News Round-Up

• “Bond market turmoil gives UK a £6 billion debt interest headache as borrowing costs jump to highest level since 1998” – Persistent inflation, high borrowing levels and political instability have driven UK borrowing costs to their highest level in nearly three decades, reports This Is Money.
• “Bond markets turn on Burnham” – Borrowing costs have soared to their highest level in decades, leaving the Prime Minister facing a £14 billion Budget shortfall, according to the Telegraph.
• “Middle earners face further tax squeeze as gilt market rout blows £6 billion hole in fiscal headroom” – Middle earners look increasingly likely to face a fresh tax squeeze after a rout on gilt markets threatened to blow a £6 billion hole in John Healey’s Budget plans, says This Is Money.
• “Why UK pays more interest on its debt than rival nations” – If the Chancellor could bring the interest-rate bill of £135 billion or so on the UK’s £3 trillion of national debt down, he might be able to fund the defence budget without piling on growth-destroying wealth and bank taxes, writes Alex Brummer in This Is Money.
• “Burnham is a big state man heading for disaster” – In the Spectator, Ross Clark argues that Burnham’s plan to tell the Commons that public control of utilities is the only path to economic growth is a recipe for catastrophe.
• “Burnham should drop the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill” – Nothing in domestic or international law requires the Government to adopt the approach taken in the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, writes Stephen Laws in the Spectator.
• “Kemi Badenoch has just found Andy Burnham’s Achilles’ heel” – By heralding a return to the failed policies of the 1970s, the Prime Minister has handed the Tory leader the perfect target, says Janet Daley in the Telegraph.
• “How Labour’s Renters’ Rights Act has made life worse for tenants” – Renters across the country are struggling to find affordable properties since the Renters’ Rights Act came into force, with one 28 year-old saying she has found it impossible to secure a one-bedroom flat in South West London, writes Olivia Christie in the Mail.
• “London market to lose three more companies as takeovers pass $100 billion” – Bodycote, Gamma Communications and Capricorn Energy are the latest British firms to be targeted by private equity and overseas investors as London’s takeover total ticks over $100 billion, says the Times.
• “The Boriswave is a fiscal timebomb, it must be undone” – The biggest immigration spike in 170 years has condemned Britain to a lifetime of fiscal strain, says Sam Ashworth-Hayes in the Telegraph. The Boriswave must be reversed.
• “Danger-to-society prisoners ‘go on to rape and kill’” – Almost 100 dangerous prisoners held on indefinite sentences committed murders, rapes and other serious offences after being freed from prison, reports the Telegraph.
• “Southampton man found guilty of blackmailing venues to cancel Katie Hopkins shows” – A Southampton man has been convicted of using blackmail to force venues into cancelling Katie Hopkins shows, according to the Southern Daily Echo.
• “Actor quits West End show over Maureen Lipman’s pro-Israel stance” – Actor Gerard McCarthy has quit a West End show in protest after Jewish actress Dame Maureen Lipman joined the cast, reports the Telegraph.
• “No to blasphemy laws” – On his Substack, Frank Haviland argues against the introduction of blasphemy laws in Britain.
• “Newborn baby found dead in Sheffield house was stabbed to death” – A newborn baby girl found dead at a house in Sheffield was stabbed to death, reports the Mail, with five people being questioned over her murder.
• “I would not join the SAS today” – Troops cannot do their jobs knowing a panel is waiting to scrutinise every life-or-death decision taken in the field, warns Andy McNab in the Telegraph.
• “Irish private schools target priced-out British families” – Schools such as the King’s Hospital in Dublin are now pitching “affordable fees for UK families” to parents fleeing Britain’s private schools after Labour’s VAT raid, says the Telegraph.
• “Trump says US position on Falkland Islands is under review” – The President could threaten to recognise the Falklands as Argentinian territory as leverage to pressure Britain into raising defence spending, according to the Times.
• “Americans deliver stunning verdict on Trump’s renaming of Lake Ontario” – A new Mail/JL Partners poll reveals that Americans have delivered a damning verdict on Trump’s decision to rename Lake Ontario amid the trade war with Canada.
• “Moment Putin told to ‘move from endless war to the end of war’ by Modi” – Vladimir Putin has been confronted by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a summit in Kyrgyzstan and urged to halt his war in Ukraine for the sake of humanity, reports the Mail.
• “When media on the Left and Right agree that data centre attacks are unfair, maybe we should listen” – With data centres becoming a flashpoint in US political attack ads this election season, the rare cross-partisan consensus that such attacks are unfair deserves serious attention, says Gary Abernathy in TEA.
• “Bombshell report claims Miliband’s clean power plan will cost £320 billion” – A new Tory-commissioned report has found that Ed Miliband’s Clean Power 2030 Plan will cost an extra £320 billion by 2050, writes Paul Homewood on his Not a Lot of People Know That blog.
• “New report into the refineries sector concludes we need to abolish the UK ETS” – In a new report on the UK refinery sector, Kathryn Porter says on her Watt-Logic blog that the UK Emissions Trading Scheme is doing more harm than good and should be scrapped entirely.
• “Summer was hotter than 1976, Met Office confirms” – British climate records have been broken this summer, with an average daily maximum temperature of 21.3°C surpassing levels set 50 years ago, reports the Telegraph.
• “2026: a record summer?” – On the Right Times Substack, Ivor Williams argues that Britain’s 0.7% share of global emissions should not carry the can for China’s 29% – and that “hottest since records began” headlines mean far less than the public is led to believe.
• “Time is running out to rescue Europe’s car industry from its ‘Made in China’ folly” – With one-in-seven new cars sold in Britain now manufactured in China, the clock is ticking on Europe’s self-inflicted industrial catastrophe, warns Tom Tugendhat in the Telegraph.
• “The Ali G haters are the dumbest people alive” – In Spiked, Brendan O’Neill says the fury over Sacha Baron Cohen’s new film is a nauseating riot of stupidity, hypocrisy and Jew hatred.
• “Ali G and the death of comedy” – In the Spectator, Gareth Roberts writes that dogmatic woke culture is especially lethal to comedy, and that the backlash against Sacha Baron Cohen’s new film proves it.
• “For the Left, nothing succeeds like failure” – Francis Menton notes in the Manhattan Contrarian that the Left has mastered the paradox of thriving on its own failures.
• “Are we the people we were?” – Thatcherism may have been a brief interruption in a long downward cultural and economic trend, rather than a lasting transformation, says Daniel Hannan for the Institute of Economic Affairs.
• “Timothy Taylor’s rebrands logo with bearded hipster to target Gen Z” – The Yorkshire brewery Timothy Taylor’s has overhauled the logos of its cask ales with bearded hipster imagery in a bid to win over Gen Z drinkers, reports the Telegraph.
• “Free Speech Union launches complaints scheme for university academics” – The Free Speech Union’s Connie Shaw reveals that academics, university staff and visiting speakers can now take free speech complaints directly to the Office for Students under a new scheme promised by the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act.

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