News Round-Up

• “Cambridge academics attack Vice-Chancellor over Arday fiasco” – Prof Deborah Prentice faces mounting pressure from within Cambridge over the university’s handling of the plagiarism row surrounding its former star professor, reports the Telegraph.
• “The Arday scandal exposes the creeping decay of Britain’s great universities” – The scandal raises urgent questions about how someone so ill-qualified in formal academic terms could have secured one of Britain’s most prestigious professorships, says Charles Moore in the Telegraph.
• “Cambridge professors who hired Arday attacked ‘whiteness’ in academia” – Two academics responsible for appointing Jason Arday to his Cambridge professorship have published work attacking “whiteness” in education, reveals the Telegraph.
• “‘Plagiarism’ professor claimed he ran nine marathons with a broken leg but photos of him at the finish line tell a different story” – Jason Arday’s forthcoming autobiography describes a dramatic fundraising feat in which he claims to have run 30 marathons in 35 days after just a few months’ training – including nine reportedly completed with a broken leg, but that’s not what photos from the time show, says the Mail.
• “Who’s to blame for Jason Arday?” – In the New Statesman, Steve Hall argues that Arday is neither victim nor crook but the product of a broken system that bears collective responsibility for his rise.
• “Jason Arday: a question of academic standards – what was his obscurantism hiding?” – In UnHerd, Richard Dawkins asks what the obscurantism of Cambridge academic Jason Arday was concealing, and what it reveals about the state of academic standards.
• “In Jason Arday’s Cambridge, clever people have become stupid” – The Jason Arday scandal exposes how Cambridge’s instinct to protect a figure seen as a victim has led clever people into wilful blindness, writes Camilla Long in the Times.
• “A top scholar’s fall shows that universities don’t get it” – By shielding a celebrated academic from plagiarism charges, Cambridge undermined the very values it claims to uphold, writes Jesse Singal in the New York Times.
• “The great and unfortunate story of Jason Arday” – Ian Leslie, in what he calls the craziest scandal of 2026, tells the full story of Jason Arday’s extraordinary rise and fall on his Substack.
• “Kemi’s outrage over sex predator freed to carry on attacks” – Kemi Badenoch leads a blistering attack on the Crown Prosecution Service and the Metropolitan Police after serial sex offender Simon Levy was repeatedly released from custody, reports the Mail.
• “Two women dead, a third traumatised. Our justice system is broken.” – The case of serial sex attacker Simon Levy, who preyed on women on the London Underground while the justice system repeatedly failed to stop him, is a damning indictment of institutional collapse, writes Rebecca Camber in the Mail.
• “NHS trust tells trans staff they can use women’s toilets” – A Midlands NHS trust is defying new Government guidance on single-sex spaces by continuing to allow trans staff access to women’s bathrooms and wards, reports the Telegraph.
• “Why I’ll never get tired of talking about trans” – In Spiked, Stella O’Malley argues that the relentless spread of gender ideology has exposed catastrophic rot at the heart of almost every institution that Western civilisation depends upon.
• “The homophobic folly of banning ‘conversion therapy’” – A former advocate of conversion therapy bans, Peter Gajdics, warns in Spiked that such legislation poses an existential threat to gay and lesbian people.
• “Female detective sacked in trans gross misconduct case” – Detective Constable Rachel Fletcher, who was instrumental in jailing a prolific paedophile for 23 years, has been sacked and put on a professional blacklist over a gross misconduct finding linked to her comments about transgender ‘women’, reports the Mail.
• “How Britain can stop small boats, from the man who halted Sweden’s migrant wave” – Britain can halt small boat Channel crossings without withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights, the architect of Sweden’s migration crackdown claims, according to the Telegraph.
• “Spain imposes border controls against Italy as Ceuta migration spat escalates” – Spain has tightened its border measures against Italy after Madrid’s foreign minister demanded that Rome “treats Spaniards like other European citizens”, says the Telegraph.
• “Burnham claims 98% of migrants who invaded Ceuta have left” – In the Mail, Sue Reid says that a deceitful narrative peddled by politicians – including the Prime Minister – that the Ceuta crisis is over masks a reality that is only just beginning.
• “The Romanian and Bulgarian beggar encampment blighting the heart of London” – Rows of tents, dishwater hurled onto the road, bathing on the central reservation and persistent theft from local shops are among the scenes blighting a central London neighbourhood, reports the Mail.
• “Burnham could block early release of all killers of emergency workers” – Andy Burnham is examining whether to block the release of all prisoners responsible for the deaths of emergency service workers, in a move aimed at keeping PC Harper’s killers behind bars, notes the Telegraph.
• “Andy Burnham insiders tell of ‘Mean Girls’ atmosphere in PM’s top team” – Allies of Andy Burnham warn that a cliquish inner circle has created a “Mean Girls” atmosphere at the heart of Downing Street, says the Mail.
• “Richard Tice: police not taking threats to Reform members seriously” – Reform UK’s Deputy Leader Richard Tice says authorities have “messed up” on the safety of politicians after the investigation into the firebombing of Nigel Farage’s home was reopened, reports the Telegraph.
• “David Lammy bids to be London mayor if Sadiq Khan decides not to run” – David Lammy, ousted from Cabinet when Andy Burnham entered No. 10, believes Labour is “back in play” for the London mayoralty following the collapsing fortunes of Zack Polanski’s Greens, says Glen Owen in the Mail.
• “Charity Commission launches probe into UK charity amid Hamas claims” – The Charity Commission has opened an investigation into the Al Khair Foundation after its director Mohammed Hasna allegedly used his role to channel funds and supplies to Hamas following the October 7th attack on Israel, reveals the Mail.
• “The well-funded activists driving your council’s Gaza obsession” – The Palestine Solidarity Campaign is bankrolling efforts to drag the Gaza conflict into local government, with dozens of councils now pushing to divest pension funds from Israeli assets, notes the Times.
• “Labour council installs squat toilets ‘preferred by foreign visitors’” – Cambridge City Council has spent £1 million building public toilets on Silver Street that include three squat-style flushing toilets said to be preferred by international visitors, reports the Mail.
• “Two more private schools forced to close blame Labour’s VAT raid” – Avon House School in Essex and Sompting Abbots Prep School in West Sussex have both announced they will not reopen in September, blaming Labour’s VAT raid on independent schools for their closure, notes the Mail.
• “Arron Banks ‘put free speech at risk’ by having reporter investigated” – A Tory peer has condemned Arron Banks for instructing a firm to investigate a Sunday Times journalist following the paper’s Insight reports on Reform’s funding.
• “Sturgeon: J.K. Rowling is obsessed with me” – Nicola Sturgeon has claimed J.K. Rowling is obsessed with her, prompting the Harry Potter author to accuse the former First Minister of being the “blindest wife ever” over her insistence she knew nothing of Peter Murrell’s conduct, reports the Telegraph.
• “Being Muslim makes you less British, claims Restore co-founder” – Charlie Downes, co-founder of the Restore party, has claimed that being Muslim makes a person less British, arguing that national identity depends on ancestry and Christian heritage, reports the Telegraph.
• “The people of Thetford deserve empathy” – In the Spectator, Thomas Casemore argues that communities under pressure from rapid demographic change deserve understanding rather than dismissal, as locals focus on protecting their neighbourhoods when broader solutions feel out of reach.
• “‘Serial bully’ Bercow back in Labour” – Labour’s woes deepen as party membership has plunged 20% under Starmer and John Bercow makes his return to the fold, notes the Spectator.
• “A romp through the Fauci diaries: fame turns to shame” – In Brownstone Journal, Jeffrey A. Tucker says Anthony Fauci’s newly published diaries reveal a man consumed by celebrity whose pandemic legacy amounts to two years of needless suffering for millions of children.
• “Labour set to relax Net Zero targets as ministers finally admit green ‘lunacy’ hurts working Britons” – Electric car mandate rules could be halved and the 2030 Net Zero target shelved entirely if energy bills continue to rise, reports GB News.
• “Eco-rules behind years-long delay to delivery of 10,000 prison places” – The construction of more than 10,000 urgently needed prison places has been held up for years by environmental objections over badgers, water weeds and legal challenges, reveals the Telegraph.
• “Met Office heatwave death claim was fake news” – A viral claim that European heatwaves have killed thousands is dismantled as misinformation by Paul Homewood on Not a Lot of People Know That, with the underlying data telling a very different story.
• “The weather isn’t getting worse. The lawsuits are” – A new National Academy of Sciences report risks unleashing a wave of costly climate litigation built on theoretical assumptions rather than observable evidence, draining public and private resources alike, says Angela Wheeler in Watts Up With That?
• “No, ScienceDaily, data show no ‘sharp acceleration’ in warming” – In Watts Up With That?, Anthony Watts argues that ScienceDaily’s clickbait headline proclaiming a sharp warming acceleration badly misrepresents underlying science that remains far more nuanced than its readers were told.
• “The insidious population reduction narrative disguised as ‘sustainability science’” – In Legal Insurrection, Leslie Eastman writes that a new study in Sustainable Development calling for the global population to be cut to four billion treats humanity itself as a variable to be eliminated in the name of saving the planet.
• “Chris Hohn, Britain’s greenest billionaire: ‘It’s decarbonise or die’” – Hedge fund billionaire Chris Hohn breaks his customary silence to declare that “any idiot” can recognise climate change and that smart businesses must cut emissions fast, according to the Times.
• “Plug-in solar panels coming to supermarkets: are they worth it?” – A £350 plug-in solar kit is expected to fly off supermarket shelves, but a significant catch gives buyers pause, reports the Times.
• “The week in energy – August 8th 2026” – On his Substack, Richard Lyon argues that “consumer-led flexibility” has quietly become a licence for energy suppliers to switch your appliances off.
• “Green Nimbys are right: even solar energy enthusiasts should be against covering the countryside with panels” – Even committed solar energy enthusiasts have good reason to oppose the mass blanketing of the British countryside with panels, writes Ross Clark on his Substack.
• “2017 blog posts demonstrating that wind power won’t work” – A series of blog posts from 2017 by a Dutch analyst made a compelling case that wind power cannot deliver reliable energy, says Rafe Champion on his Substack.
• “What it was like to edit Rod Liddle, and why I’ll miss him” – A decade working alongside Rod Liddle reveals a man whose entire mission was to make polite Middle England squirm – yet who turned out to be a deeply soppy thing, notes the Times.
• “Anyone who supports North Sea drilling is an extremist” – On X, the New Statesman‘s Oli Dugmore argues that supporting North Sea drilling is a mark of extremism.

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