News Round-Up

• “We’ll ban all foreign nationals from any benefits, says Reform” – Reform UK says it can save £21 billion a year by cutting welfare – including an end to what it calls the “immoral” system of British taxpayers funding benefits for people overseas, according to the Mail.
• “Reform vows to make long-term benefits claimants do community work” – Reform Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick has unveiled plans to make benefit recipients part of “alarm clock Britain” under a “welfare to work” scheme requiring 20 hours of community work a week, says the Mail.
• “The British Right is now as bad as Labour under Jeremy Corbyn” – We need a conservative politics that is coalitional and utterly opposed to bigotry, not nasty and obsessed with purity, according to Tim Stanley in the Telegraph.
• “The tragedy of Jason Arday can’t be blamed on the press” – If Cambridge had properly looked into its young professor sooner, it could have spared him the public humiliation, argues Charles Moore in the Telegraph.
• “Cambridge used Arday for bragging rights” – Shadow Communities Minister Sir James Cleverly says that the late Jason Ardy would not have been in such a “terrible” and “personally exposed position” had universities done their due diligence, according to the Telegraph.
• “Why people cared about Jason Arday” – Whether the allegations against Jason Arday were true or false, the intensity of public reaction reveals something uncomfortable about how institutions handle claims of academic fraud, says Druin Burch in the Spectator.
• “Inside the Green Party group chats that discussed ‘killing Zionists’” – Leaked messages show Green Party activists describing British Jews as a “weapon” of Israel and calling hostility towards Jews “understandable”, according to the Times.
• “Minister casts doubt over Labour meeting ‘tough’ new homes goal” – Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook has acknowledged Labour’s flagship target of building 1.5 million new homes is looking “really tough” to achieve, reports the Mail.
• “Rayner’s planning reforms ‘won’t save struggling pubs’” – Industry figures have warned that Labour’s planning overhaul will do nothing to halt the wave of pub closures driven by rising taxes, alcohol duties and soaring wage costs, says the Telegraph.
• “Angela Rayner paves way for more traveller sites” – Housing Secretary Angela Rayner has softened planning rules for traveller sites, making it harder for councils to resist new encampments, reports the Telegraph.
• “Burnham urged to reverse National Insurance hike with firms stuck in ‘low-hire, low-fire’ mode” – Andy Burnham has been urged to ease the cost of doing business as new data shows British firms’ hiring plans have been stuck at historic lows since last spring, says This is Money.
• “JP Morgan boss warns Chancellor against higher taxes for banks ahead of Budget” – The head of America’s largest bank has told John Healey that a tax raid on the financial sector ahead of his first Budget would be a serious mistake, according to This is Money.
• “At last there’s talk of cutting welfare. Will Andy Burnham do the job?” – With all the major parties now promising to rein in welfare spending, Daniel Hannan asks in the Mail whether Burnham has the guts to make the cuts previous governments have promised but failed to deliver.
• “Property asking prices in Britain’s richest borough drop by nearly £100,000… in a month” – Rightmove data reveals that the average new asking price in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea fell by around £95,000 in a single month to £1,552,970, according to This is Money.
• “UK biker wars: Hells Angels, Bandidos and Vikings battle for supremacy” – A fatal fight near Pontypool believed to involve rival motorcycle gangs has lifted the lid on a violent turf war playing out across Britain, says the Mail.
• “Cost of paying suspended police officers hits record £60 million a year” – Police officers suspended from duty on full pay are costing the taxpayer a record £60 million a year, with forces handing over more than £163,000 a day to staff sitting at home, reports the Mail.
• “Trump’s not bluffing about 100% tariffs on UK, says trade tsar” – US trade representative Jamieson Greer has warned that Trump’s threat to scrap a trade deal with Britain and impose 100% tariffs is “not a bluff”, according to the Times.
• “Trump accuses the BBC of harassing his children in defamation battle” – President Trump has accused the BBC of harassing his family after it tried to force his children to testify in his $10 billion defamation lawsuit, reports the Mail.
• “Spanish police investigate 15 sex assaults in Ceuta” – Spanish police say they are investigating 15 alleged sexual assaults, including one against a 10 year-old girl, in Ceuta amid growing fears over security in the enclave following the mass influx of migrants last month, according to the Mail.
• “Labour MP suspended amid concerns over Covid loan repayment” – A Labour MP has been suspended from the party amid concerns that he tried to avoid repaying a taxpayer-funded Covid loan, reports the Telegraph.
• “Labour hands consultants £456 million AI contract despite pledge” – Labour has handed consultants a £450 million contract to deliver AI training to the Civil Service despite pledging to cut spending on external advisers, says the Telegraph.
• “Emergency alert was inappropriate, says chairman of fire chiefs” – National security officials raised concerns that the wildfire emergency alert would backfire by encouraging the public to disable the alert feature on their phones, reveals the Telegraph.
• “All the times emergency alerts have gone wrong – how to turn them off” – In the Mail, Shivali Best notes that recent years have seen several incidents in which emergency alert systems have misfired, and explains how to disable them on your phone.
• “Burnham is set to make a ‘life or death’ decision on the North Sea oil” – Andy Burnham’s looming decision on new North Sea drilling could spell “life or death” for the industry, reports the Mail.
• “Andy Burnham expected to delay North Sea oil decision over ‘optics’” – Andy Burnham is expected to push a decision on two North Sea oil and gas projects into the autumn because of concerns about the “optics” of approving new drilling during a summer of heatwaves and wildfires, reveals the Times.
• “‘Hardcore’ Right-wingers are fuelling Net Zero backlash” – An ally of Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh has claimed that hardcore Right-wingers are deliberately stoking a backlash against Net Zero, reports the Telegraph.
• “Scrap Net Zero and enjoy the weather” – Reform UK’s Deputy Leader has called for Net Zero to be abandoned, describing the drive towards it as an “arrogant” attempt to halt climate change, says the Times.
• “Climate alarmists go silent: turns out fossil fuels are Earth’s ‘Miracle-Gro’” – New research shows that nitrogen deposition from burning hydrocarbons has expanded plant growth and driven the greening of large parts of the planet, directly contradicting the climate alarmist narrative on fossil fuels, according to Vijay Jayaraj at CO2 Coalition.
• “British Gas threatened disabled pensioner with court over incorrect £2,000 bill” – British Gas threatened to take a 69 year-old disabled pensioner to court over an incorrect £2,000 gas bill that took her the best part of a year to resolve, reports the Telegraph.
• “Clean-up binned ‘after the council said the bags won’t be collected’” – A huge litter clean-up had to be scrapped after bureaucrats at Newport City Council’s waste department said the rubbish would have been put in the wrong type of bin bags, according to the Mail.
• “Driver given £100 parking fine after stopping for Mr Whippy” – A motorist was given a £100 fine after stopping to eat a Mr Whippy in a car park in the New Forest, says the Telegraph.
• “The most puzzling cases from Trump’s released UFO files” – A fresh trove of declassified files offer a glimpse inside some of the most baffling UFO encounters ever investigated by the US Government, reports the Mail.
• “Battlefield where Anglo-Saxons destroyed a Viking army found in Devon” – Archaeologists believe they may have finally located the long-lost Devon battlefield where Anglo-Saxon forces delivered a devastating defeat to an invading Viking army, says the Mail.
• “Stonehenge archaeologists in bombshell new theory on where stone came from” – A new study has revealed exactly how one enormous stone may have travelled to the Stonehenge site, according to the Express.
• “1000s of academics and journalists knew the truth about Jason Arday for more than a year. Now you know why no one said anything” – On X, Nathan Cofnas – the academic who exposed the Arday plagiarism scandal – shares footage of thousands packed into Trafalgar Square as Jason Arday’s memorial turns into an anti-Cofnas hate rally, with speakers attacking him for exposing the scandal.

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