News Round-Up

• “German state elections: AfD makes sweeping gains” – The German Chancellor has refused to resign as his conservative party suffered its worst defeat on record while the Alternative for Germany notched up another night of sweeping gains, reports Oliver Moody in the Times.
• “Is this the end for Merz?” – Results from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin are proving far worse than expected for Chancellor Friedrich Merz, writes Eugyppius on his Substack.
• “Germany’s AfD announces partnership with radical Italian ‘sister party’” – Germany’s AfD and a radical Italian Right-wing party have formed a political alliance, says the Telegraph.
• “Migrant families take home record £12 billion in universal credit claims in ‘insult’ to British taxpayers” – Official data shows households with foreign nationals received a record £11.9 billion in universal credit payments last year, according to GB News.
• “RNLI fears staff data stolen after anti-migrant activists target members” – Members of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution have been warned that their data might have been stolen by hackers amid a heightened threat from anti-immigration activists, reports the Telegraph.
• “Iranian national used false documents to help five people illegally enter the UK” – An Iranian national has been jailed after using false documents to help five people illegally enter the UK, according to the Barry & District News.
• “Illegal migrant Deliveroo rider raped woman and stalked hospital” – An Algerian migrant ­working illegally as a ­Deliveroo driver has been jailed for 21 years for raping a semi-conscious woman he dragged off a street “like a rag doll”, reports the Sun.
• “Labour prison reforms to see 700 sex offenders ‘let loose on streets’” – Labour’s prison reform plans are set to result in around 700 sex offenders being released early, according to the Mail.
• “London council recovers homes in fraud investigation after tenant was living in USA” – Hammersmith and Fulham council has launched probes into 33 properties in 2025 and 2026 after discovering tenants were fraudulently claiming social housing while living abroad, reports the Standard.
• “Reform donor to sell £18 million luxury flat amid fears of Labour tax raid” – A wealthy Reform donor is selling an £18.2 million luxury flat as he attempts to downsize his UK property empire in the face of Labour tax rises, says the Telegraph.
• “Betting shops and jobs will go if the morality police strike again” – Last year’s budget dealt a devastating blow to the betting industry, wiping out hundreds of jobs and tens of millions in tax revenue, and another crackdown threatens to finish the sector off, warns Betfred co-founder Fred Done in the Sunday Times.
• “Burnham weighs £14 billion capital gains tax raid” – Labour is considering raising capital gains tax to 45% to fund a £20 billion handout for the lowest earners, says the Telegraph.
• “Burnham ‘plotting early election’ in bid for income tax hike mandate” – Andy Burnham is plotting an early general election to secure a mandate to raise taxes amid a “meltdown” in the Treasury over the deteriorating state of the public finances, reports the Mail.
• “Half of Labour MPs at risk of backlash over benefit cuts” – Ministers are terrified of a rebellion over PIP reform, with a Times analysis showing that the number of disability claimants exceeds the local MP’s majority in 58% of Labour-held seats.
• “The Tories have a powerful inheritance tax card to play” – A bold inheritance tax gambit could offer the Conservatives their most potent route back to electoral relevance, argues Michael Mosbacher in the Telegraph.
• “PM ‘fiddling while Russia threatens to burn Europe’, fumes Badenoch” – Kemi Badenoch has demanded the PM end his “dither and delay” and “fund our defence properly” as Russia ramps up threats towards allies of Ukraine, reports the Mail.
• “National taskforce to tackle misogyny launched” – The Government has launched a national taskforce to root out ‘harmful attitudes’ towards women and girls, says Sky News. What about tackling actual harms to women and girls?
• “Time to ban the burqa and end our cowardly love-in with misogyny” – Thousands of women are rendered invisible on British streets by the burqa, yet mainstream feminism is conspicuously silent, writes Camilla Long in the Sunday Times.
• “Lib Dem conference ‘descends into culture wars’ with trans vote” – The Lib Dem conference has been thrown into turmoil after members forced a divisive vote on trans issues, echoing a similar row that derailed last year’s gathering, reports the Telegraph.
• “GB News braces for launch of rival Reform YouTube channel” – Reform’s £72 million war chest is funding a YouTube channel that could steal viewers and presenters from GB News, writes Alex Farber in the Times.
• “Court lets off vandal who mocked Churchill” – What is going on in Britain when a foreign citizen can climb all over Winston Churchill’s statue, daub it with mad slogans and then get let off by the courts? asks Lord Ian Austin in the Sun.
• “Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having” – On his Substack, C.J. Strachan argues that once keeping the peace turns into policing people’s feelings, the police risk becoming little more than the enforcement arm for whoever complains the loudest.
• “Oxford Street’s homeless migrant camps” – Oxford Street is being transformed into a squalid slum more associated with the London of Charles Dickens than 21st-Century commerce, says the Mail.
• “Britain’s journey from high-speed rail pioneer to global laughing stock” – In the Telegraph, Gavin Haines charts the highs and lows of the UK’s 50-year quest for high-speed rail.
• “Miliband’s West Bank sanctions will ‘drive business away from UK’” – Israeli business groups have warned that Ed Miliband’s sanctions on companies operating in the West Bank risk driving investment away from Britain, says the Telegraph.
• “How society must confront the surge of antisemitism” – In a lecture at the Centre for Independent Studies, Lord Roberts of Belgravia warned that governments must urgently confront the organisations fuelling Islamist extremism and antisemitism, such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
• “Ed Sheeran tears up on stage and says he’s ‘found who his friends are’” – Ed Sheeran broke down in tears before a Philadelphia crowd, calling the situation in Gaza “catastrophic and unjustifiable” in an apparent reversal of his position that he would not use his platform for political causes, reports the Mail.
• “The invasion of Ceuta” – In Quadrant, Anthony Daniels warns that Moroccan minors, who cannot legally be deported from Spain, are poised to act as an anchor for wider family migration into Ceuta in a pattern that amounts to a slow-motion demographic invasion.
• “Moscow burns as Ukraine strikes Russian capital’s biggest oil refinery” – Huge fires tore through Moscow overnight after one of the largest Ukrainian drone strikes ever launched on the Russian capital killed two people and devastated the city’s biggest oil refinery, says the Mail.
• “US nuclear submarines defend crucial European sea cables from sabotage” – American nuclear submarines are being deployed to protect undersea cables that carry more than 90% of the UK’s international banking transactions, reports the Mail.
• “Putin troops gang rape and torture” – Grim allegations of gang rape and torture carried out by Russian troops under Putin’s command are brought to light in the Sun.
• “Danes mock Trump for ‘status quo’ Greenland deal” – Danes are ridiculing Trump over a Greenland agreement that critics say amounts to little more than the status quo, reports the Telegraph.
• “Trump considering ‘blowing up entire nation’ of Iran” – Donald Trump has said he’s considering “blowing up the entire nation” of Iran as reports emerge that the US is preparing to resume military action against the country, says the Telegraph.
• “Caribbean to train children as reparations activists against Britain” – Caribbean countries are preparing to teach children to be reparations activists so they can press claims against Britain for generations, notes the Telegraph.
• “Our 83 year-old Christian grandmother was euthanised against her will” – According to the Mail, the family of an 83 year-old Christian grandmother in Ontario claim she underwent an assisted dying procedure against her wishes, dying covered in blood with her hands clasped in prayer.
• “Lucy Letby may have been ‘scapegoat’ to cover up failures of understaffed, high-risk unit, bombshell Sun doc claims” – A senior consultant who worked alongside Lucy Letby believes she was made a “scapegoat” to conceal the failings of a chronically understaffed neonatal unit, an exclusive Sun documentary reveals.
• “ADHD is over-diagnosed, say doctors” – GPs are warning that ADHD is being over-diagnosed, with some private providers accused of always diagnosing the condition, according to the Telegraph.
• “UKHSA Advisory Board: the internal register of interests” – On the TTE Substack, Dr Tom Jefferson and Prof Carl Heneghan examine what is not immediately visible in the UKHSA Advisory Board’s internal register of interests.
• “Net Zero is a national suicide pact” – In the Telegraph, Allison Pearson writes about Sir Richard Dearlove’s devastating analysis of Britain’s energy policy (as published in the Daily Sceptic).
• “How will ‘super’ El Niño food price shock hit British households?” – A powerful El Niño event could make next year the hottest on record and ravage global harvests, threatening a major food price shock for British households at an already difficult time, warns the Times.
• “Open letter to Martin Lewis” – On his Substack, David Turver has written an open letter to Martin Lewis calling on him to consider the impact of Net Zero on electricity bills.
• “Climate reporter says she buried some news to advance Left-wing narrative” – A former climate reporter has admitted to suppressing stories that challenged the prevailing climate narrative to advance a Left-wing agenda, according to Climate Change Dispatch.
• “China’s Net Zero advantage” – Beijing is pursuing a climate strategy designed to weaken the West while strengthening its own competitive position, write Michael Doran and Brenda Shaffer in the Tablet.
• “The week in energy – September 20th 2026” – On his Substack, Richard Lyon rounds up the week’s key energy developments, including the Bank of England putting this winter’s bills in writing.
• “2025 Nature paper claiming worsening global drought gets retracted as heavily flawed” – A 2025 paper in Nature claiming that global drought is worsening has been retracted after being found to be full of holes, writes P. Gosselin in No Tricks Zone.
• “Taking us for fools” – On his Substack, Roger Pielke Jr. exposes the turnkey method researchers use to attribute any trend to climate change.
• “Cancel culture fuels Right-wing populism, says university rector” – In the Sunday Times, University of Edinburgh rector Simon Fanshawe claims the erosion of free speech is alienating people and pushing them towards reactionary movements.
• “BBC cuts Mitchell and Webb sketches that mocked racism” – The BBC has been accused of “classic overkill” after removing parts of Mitchell and Webb’s Bafta-winning show that dealt with racism and racial stereotypes, says the Times.
• “Men are expendable. They don’t have the automatic respect they once had” – In the Telegraph, novelist Louis de Bernieres gives his views on the diminishing status of men in modern society.
• “Joel Dommett snubs Radio 2 job offer” – Presenter Joel Dommett has turned down a lucrative job offer for Radio 2 following concerns over the “toxic environment”, according to the Sun.
• “This bill will introduce a chilling effect into family relationships” – On GB News, the Free Speech Union’s Jan Macvarish warns that proposed conversion therapy legislation in Northern Ireland risks criminalising conversations between parents and children.

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