News Round-Up

• “Rioters march on Belfast ‘asylum hotel’ as migrant ‘hit list’ shared” – A second night of violent clashes erupted in Belfast as protesters returned to the streets and a ‘hit list’ of alleged migrant homes circulated on social media, reports the Mail.
• “Belfast knife suspect won asylum in Britain under ‘fast-track’ scheme” – Hadi Alodid was granted permission to remain in Britain after completing a 10-page Home Office questionnaire rather than undergoing the standard face-to-face interview process, says the Mail.
• “People smugglers ‘guarantee’ UK entry via Ireland” – The Belfast knife attack has drawn fresh attention to a ‘backdoor’ route exploited by illegal migrants with no identification, writes the Telegraph.
• “Aboard the bus that ferries asylum seekers into UK by back door” – A coach driver who has spent more than five years ferrying passengers from Dublin to Belfast reveals how the route has become a well-worn back-door entry point for asylum seekers, reports the Mail.
• “The Belfast border loophole that leaves us all unsafe” – The horrifying knife attack caught on video in Belfast exposes a border loophole that elite indifference to the tensions caused by migration has left dangerously unaddressed, says David Shipley in the Spectator.
• “Conor McGregor calls for removal of ‘all illegal entrants’” – MMA fighter Conor McGregor has demanded an immediate ban on immigration and the removal of all illegal entrants following a Sudanese migrant’s knife attack on a man in Belfast, notes the Mail.
• “‘Starmer’s got blood on his hands’: Mother of migrant murder victim Rhiannon Whyte” – On the Telegraph podcast, Camilla Tominey and Tim Stanley discuss the charge that Keir Starmer bears responsibility for failures in the asylum system following the Belfast attack.
• “Politicians only have themselves to blame for the Belfast riots” – Years of electoral promises broken on immigration and asylum have made the Belfast riots an entirely foreseeable consequence of political failure, according to the Telegraph.
• “Why Belfast is burning” – The rioting in Belfast is indefensible, but so too is the ruling class’s determination to dismiss the genuine tensions that mass migration has created, says Fraser Myers in Spiked.
• “Belfast and the truth about ‘alien cultures’” – The people of Belfast are well within their rights to question whether men from cultures with radically different attitudes to violence should be settled on their streets, argues Brendan O’Neill in the Spectator.
• “Should Europe shelter Sudan’s refugees?” – With European countries increasingly turning to deportation and detention as tools of migration management, the question of how the continent should treat Sudanese refugees is more urgent than ever, says Gavin Mortimer in the Spectator.
• “Labour triggers Belfast attack censorship row as it sets out plans for new crackdown on social media content ‘in times of crisis’” – Technology Secretary Liz Kendall has unveiled plans to amend online safety laws to allow regulator Ofcom to impose restrictions on social media content during periods of heightened political and social tension, reports the Mail.
• “Jolyon’s Good Law Project uses Belfast attack to beg for donations to ‘stop Farage’” – Jolyon Maugham’s Good Law Project is exploiting the North Belfast attack and its aftermath to solicit donations in a campaign it is billing as a drive to “stop Farage”, notes Guido Fawkes.
• “Migration is a national security issue, says terror watchdog” – Counter-terrorism legislation reviewer Jonathan Hall warns that the Belfast knife attack, allegedly carried out by a Sudanese asylum seeker, carries “huge ramifications” for how migration is treated as a security matter, says the Telegraph.
• “Nowak protester jailed for three years” – Leon O’Leary, who threw a smoke grenade at police and was found to have a samurai sword at home following disorder linked to the Henry Nowak murder, has been sentenced to three years in prison, reveals the Telegraph.
• “The book of JO’B” – James O’Brien’s aggressive incuriosity is becoming ever more embattled as his worldview crumbles, says Michael Murphy in the Critic.
• “Preening and posturing: the Bishop of Leicester in the House of Lords speaks about the Henry Nowak murder” – Julian Mann in Anglican Ink takes the Bishop of Leicester to task for his Lords intervention on the Henry Nowak murder, accusing him of preening and posturing rather than speaking with moral clarity.
• “I lost friends over the madness of BLM. I wonder what they think now?” – The Left’s response to Henry Nowak’s murder has confirmed what Annabel Fenwick Elliot in the Mail long suspected – that ideology has comprehensively overwhelmed reason among a large swathe of British progressives.
• “When equality law serves terrorists and murderers it’s clear that we need change” – The Conservatives have pledged to abolish the public sector equality duty that currently allows extremists and convicted murderers to bring costly legal claims from prison, writes Nick Timothy in the Telegraph.
• “Kemi Badenoch’s equality reforms don’t go far enough” – The 2010 Equality Act contains provisions far more perverse than those Badenoch has targeted, and the case for root-and-branch reform remains urgent, says Ameer Kotecha in the Spectator.
• “Kemi underestimates how deeply the woke cult has infected Britain” – The ideological capture of the police – exposed by the treatment of dying Henry Nowak – demands far more drastic action than Badenoch’s proposed reforms, argues Allison Pearson in the Telegraph.
• “Why the rape gangs are still flourishing in broken Britain” – The latest Bradford grooming-gang trial lays bare how multicultural segregation continues to enable predatory networks to operate with impunity, writes Rakib Ehsan in Spiked.
• “The lanyard class’s empathy for Britain’s enemies is suicidal” – A pathological altruism gripping the nation’s MPs, civil servants and decision-makers has already produced deadly consequences, says Stephen Daisley in the Telegraph.
• “The luvvies are out for Reform. Is anyone listening?” – As Starmer’s Government fades into irrelevance, a celebrity campaign against Nigel Farage’s Reform party is gathering pace – but its resonance beyond the cultural elite is far from clear, says Joanna Williams in the Spectator.
• “Starmer’s only present in Commons like a corpse present at its wake” – Parliament has already moved on from Sir Keir Starmer, who haunts the chamber like a man attending his own political funeral, says Quentin Letts in the Mail.
• “Keir Starmer facing transgender rights rebellion” – Some 118 MPs – including more than 50 Labour backbenchers – have signed a Parliamentary motion demanding that updated guidance from Britain’s equalities watchdog protecting single sex spaces be scrapped, reveals the Mail.
• “Reeves has turned the labour market into a bewildering mess” – Rachel Reeves’s interventions have left the labour market in chaos, and the case for abolishing National Insurance contributions entirely – folding them into income tax – grows ever stronger, says Ross Clark in the Spectator.
• “Student loan interest cut cash used to pay benefits instead: Minister” – Treasury Chief Secretary Lucy Rigby has confirmed that funding scrapped from student loan interest relief has been redirected to finance the abolition of the two-child benefit cap, reports the Mail.
• “Centuries-old private school closes after Labour VAT raid” – Stoke College in Suffolk has become one of more than 100 independent institutions to shut its doors following Labour’s imposition of VAT on private school fees, reports the Telegraph.
• “China put secret tracking device on the PM’s car four years ago” – The discovery of the device sparked fears that Beijing was aggressively spying on ministers in the then-Conservative government, says the Mail.
• “The intractable problems pulling modern Britain apart” – Charlie Bentley-Astor in the Critic with a searching examination of the tensions fracturing contemporary British society – including the fraught question of when upholding free speech becomes an act of self-sabotage.
• “US attacks Iran as Trump launches ‘self-defence strikes’” – The United States launched a fresh round of strikes on Iran on Wednesday evening, with the Trump administration describing the action as defensive, reports the Mail.
• “Anti-Israel Democrat with Nazi tattoo wins primary” – An anti-Israel oyster farmer who was forced to cover up a Nazi tattoo has clinched the Democratic nomination to be the party’s Senate candidate in Maine, reports the Telegraph.
• “I’ve seen first hand Oxford University’s double standard on antisemitism” – Jewish student Gavriella Epstein-Lightman describes in the Telegraph how hostility at Oxford is routinely rationalised, minimised and reframed as moral clarity, making it lonelier than ever to be Jewish on campus.
• “Supermarkets take £800 million hit from fat jabs” – New research shows supermarkets suffered a sales hit of almost £800 million last year due to the growing popularity of weight-loss injections such as Ozempic and Wegovy, according to the Telegraph.
• “The end of the open internet” – Europe’s approach to regulating online speech has gone badly wrong, fatally undermining the principles of the open internet, argues Jacob Mchangama in Foreign Affairs.
• “The global Left wants to turn laziness into a virtue” – Progressive economists have unveiled a scheme purporting to halt climate change and eliminate inequality that will lead to worldwide penury, warns Annabel Denham in the Telegraph.
• “Miliband defies Starmer over cuts to fund defence” – Sources tell the Telegraph the Energy Secretary is resisting demands to reduce Net Zero spending in order to free up funds for defence.
• “Here comes the super mega ultimate hyper giga Godzilla El Niño” – The media’s breathless arsenal of climate alarm vocabulary – “super”, “monster”, “cataclysmic”, “apocalyptic” – is skewered as a pattern of serial fear-mongering by Charles Rotter in WUWT.
• “What’s up with the Endangerment Finding litigation?” – The legal battle over the EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding – described as the most consequential and destructive regulatory action in federal history – is examined in detail by Francis Menton in the Manhattan Contrarian.
• “Women climate scientists being harassed, insulted by sceptics, claims Berkeley Earth researcher” – A Berkeley Earth researcher claims that women climate scientists are being subjected to harassment and insults from sceptics, notes Pierre Gosselin in the No Tricks Zone.
• “Pierce Brosnan reads fear-mongering climate doom message for ‘World Environment Day’ from his oceanfront compound in Hawaii” – The actor delivered a climate alarm message for World Environment Day while residing at his oceanfront Hawaii compound, notes Breitbart.
• “How the BBC destroyed Doctor Who” – Russell T. Davies’s shock exit and the cancellation of the Christmas special are the latest blows to a once-cherished institution laid low by the BBC and its woke agenda, reports the Telegraph.
• “Idris Elba is right about James Bond” – With Sir Keir Starmer once calling for a female Bond while struggling to define what a woman is, the case against a woke 007 has never been more compelling, says James Hanson in the Spectator.
• “Humiliated Bill Gates reveals ‘painful’ marriage secret” – Gates, who struck up a friendship with Jeffrey Epstein in 2011 after the financier promised to help raise billions for global public health initiatives, has made a candid admission about his marriage, reveals the Mail.
• “Academic choosing Britain’s judges is pro-diversity, say Tories” – The Shadow Justice Secretary has accused a candidate for the judicial appointments body of prioritising equality over merit in a row over who shapes the composition of Britain’s judiciary, reports the Telegraph.
• “This is the woman David Lammy wants to choose our judges. She says merit alone should NOT determine judicial appointments” – “Merit is crucial but so is a focus on diversity,” Professor Lynne Berry told MPs.

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