News Round-Up

• “Trump to slap UK with new 10% tariff on Friday” – The US President will press ahead with duties on 60 trading partners, including the UK, reports the Mail.
• “Saudis must recognise Israel for nuclear deal, says Trump” – Trump says the landmark agreement to help Saudi Arabia develop nuclear energy is dependent on it joining the Abraham Accords, according to the BBC.
• “US sanctions London-based Muslim Brotherhood member” – The Trump administration has put pressure on Britain to act against the Islamist group, which remains unproscribed in the UK, notes the Times.
• “Trump warns it will be ‘very bad’ for China or Russia if they arm Iran” – In a stern warning to America’s two most powerful adversaries, Trump says it is “certainly not in their best interests” to arm Iran, reports the Mail.
• “Is Ed Miliband preparing to take on Donald Trump?” – In the Spectator, John Power reveals that the White House is reportedly furious at Miliband’s appointment as Foreign Secretary, having previously warned against it – with Trump said to be unimpressed by his record of blocking North Sea oil drilling and past remarks calling him a “racist, misogynistic self-confessed groper”.
• “Ed Miliband ‘furious and let down’ after being snubbed for Chancellor” – Ed Miliband’s fury at being passed over for Chancellor – a role reportedly eyed by Andy Burnham and Ed Balls before going to former defence secretary John Healey – exposes deep tensions at the heart of the new Government, writes James Tapsfield in the Mail.
• “How Reform and the Tories plan to fight Andy Burnham” – With Kemi Badenoch buoyant after a turbulent year and Reform sharpening its attack lines, the battle to challenge Andy Burnham’s new Government is already under way, says James Heale in the Spectator.
• “Andy Burnham’s centrist act isn’t fooling anyone” – The new Prime Minister’s attempt to present a broad-church Government of rival views is being seen through by those who know him best, says Tim Shipman in the Spectator.
• “Burnham’s vanity street project” – Andy Burnham’s ascent to Downing Street is skewered as an elaborate act of mid-life self-reinvention that has dragged the entire country along for the ride, writes Sean Walsh in Country Squire Magazine.
• “Burnham under pressure to block early release of rape gangs” – Labour MPs are demanding that those convicted of child sexual abuse and other sex crimes be exempted from early-release schemes, piling pressure on the new Prime Minister to act, reports the Telegraph.
• “Prisons to run out of space by November” – The architect of the early release scheme warns that abandoning it entirely will create a risk of instability, even as England and Wales’s jails barrel toward capacity, reports the Telegraph.
• “Kemi is right to purge the Tories of has-been wets” – Kemi Badenoch’s drive to strip the Conservative Party of dissenters who refuse to back her twin commitments to scrapping the ECHR and Net Zero is a necessary act of renewal, says Tom Harris in the Telegraph.
• “Healey must fix the ONS” – In the Spectator, Michael Simmons argues that Chancellor John Healey must urgently get a grip on a chronically troubled Office for National Statistics before its mounting failures undermine confidence in the data underpinning economic policy.
• “Revealed: Angela Rayner’s £182k ‘year off’” – The former Housing Secretary enjoyed an “extremely profitable” year after quitting Government over her tax affairs, with earnings reaching £182k, reveals the Telegraph.
• “The dangers of policing misinformation” – In the Spectator, Toby writes that a government-commissioned evidence review on countering misinformation, ordered in the wake of Steve Reed’s social cohesion action plan, poses a serious threat to free expression.
• “Southport killer has tricked his way into Broadmoor, say families” – Bereaved relatives of Axel Rudakubana’s victims accuse him of “manipulating the system” to secure a transfer from a high-security jail to Broadmoor psychiatric hospital, reports the Telegraph.
• “Is Axel Rudakubana playing the system?” – Just before the second anniversary of his murders, the Southport killer’s transfer from Belmarsh to the more comfortable surroundings of Broadmoor raises urgent questions, writes David Shipley in the Spectator.
• “Greater Manchester Police has disgraced itself” – In the Spectator, Jawad Iqbal says Greater Manchester Police’s admission that it failed to check vital information on the Manchester synagogue attacker’s phone is a damning indictment of the force.
• “Mega-dinghy carries 165 migrants across Channel” – A single packed vessel carrying 165 migrants has beaten the previous record for arrivals on one boat, as smuggling gangs cram ever more people onto Channel crossings, reveals the Telegraph.
• “Iran smuggling agents into UK as Channel migrants” – Tehran is boasting it has positioned “revolutionary people” in London through a secret network exploiting small boat crossings, reports the Telegraph.
• “Police seize ‘significant’ bomb being driven to Northern Ireland” – A law student has been charged after her car was stopped while carrying a viable device built with military-grade plastic explosives, says the Telegraph.
• “Henry Nowak’s killer caught on video telling his mother to take knife” – The footage, released by the Crown Prosecution Service, comes after the killer’s mother, Kiran Kaur, was jailed for three years at Southampton Crown Court for assisting an offender, notes the Mail.
• “‘Workout with a hammer’: Palestine Action advertises terror training” – The proscribed group’s ‘sinister’ training sessions were held just days after the violent death of Ann Widdecombe, reveals the Telegraph.
• “One day, your life and future may depend on a jury – the integrity of that legal process is in peril right now” – In the Guardian, Imran Khan KC argues that citing a barrister for contempt over his jury address in a Palestine Action trial places the integrity of trial by jury at risk for everyone.
• “Cambridge’s diversity poster boy in plagiarism row” – Jason Arday, lionised as a symbol of diversity when he became a Cambridge professor at 37, now faces serious plagiarism allegations, reports the Telegraph.
• “ICC’s British chief prosecutor is ousted over sexual misconduct claims” – Karim Khan, 56, has been removed from his post as chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court following a vote prompted by allegations of sexual misconduct with a female aide, writes Francine Wolfisz in the Mail.
• “Cops fume as Mamdani urges New Yorkers to take to streets to protest Netanyahu after arrest fail: ‘edge of chaos’” – New York City Mayor Mamdani’s call for street protests against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu – after police failed to arrest him – has infuriated the NYPD and pushed the city to the “edge of chaos”, says Larry Celona in the New York Post.
• “What Ukraine doesn’t want you to know about the Nord Stream pipeline” – In the Spectator, Peter Hitchens argues that the popular narrative pinning the Nord Stream sabotage on a daring Ukrainian operation is a seductive fiction designed to obscure a far more inconvenient truth about who really destroyed the pipeline.
• “The radical Left-wing takeover of the Democrats is nearly complete” – In the Spectator, Freddy Gray notes that the Michigan Senate primary on August 4th could prove the decisive moment at which the radical Left cements its grip on the Democratic Party, potentially reshaping American politics ahead of 2028.
• “Trudeau’s cannabis revolution turns Belgium into narco state” – Legally grown cannabis is flooding into Europe from Canada, enriching criminal gangs and helping transform Belgium into a ‘narco state’, reports the Telegraph.
• “The truth behind Sadiq Khan’s claims of falling London crime” – In UnHerd, Archie Earle scrutinises the Metropolitan Police data cited by Sadiq Khan to claim London is growing safer, questioning whether the Mayor’s reassuring picture holds up.
• “MI5 to pay compensation for surveillance on journalist’s phone” – MI5 has been directed to pay compensation to a journalist over unlawful phone surveillance, believed to be the first such ruling of its kind, says BBC News.
• “Yet another embarrassment from the National Academy of pseudoscience” – In the Manhattan Contrarian, Francis Menton argues that the National Academy of Sciences has once again undermined its own credibility, exposing it as an institution of pseudoscience.
• “The great Net Zero showdown: can’t afford to keep it, can’t afford to drop it” – In UnHerd, John Rapley writes that governments find themselves trapped in an agonising Net Zero dilemma, with the costs of pressing ahead and the costs of abandoning course both proving politically unbearable.
• “Net Zero race ‘risks blackouts and higher bills’” – A leaked report commissioned by the National Grid operator warns it is “flying blind” because it cannot accurately forecast supply from renewable sources, reports the Times.
• “BP to sell British solar farms to Kuwait in Net Zero retreat” – BP is refocusing on its core oil and gas business as it moves to offload British solar farms to Kuwait, says the Telegraph.
• “How writers are reacting to Substack’s AI transparency tools” – The Substack Team responds to criticism over the website’s new AI detection tools.
• “Woke academics are ruining British museums” – The V&A’s ‘racist’ and ‘colonial’ row exposes how no amount of globalism can satisfy the anti-Eurocentric mob, notes the Telegraph.
• “Young women are completely wrong about relationships” – Unfortunately for single feminists, true fulfilment comes from a partner and children – not a job that doesn’t love you back, says Eleanor Mills in the Telegraph.
• “Not all boorish or lecherous behaviour is sexual assault” – In the Spectator, Joan Alexander argues that the blurring of boorish conduct with criminal sexual assault strips women of the agency to handle unwanted advances themselves.
• “Therapy speak is turning us into sissies” – The modern therapeutic vocabulary is pathologising what were once simply called personality traits, writes Julie Burchill in the Spectator.
• “Gary, please pay more tax if you want to – but do it in private” – Quentin Letts in the Mail takes aim at public figures like Lineker who make a performance of their tax virtue, noting that the British tradition has never been one of ostentatious self-flagellation
• “Soft touch” – On his Substack, David McGrogan draws on England’s latest World Cup disappointment to reflect on a lost instinct for ruthlessness in modern society.
• “Puberty blocker trial could be halted next week” – The High Court is set to decide whether to allow children as young as 11 to take part in a controversial puberty blocker trial, reports the Telegraph.
• “Elon is an absolute legend” – A post praising Elon Musk as “an absolute legend” for an interview where he defended his support for what the interviewer called the “far Right” and he called “the normal people” is doing the rounds on X.

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