News Round-Up

• “PM-in-waiting to launch tax raids from ‘No 10 of the North’” – Andy Burnham has used his first major speech in Manchester to pledge to move power and money North, according to the Mail.
• “There’s a massive problem with Andy Burnham’s vision for the North” – Andy Burnham’s keynote speech was packed with Left-wing promises, but Britain is too poor to afford them, says Tom Harris in the Telegraph.
• “Burnham’s plan to ‘rewire’ Britain could short-circuit the economy” – Andy Burnham is asking for a blank cheque to deliver what he calls the “biggest change in our lifetimes” without explaining how much it will cost, writes Gordon Rayner in the Telegraph.
• “Why Andy Burnham’s devolution agenda sounds a lot like Mike Bloomberg’s” – On Substack, Charlotte Gill draws striking parallels between Andy Burnham’s devolution agenda and Mike Bloomberg’s model of mayoral governance.
• “Andy Burnham’s tragic Blairite tribute act” – In the Spectator, Madeline Grant says Andy Burnham’s grand policy launch at the People’s History Museum amounted to little more than a hollow imitation of New Labour grandeur.
• “I knew Burnham would be Left-wing. I didn’t expect this ‘bright, hygienic hell’” – Andy Burnham’s vision for Labour-run Britain echoes a story we have heard before – and it does not end well, warns David Frost in the Telegraph.
• “Under the new No 10 North Korea, politics as we know it is over” – Andy Burnham’s agenda for democratic renewal is being unveiled without any democratic consultation whatsoever, notes Tim Stanley in the Telegraph.
• “Arrogant and entitled – it’s all downhill from here, Andy” – In the Mail, Richard Littlejohn says Andy Burnham’s announcement that he intends to be PM for the next 10 years, barely minutes after returning to Westminster, exemplifies the sheer effrontery of a man dripping with arrogance and entitlement.
• “What’s Burnham hiding by banning your sketch writer?” – In the Mail, Quentin Letts reveals that he was barred from attending Andy Burnham’s speech entirely – while other reporters were admitted but forbidden from asking questions.
• “Why Wes Streeting’s wealth tax could cost the Treasury £8 billion” – New analysis suggests people will hold on to their assets rather than pay more capital gains tax, meaning Wes Streeting’s proposed wealth tax could leave the Treasury £8 billion worse off, says the Times.
• “Starmer short-changes defence in final act as Prime Minister” – Sir Keir Starmer is to unveil a defence spending plan that falls £9 billion short of matching key Nato allies, according to the Telegraph.
• “It’s time to stop blaming all of Britain’s ills on Brexit” – From low growth to stagnant wages, almost every economic ill in modern Britain is reflexively blamed on Brexit – but this lazy consensus deserves serious challenge, says Adam Smith in the Telegraph.
• “Foreign Secretary hopeful David Miliband backs quintupling number of refugees Britain takes in” – David Miliband, widely tipped to be appointed Foreign Secretary by Andy Burnham, has backed a fivefold increase in the number of refugees Britain accepts, reports Guido Fawkes.
• “Labour secretly drops small-boat migrants citizenship ban” – Labour has covertly dropped a ban on allowing asylum seekers to claim British citizenship, says GB News.
• “Migrants using ECHR to stay in Britain will cost taxpayer £4.9 billion” – The total net cost to fund healthcare, education, welfare and pensions for migrants who used the ECHR to remain in Britain will reach £4.9 billion over their lifetimes, reports the Telegraph.
• “Grooming gang ringleader cannot be deported because of loophole” – A Pakistani grooming gang ringleader convicted of 30 child rape offences cannot be deported despite being stripped of his British citizenship, according to the Oldham Chronicle.
• “Civil servants blow the whistle on a woke and wasteful Whitehall” – In the Telegraph, Patrick Kidd reports on a new six-month survey of Whitehall commissioned by Danny Kruger that lifts the lid on a bloated Civil Service paralysed by Left-wing ideology, chronic underperformance and mindless bureaucracy.
• “Why Lara ‘fingers-crossed’ Bird’s fakery matters more than Peter Murrell’s thievery” – The deceit of Lara Bird who crossed her fingers while taking her Oath of Allegiance matters more to public trust than a straightforward act of theft, argues Sean Walsh in the Conservative Woman.
• “Top schools told to admit more white working-class children” – A year-long inquiry has concluded that top schools should be compelled to take more white working-class children to stem decades of failure, reports the Times.
• “Poor white children aren’t victims of the state, but of bad parenting” – A new inquiry endorsed by Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson into the failure of white working-class children ignores the role of parenting, notes John Townsley in the Telegraph.
• “British expat graduates chased for £1 billion loan debt… by text” – The Government is attempting to claw back £1.3 billion in taxpayer cash from UK graduates living overseas by sending them text messages, reports the Telegraph.
• “First bats, now telescopes: why Cambridge to Oxford railway may need tunnel” – Campaigners have warned that a new Oxford to Cambridge rail line may require an HS2-style bat tunnel to protect an internationally renowned observatory from light and vibration disruption, reports the Times.
• “Junior doctors to earn more than £100,000 in deal to end strikes” – The British Medical Association says 53% of eligible members have voted to accept a pay deal that will see junior doctors earn more than £100,000, according to the Telegraph.
• “Carrie Johnson and Olivia Colman call for inquiry into murdered toddler Preston Davey” – Campaigners including Carrie Johnson and Olivia Colman are demanding a public inquiry into the catastrophic failure to prevent the murder of 13 month-old Preston Davey, reports GB News.
• “Five dead in mass shooting in Germany” – Five people have been killed in a mass shooting at a youth welfare facility in Germany, says the Mail.
• “Zohran Mamdani’s socialist New York dream is about to turn sour” – Zohran Mamdani’s victory has energised his supporters, but the hard fiscal realities of governing New York City are set to shatter the socialist fantasy, warns Joel Kotkin in the Telegraph.
• “‘Mexican Batman’ tapes men to lamp posts” – A vigilante in the Mexican state of Jalisco has been binding suspected bicycle thieves to lamp posts with the word “ratero” (thief) scrawled across their chests, says the Sun.
• “Why Jeremy Clarkson was well meaning but wrong” – On its Substack, HART suggests that, instead of recommending screening, Jeremy Clarkson might want to consider campaigning against the addition of folic acid – which doubles the risk of prostate cancer – to our white flour.
• “Major Joseph Murphy: the Snowden of SARS-CoV-2” – On his Substack, Jim Haslam profiles Major Joseph Murphy, the whistleblower figure he dubs the ‘Snowden of SARS-CoV-2’, and the US biodefence project he claims originated in Wuhan but was buried in Washington.
• “Silicon Valley’s AI jobs purge is a warning for the world” – Tech giants are cutting staff to pour money into AI agents, with no signs of slowing the automation drive that threatens jobs worldwide, writes James Titcomb in the Telegraph.
• “New Green council shows its true colours” – On his Substack, Niall McCrae discusses the newly elected Green council in Hastings and what its early behaviour reveals about the party’s true priorities.
• “My hunch about Burnham and Miliband” – Appointing Ed Miliband as Chancellor could send shockwaves through bond markets, warns Jeremy Warner in the Telegraph. Yet he thinks he’ll do it.
• “Kemi Badenoch says Chancellor Miliband would be ‘disaster’ for Britain” – Kemi Badenoch has branded Ed Miliband the “villain” of Britain’s energy crisis and says Andy Burnham should sack him rather than promote him to Chancellor, according to the Mail.
• “Ed Miliband wasting ‘colossal amount of money’ says eco tycoon” – Green businessman Dale Vince claims that Ed Miliband’s £50 billion of green schemes amount to a “colossal waste of money” for both the economy and the environment, according to the Mail.
• “Britain: time to go back to coal” – In Manhattan Contrarian, Francis Menton argues that Britain’s dogged pursuit of Net Zero has left it so energy-impoverished that a return to coal is now the only rational option.
• “What the aircon debate says about Britain’s climate insanity” – On his Substack, Konstantin Kisin uses Britain’s perennial summer debate over air conditioning to expose the contradictions at the heart of the country’s climate policy.
• “France’s ideological war on air conditioning” – In the Spectator, Gavin Mortimer writes that France’s political, cultural and media elite is dominated by the belief that air conditioning is bad for the environment.
• “EU HQ only kept air conditioning on for floors with top Eurocrats” – While much of Europe sweltered through last week’s heatwave, the EU Commission kept the air conditioning running only on the top floors of its headquarters – where the senior Eurocrats work, according to Breitbart.
• “Sweat-soaked Europe lectured by NY Times: push for air conditioning is a ‘far-Right’ plot” – In Newsbusters, Clay Waters reports that two New York Times reporters, writing from a sweltering London and Brussels, dismissed air conditioning as a far-Right plot even as Europe baked in a deadly heatwave.
• “Can solar and wind + batteries really provide 24/7/365 electricity?” – On the Unpopular Truth blog, Dr Lars Schernikau forensically examines the hard engineering and economic realities of relying on solar, wind and battery storage for round-the-clock power supply.
• “Big Brother is watching Cliscep” – On Cliscep, John Ridgway reveals that the AI tool Gemini appears to be monitoring the site’s output.
• “Bishops who will not defend free speech are no different from other Left-wing politicians” – Why is it that some Church of England bishops have a problem with defending free speech? asks Julian Mann at Anglican Mainstream.
• “Labour’s war on gay rights: a new law risks reviving conversion therapy” – In UnHerd, Andrew Doyle argues that Labour’s proposed legislation risks inadvertently reviving the very conversion therapy practices it claims to oppose.
• “The truth about white guilt” – In the Spectator, Katharine Birbalsingh argues that young people’s moral education has stripped them of the capacity for complexity and nuance, leaving white guilt to fill the void.
• “The working-class Bristolians defying Britain’s ‘wokest’ council” – Bristol’s working-class residents are pushing back against a council that has helped earn the city a reputation as Britain’s most woke, reports Colin Freeman in the Telegraph.
• “The big picture of extraordinary evil in 428 words” – Over at the Brownstone Institute, Jeffrey A. Tucker offers a concise account of how academia and the major media played along with Deep State actors out of careerism and fear.
• “State-approved news or free press?” – Watch Toby grill the Government in the House of Lords over plans to force social media to boost “trusted” publishers – and the evasive reply he gets from a minister.

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