News Round-Up

• “Reform is a party in crisis” – In the Spectator, Tim Shipman notes that all political parties need more money than they have, but the art of extracting it is knowing where the rules can be stretched.
• “The midnight crisis talks that sealed the fate of Farage’s aides” – Farage’s most senior aides were covertly filmed appearing to devise ways to circumvent Britain’s political donation rules, triggering emergency talks that would seal their fate, reports the Telegraph.
• “Amateurish Reform is letting down the British Right” – Resolutely Right-wing voters let down by a Conservative Party that governed from the Left for 14 years are now watching Reform squander a historic opportunity through sheer amateurism, writes Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph.
• “Reform conference hit by protests as hecklers target Farage speech” – Four Climate Resistance protesters were ejected from the Birmingham conference hall after attempting to disrupt Farage’s speech, which had already been delayed by a security scare, reveals the Mail.
• “Met Police chief ‘flabbergasted’ by release of knife and gun crime suspects on bail” – Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley says he is “flabbergasted” by the sharp drop in the number of defendants accused of knife and gun offences being remanded in custody, reports Sky News.
• “Rayner’s office ‘broke ministerial code’ by deleting Islamophobia documents” – Sir Nick Timothy has accused Angela Rayner of breaking the ministerial code by destroying evidence used to draw up the Government’s definition of anti-Muslim hostility, says the Telegraph.
• “Cambridge announces independent review after Jason Arday’s death” – The University of Cambridge has launched an independent review into the policies and decision-making that led to the appointment of Professor Jason Arday, its youngest black professor, following his death, notes the Times.
• “Jaguar Land Rover to axe 4,000 jobs as sales fall and tariffs bite” – Britain’s largest carmaker is due to cut 4,000 jobs over two years as falling sales and trade tariffs take their toll, reports the Times.
• “White House hits out at Labour over media ‘censorship’ plans” – The White House has raised concerns over Labour’s proposals to force tech giants to promote ‘trusted’ news sources at the expense of independent providers, says the Telegraph.
• “In the heart of London, Left-wing voters are rejecting ‘egocentric’ Polanski” – Working-class loyalists and affluent liberals alike are shunning the Green Party leader’s bid to unseat Keir Starmer on his own home turf, according to the Telegraph.
• “Why Holborn will reject Polanski” – In the Spectator, Oliver Dean argues that more than a year of Polanski parading around the UK and claiming the Greens are the true party of the Left has fatally undermined his appeal in Holborn.
• “Bankrupted Birmingham council plans to spend £2.6 million removing flags” – Birmingham city council – run by a coalition of Liberal Democrats, Greens and Independents – plans to spend £132 per flag on removing Union Flags and St George’s Crosses, reports the Mail.
• “Tractors ‘could spy on farmers’ for China” – Chips in GPS-guided tractors, drones and irrigation systems are said to open a back door to Chinese data-gathering on UK food production, says the Telegraph.
• “Andy Burnham is a homeopathic Prime Minister, not the remedy sick Britain needs” – In the Telegraph, Dominic Lawson argues that Andy Burnham is offering only soothing quack cures when rigorous treatment is what a sick Britain desperately needs.
• “Milei: Argentina ‘will prevail’ over declining Britain” – Javier Milei has announced sanctions against oil drilling off the Falklands, declaring that Argentina “will prevail” in its efforts to reclaim the islands, says the Telegraph.
• “Argentina’s new play for the Falklands is because Labour is ‘weak’” – Milei has vowed to impose sanctions on any oil companies operating in the Falklands “under the British occupation”, with critics pointing to Britain’s perceived weakness as the emboldening factor, according to the Mail.
• “Time is running out for Javier Milei and his mendacious Falklands…” – Argentina’s President Milei is pressing Donald Trump to endorse Buenos Aires’s sovereignty claim over the Falklands, in a gambit that raises the diplomatic stakes for Britain, reports the Telegraph.
• “With Milei, Trump and our defeatist culture, could we lose the Falklands?” – In the Telegraph, Charles Moore warns that a weakened Milei, emboldened by Trump and facing Argentine elections, has abandoned his previous Falklands moderation – and that Britain may be ill-equipped to respond.
• “Bid to abolish NHS England bedevilled by quango’s high salaries” – Health Secretary Yvette Cooper has been advised to create an entirely new body to sidestep damaging pay discrepancies between NHS England staff and civil servants as she pursues Wes Streeting’s abolition goal, says the Times.
• “The BBC tries to debunk IQ” – Timothy Bates, A professor of differential psychology at Edinburgh, mounts a robust response in Aporia to the BBC’s attempt to discredit IQ.
• “Natural England accused of ‘bullying’ rural workers in shooting crackdown” – Natural England, which has just been refused permission to appeal against a High Court ruling, stands accused of intimidating rural workers in its crackdown on shooting, reports the Telegraph.
• “CCN celebrate media lies about Nepal floods” – The Nepal floods were caused by a bedrock collapse, yet climate campaigners and their media allies are exploiting the disaster for propaganda purposes, writes Paul Homewood in Not a Lot of People Know That.
• “CNN pivots from climate change to Trump over Nepal’s deadly landslides” – In Climate Change Dispatch, Thomas Richard notes that CNN has shifted its Nepal landslide coverage away from climate change to blaming Trump’s USAID cuts – even as the network itself admits the uncut aid would not have prevented the disaster.
• “I’ve tried the new plug-in solar panels – are they worth it?” – Bulky and requiring some upfront admin, plug-in solar panels are nonetheless simple to install and their real-time output data proves surprisingly addictive to monitor, writes Adam Vaughan in the Times.
• “World’s largest wealth fund to dump government bonds after global turmoil” – Norges Bank Investment Management is proposing to cut its government bond holdings by around £90 billion as the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund repositions in the wake of global market turbulence, notes the Telegraph.
• “Vicars now an ‘endangered species’” – A “crisis” in clergy numbers is rendering vicars an “endangered species”, according to the Church of England, reports the Telegraph.
• “Canary staff not paid amid fears for news website’s future” – Left-wing outlet The Canary faces an uncertain future after its bank blocked its funds without explanation, leaving staff unpaid, writes Ben Quinn in the Guardian.
• “Miriam Margolyes isn’t a national treasure, she’s an irrational disgrace” – Claiming that “Hitler won”, Miriam Margolyes exemplifies the kind of obnoxious, irrational commentary that forfeits any claim to national treasure status, writes Stephen Pollard in the Telegraph.
• “Exclusive: BBC Arabic ‘got it very wrong’ over Israel coverage, says Lord Grade” – Lord Grade, the outgoing Chairman of Ofcom, calls for wholesale reform of the BBC’s complaints process after concluding that BBC Arabic “got it very wrong” in its coverage of Israel, writes Jane Prinsley in the Jewish Chronicle.
• “Migrants raise dolphin in the air after it was ‘hit with a stick’” – Enraged locals in Ceuta confronted North African migrants who were filmed lifting a dolphin calf into the air and allegedly striking it with a stick, reports Natalia Penza in the Mail.
• “Are our maps colonialist?” – In the Spectator, Ross Clark argues that describing Mercator maps as “colonialist” betrays astonishing ignorance of geographical reality, given that their design makes navigation far simpler.
• “New HBO documentary promotes conspiracy theory that Elon Musk used “space lasers” to rig election for Trump” – Michael Shellenberger writes in Public that a new Alex Gibney documentary spreads the claim that Musk used “space lasers” to rig the election for Trump – a theory that election officials, AP, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, and Poynter all investigated and dismissed in November 2024.
• “George Bernard Shaw intended Eliza Doolittle to sound like this” – Listen to the increasingly erratic Jolyon Maugham pronounced Michael Gove’s surname in a bizarre way.

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