up in the street by a gang of masked youths speaking Arabic, according to the Times of Israel.
• “A ‘far-Right’ rally in London” – On Substack, Paul Sutton writes about his experience at Saturday’s Unite the Kingdom march.
• “Vance tells anti-immigration protesters in the UK to ‘keep on going’” – The US Vice-President has offered words of encouragement to the estimated 60,000 demonstrators who attended the Unite the Kingdom rally in London, according to the Express.
• “Desperate attempt by mom of San Diego mosque shooter to alert police” – A California mother desperately tried to alert police that her teenage son and his friend may pose a threat hours before they opened fire at the Islamic Centre of San Diego, reports the Mail.
• “Nazi stickers found at scene of mosque shooting” – Two teenagers left Nazi stickers and hate messages on their weapons before opening fire on a California mosque, killing three people, says the Telegraph.
• “Athens museum bars academic over Elgin Marbles views” – Archaeologist Dr Mario Trabucco della Torretta has been banned from speaking at the Acropolis Museum in Athens after defending Britain’s claim to the Elgin Marbles, reports the Telegraph.
• “Marc Lipsitch on playing pandemic roulette in the lab” – On the Good Fight podcast, Yascha Mounk and Marc Lipsitch discuss how worried we should be about Hantavirus and Ebola.
• “WHO chief ‘deeply concerned’ as Ebola death toll rises and cases soar” – Experts have warned the World Health Assembly in Geneva that the scale and speed of Africa’s Ebola epidemic is alarming, according to the Telegraph.
• “Labour’s ‘conversion therapy’ ban will do untold harm to children” – Labour’s ‘conversion therapy’ ban means adults could be criminalised for questioning a child who claims to have been “born in the wrong body”, warns Bev Jackson in Spiked.
• “Rowan Williams vs Brenda Hale: who’s right about assisted dying?” – Do We Have the Right to Die? is a new book in which the former Supreme Court President Brenda Hale takes on ex-Archbishop Rowan Williams, and their arguments will have you torn, says Nina Power in the Telegraph.
• “Is TikTok slop to blame for the fertility crisis?” – Raising the age limit for social media for under-16s will not be a silver bullet for the West’s fertility crisis, but if ever there was a role for regulation it is now, argues Miriam Cates in the Spectator.
• “UK energy bills to rise by more than £200 in July” – British households are facing another major increase in energy bills after analysts forecast that the Ofgem price cap will rise by £209 a year from July, says GB News.
• “Energy shock shows oil essential for decades to come, says Shell” – Shell boss Wael Sawan says the energy crisis has demonstrated that meeting oil demand will be “essential” for decades to come, according to the Times.
• “Reopen North Sea to boost Britain, Shell urges Labour” – Shell’s CEO has urged Labour to ramp up drilling in the North Sea, claiming it would deliver a much-needed boost to Britain’s struggling economy, says the Telegraph.
• “Scientists take credit for averting a climate ‘scenario’ that was never plausible” – The IPCC’s RCP8.5 worst-case scenario did not become implausible because of climate policy, writes Roger Pielke Jr on his Honest Broker Substack.
• “Wrong, Mail, future melting Antarctic ice isn’t going to drown millions” – A recent Mail article claiming melting Antarctic ice shelves may cause global sea levels to rise, leaving millions underwater, is speculative nonsense, says Anthony Watts at ClimateRealism.
• “Flipping out in a warming world” – News media is swarming all over a new alarmist study, pimping up tipping points and catastrophic ocean circulation collapse like flies on crap, writes Robert Vislocky in Watts Up With That?
• “Humanity has only a few more months to live” – Issues & Insights offers up University of Arizona professor Guy McPherson as a case in point, arguing that climate ‘science’ is filled with crackpots peddling ever more absurd doomsday deadlines.
• “Parents have become a teacher’s worst nightmare” – From AI-written legal threats to online abuse, educators are being attacked every day, reports Nicole Mowbray in the Telegraph.
• “Commonwealth literary prize winner accused of using AI” – Jamir Nazir, who was awarded the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, stands accused of using AI to create his work, says the Telegraph.
• “The chilling effect of the Removal of Peerages Bill” – In the Lords, Toby Young warns of the chilling effect the Removal of Peerages Bill could have, with maverick peers fearful that if they say something that supposedly brings the Lords into disrepute, e.g. challenge progressive orthodoxy, they could be stripped of their titles.

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