News Round-Up

• “Britain ‘taxing itself to death’ as investors lose faith” – Senior US economist Arthur Laffer has warned Andy Burnham against a fresh tax raid as confidence in Britain among international investors continues to collapse, reports the Telegraph.
• “Burnham’s EU reset plan will be an economic disaster” – British taxpayers would face a bill of £570 million a year from 2027, rising to £810 million by 2028, under Andy Burnham’s EU reset, says Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph.
• “Burnham’s Israel sanctions ‘threaten UK security’” – Andy Burnham’s plans to sanction Israel risk jeopardising British national security by making it harder to fight terrorism, the new Shadow Foreign Secretary Tom Tugendhat has said.
• “Kemi Badenoch blasts PM after Falklands threat” – Kemi Badenoch has attacked Andy Burnham for failing to respond after Buenos Aires escalated tensions to their highest level since 1982 by insisting the islands were “historically and legally” Argentinian, reports the Mail.
• “Diane Abbott is embarrassing Britain” – In the Spectator, Lisa Haseldine argues that Andy Burnham’s failure to act on Diane Abbott is undermining his authority on defence at the worst possible moment.
• “Stop blaming Liz Truss for Andy Burnham’s failures” – Media pundits are too readily using the former Prime Minister as a scapegoat for Labour’s gilts crisis rather than holding Burnham to account, notes James Baxter-Derrington in the Telegraph.
• “Assisted dying will end almost twice as many lives as expected” – Government officials have raised their central estimate for assisted dying deaths from around 13,500 to more than 25,000, reports the Telegraph.
• “Police need extra £500 million to monitor early-release prisoners” – Police chiefs say they will need nearly £500 million to tackle crime and rule-breaking by the prisoners freed early under Labour’s emergency release scheme, says the Telegraph.
• “Balaclava-clad mob bring Dover to a halt in ‘stop the boats’ protest” – Hundreds of protesters dressed in black and wearing balaclavas descended on Dover, bringing the port to a standstill after catching police off guard, reports the Mail.
• “Reform UK pledges to raise tax-free personal allowance to £15k” – Robert Jenrick’s plan would stop three million people from paying income tax altogether, the party claims, reports the Telegraph.
• “This crisis is extremely serious for Nigel Farage” – Reform voters have long believed Farage is the only honest man in British politics, making the current crisis a potentially devastating threat to his political identity, notes James Frayne in the Telegraph.
• “Farage admits he hasn’t got family’s support to continue in politics” – The Reform UK leader has revealed that his loved ones “would rather I packed it up and walked away”, as he faces a fresh donations row, says the Mail.
• “Will Nigel Farage’s motley crew of allies be his undoing?” – Another donation scandal has thrust Farage’s circle of rebels and private-club confidants into the spotlight, raising fresh questions about whether his inner world could prove his greatest liability, says the Times.
• “Burial site for damaged Korans must be removed, council rules” – The Environment Agency has declared activities at a West Yorkshire plot “illegal” and issued an enforcement notice demanding all materials be cleared, reports the Telegraph.
• “Labour’s equality laws are backfiring for the Left” – A new wave of claimants are using equality legislation to argue they are being discriminated against for holding anti-woke views, notes the Telegraph.
• “Green Party deputy is a landlord, despite vow to abolish landlords” – Mothin Ali, the Green Party’s Deputy Leader, owns two rental properties in Leeds even as his party campaigns to abolish landlords, reveals the Times.
• “Jolyon Maugham and the rise and fall of the celebrity lawyer” – In the Spectator, Julie Burchill writes that everything about “puffed-up popinjay” Jolyon Maugham is absurd – even his name seems like something out of P.G. Wodehouse.
• “How much longer will Cambridge stand by Simon Woolley?” – Andrew Gilligan says in the Spectator that the reaction of Woolley’s fellow activists to challenges over his untruths was, inevitably, to dismiss them as racist.
• “Jason Arday and the Church of England” – In Psephizo, Ian Paul reflects on the tragic affair of Jason Arday – his appointment as a Cambridge professor, the challenges to his academic and personal claims, his resignation and his death by suicide – and looks at what the Church of England’s response reveals about its values.
• “Putin pauses strikes on Kyiv for Witkoff and Kushner talks” – US envoys have arrived in Moscow for talks after the trip was confirmed and cancelled several times, reports the Telegraph.
• “UN votes to reduce size of Britain and US in new map” – The United Nations has voted to replace the traditional map of the world with one that shrinks the size of Britain and the United States, says the Telegraph.
• “Welcome to the dystopian Spanish enclave of Ceuta” – Nick Craven reports in the Mail from Ceuta, the EU’s only land border with Africa, where 70,000 migrants arrived on July 30th and a subsequent crime wave including 21 sexual attacks has shattered any semblance of normal life.
• “The traditional French feasts deemed ‘offensive to Muslims’” – Left-wing opponents in France are branding pork-heavy menus and patriotic gatherings as provocative to Muslims, sparking a fierce national debate over culture and identity, reports the Telegraph.
• “Victory lies ahead for Germany’s AfD” – In the Spectator, Constantin Eckner says the AfD’s broad base of middle- and working-class supporters makes a first-place finish in the Sachsen-Anhalt state election virtually inevitable.
• “Federal Republic on edge as fascism threatens to return to Sachsen-Anhalt with historic vote tomorrow” – On his Substack, eugyppius skewers the hysteria surrounding the Sachsen-Anhalt state parliament election, in which voters exercising a routine democratic ritual are once again being cast as harbingers of fascism.
• “The facts have never mattered to Lindsay Clancy’s deranged fans” – A mistrial in the Lindsay Clancy case has done nothing to cool the cultural war that has made her an unlikely cause célèbre among fans for whom the facts are beside the point, says Poppy Coburn in the Telegraph.
• “Rogue AI agents conspire to escape and take over world, it is feared” – Experts warn of a future in which banks, hospitals, schools and even weapons could become targets for armies of rogue AI agents, reports the Telegraph.
• “Labour tax raids make US gas cheaper than North Sea supplies” – Labour’s tax raids have made producing North Sea gas more expensive than importing it from the US, energy experts warn, says the Telegraph.
• “Sorry, Fortune, climate change is hardly the prime influence on sardine fisheries” – In ClimateRealism, Linnea Lueken argues that Fortune magazine is wrong to blame declining sardine catches on climate change, pointing instead to Chinese overfishing and natural cycles as the real culprits.
• “Secretary General António Guterres is on track to be the UN’s biggest climate loser” – While his predecessors secured the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, António Guterres looks set to leave office empty-handed on climate, notes Eric Worrall in Watts Up With That.
• “Met Office admit Kew is a class 5 junk site” – A Freedom of Information request has revealed that the Met Office classifies the Kew Gardens weather station as a class 5 site – the lowest possible rating for data quality – notes Paul Homewood in Not a Lot of People Know That.
• “Taxpayer subsidies for Chinese batteries? Just say no!” – A coalition of free market energy groups has written to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urging him to close a legal loophole that allows Chinese-owned battery component manufacturers to receive taxpayer-funded subsidies, reports Master Resource.
• “Theresa and Sir Philip May face revolt from ‘anti-woke’ Athenaeum members” – Critics are accusing the former Prime Minister’s husband of pursuing Left-wing policies and barring conservative speakers from the prestigious Pall Mall institution, says the Telegraph.
• “How having a disability became cool” – Young women dubbed ‘sickfluencers’ are turning chronic illness into a lifestyle trend, raising urgent questions about the glamorisation of ill health, says Poppy Coburn in the Telegraph.
• “Why shouldn’t civil servants come to work dressed as cats?” – SNP ministers may fear that dressing as cats could undermine their authority, but the evidence suggests they have rather less credibility left to lose, writes Michael Deacon in the Telegraph.
• “Hollywood has killed the macho man” – From Paul Mescal to Jacob Elordi, today’s leading men have swapped machismo for moisturising, and Kara Kennedy in the Telegraph argues the era of the classic Hollywood alpha male is well and truly over.
• “The last series of 7 Up is a lament for a lost Britain” – In the Mail, Robert Hardman writes that the final instalment of the “greatest documentary ever made” serves as a moving elegy for a Britain that has quietly slipped away.
• “Nearly a thousand masked men dressed all in black have arrived at the Port of Dover and are blocking the streets there” – Visegrád 24 has footage of the protests where men attempted to block the authorities from disembarking additional batches of illegal boat migrants.

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