News Round-Up

• “Police foil Yom Kippur terror plot in Manchester” – Two men in their 30s were arrested hours before Yom Kippur after police thwarted an Islamist attack targeting Manchester’s Jewish community, reports the Telegraph.
• “Trump attacks ‘terrible’ Chagos deal in first meeting with Burnham” – Donald Trump has launched a fresh attack on Labour’s “terrible deal” to surrender the Chagos Islands in his first meeting with Andy Burnham, says the Mail.
• “Streeting admits Chagos ‘surrender’ deal is dead without US backing” – Wes Streeting has conceded that the Chagos handover is effectively finished after Trump branded it “terrible and ridiculous”, reports the Mail.
• “Wes Streeting has confirmed Labour’s Chagos humiliation” – By making American approval central to his original case for the Chagos deal, Streeting handed Trump the power to kill it – and now Labour faces a humiliation of its own making, writes Jake Wallis Simons in the Telegraph.
• “Nigel Farage pushed Donald Trump to reject ‘terrible’ Chagos deal just days before Andy Burnham’s meeting in ‘high-level’ talks” – Nigel Farage held high-level talks with Trump just days before Andy Burnham’s meeting, during which he urged the President to reject the Chagos deal, according to GB News.
• “How can Burnham solve his Chagos problem?” – With options ranging from indefinite delay to a full renegotiation, the question of how Andy Burnham extricates himself from the Chagos deal is one with no easy answers, says Dominic Penna in the Telegraph.
• “Security fears as small boat migrants go missing” – An urgent security review has been ordered after up to 10 migrants vanished when Border Force failed to intercept a small boat for a second time, says the Telegraph.
• “Third town considers independence vote over migrant camp plans” – Following Piddington’s referendum against plans to house over 1,250 migrants at a former Ministry of Defence garrison, Crowborough is now weighing its own independence vote in protest at similar proposals, reports the Telegraph.
• “Labour MPs to share stage with head of Muslim group that opposed al-Qaeda ban” – Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain Wajid Akhter is set to speak at the Labour conference despite the party’s own non-engagement policy with the organisation, notes the Times.
• “RNLI turns off lifeboat trackers after crews abused” – The RNLI has disabled its lifeboat tracking systems over fears that volunteers could be followed and targeted while at sea, reports the Telegraph.
• “UK growth downgraded by OECD in setback for Burnham” – The OECD has cut Britain’s 2027 growth forecast in a fresh blow to the Prime Minister, says the BBC.
• “I stand by what I said… Britain is still in hock to bond market” – Andy Burnham is doubling down on his claim that Britain remains too dependent on bond market confidence, according to the Standard.
• “Andy Burnham has no idea what he’s doing… and it’s starting to show” – We have a PM and a Government trying to find their feet at precisely the moment when Britain needs real leadership, says Kemi Badenoch in the Telegraph.
• “Conservatives pledge to cut benefits for the long-term unemployed” – Kemi Badenoch has announced plans to bar claimants who have been out of work for more than six months from spending benefits on alcohol, tobacco and gambling, reports the Irish Times.
• “Blow for Reform as voters seek to block Farage’s route to No 10” – New analysis of tactical voting suggests the public is increasingly willing to back a ‘stop Reform’ candidate in their area, particularly where the alternative is Labour or the Conservatives, says the Mail.
• “SAS at risk of collapse due to ‘persecution’, veterans warn” – Two former special forces officers have warned that a “sustained public assault” on the regiment’s operations and ethos is deterring recruits and threatening the SAS’s future, reports the Times.
• “The Ministry of Truth, rebranded again” – On her Free Mind Substack, Laura Dodsworth argues that Andy Burnham’s newly announced National Centre for Information Defence is simply the state’s latest attempt to dress up censorship as counter-disinformation.
• “Why does it cost £237 million to build a railway bridge?” – How did rebuilding an 18-metre-wide railway bridge over a two-lane road end up costing almost a quarter of a billion pounds? asks Sam Dumitriu in the Spectator.
• “People don’t realise how poor, backward and irrelevant Britain is” – Britain is suffering an exodus of millionaires and capital while battling an influx of low-quality immigration, warns Allister Heath in the Telegraph.
• “BBC licence fee could be axed and replaced by £11-a-month charge” – Plans are being floated to scrap the current £180 TV licence and replace it with an additional charge added directly onto broadband bills, reports the Mail.
• “BBC staff in tears at £2.6 million cuts” – Morale at the BBC’s sports department has hit rock bottom after 41 roles were axed, with staff now considering strike action, says the Telegraph.
• “Staff should call their boss to request a sick day, says work tsar” – Government adviser Sir Charlie Mayfield is recommending that employees be required to telephone their managers directly when requesting a sick day, according to the Mail.
• “Elgin Marbles talks on brink of collapse” – Negotiations over the Elgin Marbles are teetering on the edge after Greece rejected the British Museum’s loan proposal and demanded the permanent return of the artworks, reveals the Telegraph.
• “How does Burnham plan to tackle Russian disinformation?” – In the Spectator, Mark Galeotti argues that pushing back against disinformation is both appropriate and necessary, whether its source is Russia, China, Brussels or Washington.
• “Macron’s UN speech a ‘grotesque absurdity’, says Netanyahu” – Netanyahu has hit back at Macron’s UN address, in which the French President criticised Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and appeared to downplay Hamas’s role in the West Bank, reports France24.
• “Die Linke won the Berlin election. They want to provide public spaces for smoking crack, replace the police with social workers, legalise fare evasion and grant squatters ownership rights” – Die Linke’s victory in Berlin has raised eyebrows over the party’s radical policy platform, notes Eugyppius on Substack.
• “US scraps UN free-speech declaration after not enough countries sign up” – The Trump administration has abandoned a planned free-speech declaration at the UN General Assembly after failing to secure sufficient signatories, says the Times.
• “The rise of the meritocrats” – On Substack, C.J. Strachan argues that Canada is becoming a live experiment in Michael Young’s warning that meritocracy risks producing an elite even more convinced of its right to rule than the aristocracy it replaced.
• “Ed Sheeran loses almost half a million followers” – Ed Sheeran has shed almost 500,000 Instagram followers during what the singer himself has called “one of the worst weeks of my life”, reports the Mail.
• “Private ADHD clinics face crackdown” – ADHD diagnoses have more than doubled following the rapid expansion of independent assessment providers, notes the Telegraph.
• “Peter Hotez’ replies are turned off” – On his Substack, Randall Bock argues that pandemic alarmism serves the interests of researchers dependent on grant funding rather than the public it claims to protect.
• “French literary sensation accused of using AI to write prize-winning novel” – Haitian-born Canadian author Thélyson Orélien is at the centre of a growing scandal after his prize-winning novel, lauded as the literary sensation of the year, faces allegations that it was written using AI, says the BBC.
• “Net Zero has made Britain less safe” – Decades of deindustrialisation have hollowed out our industrial base to such an extent that we have lost control over the production of crucial parts of the grid, warns Harry Wilkinson in the Spectator.
• “High energy prices are crippling Britain” – Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s accusation of “economic vandalism” against the Labour Government deserves to be taken seriously rather than dismissed, argues Matthew Lynn in the Spectator.
• “Wrong, Guardian, if humanity can no longer ‘flourish,’ someone forgot to tell humanity” – In ClimateRealism, Anthony Watts dismantles the Guardian‘s claim that climate change has rendered human flourishing impossible.
• “On hurricanes, sea level rise and droughts, scientists manipulated models to show climate trends that aren’t in the real-world data” – On the Public Substack, Michael Shellenberger argues that researchers claiming to detect climate-driven changes in hurricanes, sea level rise and droughts have systematically excluded or downplayed the many real-world factors that counteract warming’s effects.
• “This year’s Climate Week NYC will be a hot party for all the wrong reasons” – Climate Week NYC is set to rubber-stamp arrangements that would effectively guarantee a 75-year lease on life for the sprawling UN climate bureaucracy, writes Paul H. Tice at Watts Up With That?
• “Miliband lies in New York” – Paul Homewood takes aim at Ed Miliband’s appearance at New York Climate Week, accusing the Energy Secretary of making misleading claims in Not a Lot of People Know That.
• “Bentley’s first electric car is fascinating” – The Torcal, named after an Andalusian mountain, marks the first pure electric vehicle in Bentley’s 107-year history and signals the direction of the marque’s future line-up, writes Andrew English in the Telegraph.
• “Men and women are different, but feminists are too angry to admit it” – We live in a culture which rules sex must not explain differences in behaviour whilst relying on those differences when they’re convenient, notes Annabel Denham in the Telegraph.
• “Women: victims even when perpetrators” – On his Substack, Frank Haviland argues that the justice system’s instinct to treat women as victims even when they stand accused as perpetrators is corroding the presumption of innocence.
• “British car dealership forced to apologise for its own name after watchdog finds it would ‘cause serious racial offence’” – Car import firm Jap Car South has been ordered to apologise for its own trading name after an advertising watchdog ruled that it would cause serious racial offence, reports GB News.
• “I would never have signed for Man Utd under Sir Jim Ratcliffe” – Eric Cantona says he would not have signed for Manchester United under Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s ownership because of his stance on immigration, according to the Sun.
• “Not a good look: Rory Stewart mocked for staring at Newsnight guest” – Rory Stewart’s unblinking swivel and intense gaze at fellow Newsnight guest Ailbhe Rea has gone viral, reports the Sun.
• “Free Speech Union slams PM’s claim that Russian bots are fighting an ‘information war’” – On GB News, the Free Speech Union’s David Rose argues that claims about Russian bot interference are “invariably overblown and exaggerated and used to create arguments for censorship”.

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