News Round-Up

• “Burnham clashes with Farage over Channel boat attack ad” – Andy Burnham has clashed with Nigel Farage over an attack ad showing Channel migrants backing him in the Makerfield by-election, reports the Mail.
• “My poll proves it’s a funny old world” – Only 6% of people think Sir Keir Starmer will still be Prime Minister after the next election, but even more uncertain is whether he will still be in No 10 in a few weeks, writes Lord Ashcroft in the Mail.
• “Keir Starmer ally considers centrist challenge to Burnham and Streeting” – Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones is reportedly weighing up whether to enter a Labour leadership race should the PM decide not to stand, says the Times.
• “Labour chaos as Streeting calls for ‘jobs tax’ U-turn” – Labour’s civil war has escalated again after Wes Streeting publicly called for a reversal of Rachel Reeves’s hike to employer national insurance, according to the Mail.
• “The unfairness of capital gains tax is for the good of us all” – Wes Streeting’s proposal to reform capital gains tax may be well-intentioned, but we know by now that wealth taxes don’t work, says Michael Mosbacher in the Telegraph.
• “Starmer waters down benefits checks” – Sir Keir Starmer is watering down checks on benefit claimants to prevent the welfare system from collapsing under a record backlog of cases, reveals the Telegraph.
• “Reeves’s salary sacrifice raid to leave almost three million poorer” – Official figures show that Rachel Reeves’s £5 billion raid on pensions will leave almost three million workers worse off in retirement, according to the Telegraph.
• “Larger private schools begin to close after VAT raids” – Analysis shows that more mid-sized independent schools than usual have begun to close since the introduction of Labour’s VAT raid on school fees, reports the Times.
• “Britain’s housing wealth is in danger of collapsing” – With consumer spending, small business borrowing and residential investment all tied to rising house prices, Britain’s addiction to property wealth is leaving the economy dangerously exposed, warns Melissa Lawford in the Telegraph.
• “The culture of useless degrees, entitlement and benefits that has spawned a million Neets” – A culture of worthless degrees, welfare dependency and entitlement has produced a generation of over a million young people who are not in education, employment or training, and Labour is doing nothing about it, writes Bruce Newsome in the Conservative Woman.
• “Employers turn to private investigators to track down ‘sick’ workers” – With workplace absenteeism on the rise, employers are hiring private detectives to catch staff they suspect of pulling a sickie, reveals Eleanor Harmsworth in the Telegraph.
• “The numbers show where Britain has really gone wrong” – Labour’s battle of ideas is built on pure fantasy, with the underlying statistics exposing just how badly Britain has been mismanaged, writes Robert Colvile in the Times.
• “The anti-Zionism mob is showing its true insidious colours” – The adherents of anti-Zionism are showing their true colours, writes Jake Wallis Simons in the Telegraph.
• “Vape shops ‘can apply for skilled worker visas’ despite crime fears” – The Home Office’s official register of licensed sponsors lists nearly 80 vape companies eligible to sponsor skilled worker visas, despite fears that the stores are being used as fronts for organised crime, reports the Mail.
• “Plight of Christian street preachers is another sign of our cultural decline” – The law is being manipulated by activists to silence Christian street preachers, warns Max Thompson in the Telegraph.
• “Left-wing YouTube pundit Cenk Uygur banned from entering UK” – Turkish-American broadcaster Cenk Uygur, booked to appear at the SXSW London conference, has had his travel authorisation revoked by Shabana Mahmood amid concern over his comments about Israel and grooming gangs, reports the Times. (His nephew Hasan Piker has also been refused entry.)
• “Sturgeon refuses to apologise for ex-husband’s crimes” – Nicola Sturgeon has remained defiant in the wake of Peter Murrell’s £400,000 SNP embezzlement conviction, insisting she bears no responsibility for her ex-husband’s actions, says the Mail.
• “Nicola Sturgeon could lose home after estranged husband’s embezzlement” – The Uddingston home shared by Nicola Sturgeon and convicted embezzler Peter Murrell could be sold off to repay stolen SNP funds, reports the Mail.
• “Murrell bought 108 toilet rolls hours before Sturgeon’s Covid panic buy warning” – Peter Murrell stockpiled 108 toilet rolls just 48 hours before Nicola Sturgeon publicly urged Scots to “apply common sense” and not panic buy at the beginning of the pandemic, says the Daily Record.
• “Under-fire Sturgeon quits Scotland… to live in England” – Nicola Sturgeon has abandoned Scotland for London amid the political storm engulfing her, reveals the Mail.
• “Gulf states shame Britain with plan to build HS2-style rail route by 2030” – Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are planning a high-speed rail line more than twice as long as Britain’s HS2, but it will be finished a decade sooner and at a fraction of the cost, reports the Telegraph.
• “One dead and another in intensive care after riots across France” – A football fan has died and 400 people have been arrested following widespread riots across France in the wake of PSG’s Champions League victory over Arsenal, says the Mail.
• “Merz faces his own Burnham-style coup plot” – Senior figures within the German Chancellor’s own party are said to be circling as rumours of a plot to remove Friedrich Merz from power refuse to die down, according to the Telegraph.
• “How Britain’s disability diagnosis epidemic reached Disneyland” – Priority queues at Disneyland Paris are reportedly full of Britons using PIP or Disability Living Allowance claims to skip long lines, reports the Telegraph.
• “Hospital chiefs feared Lucy Letby was being bullied by doctors” – Internal documents reveal how managers were concerned about the “bullying” behaviour of two doctors towards Letby before her conviction, says the Mail.
• “Multi-billion pound claim over scam ads on Facebook and Instagram” – Meta faces a multi-billion pound group legal action from British consumers who accuse it of enabling scam adverts which left them facing financial ruin, reports the Mail.
• “The endless data centre whine threatening to blight Britain’s countryside” – From piercing whines to persistent gurgling as external generators rev up, the noise pollution from Britain’s proliferating data centres is annoying nearby residents, writes Matthew Field in the Telegraph.
• “We visit the Norwegian boom town getting rich selling us oil and gas” – Norway has rediscovered its love of fossil fuels and is growing rich supplying Britain with the energy it refuses to produce itself, says Jim Armitage in the Sunday Times.
• “Streeting backs drilling for North Sea oil” – Health Secretary Wes Streeting has urged Labour to ramp up oil drilling in the North Sea to boost the economy, putting him on a collision course with Ed Miliband, according to the Telegraph.
• “Labour ‘stopped rail firms buying cheap fuel before Iran war’” – The Department for Transport prevented rail firms from hedging their diesel purchases ahead of the Iran war because doing so risked being seen as “gambling with public money”, reveals the Telegraph.
• “Zero prosecutions for water companies pumping sewage into waterways” – A Government “crackdown” to punish water companies for pumping sewage into Britain’s rivers, lakes and coast has failed to produce a single prosecution, says the Mail.
• “Net Zero ‘Nimbyism’ destroying UK industry: foreign rivals cash in as Miliband’s green crusade cripples firms” – The boss of the UK’s last aluminium smelting plant says Ed Miliband’s Net Zero policies amount to a form of Nimbyism that is destroying British industry through high energy costs and green taxes while foreign rivals cash in, according to This is Money.
• “Reform and Tory policies not enough to reverse Miliband’s Net Zero madness” – On Substack, David Turver argues that opposition parties will need to go far beyond cancelling AR7, eliminating carbon taxes and abolishing ROCs if they are to bring electricity bills down to bearable levels.
• “God forbid a farmer wants a chicken shed” – How does it make sense that Ed Miliband can wave through a giant solar farm over the heads of local planners, yet a farmer faces years of red tape and expense just to extend a chicken shed? asks Minette Batters in the Mail.
• “Ferrari and Jaguar show electric cars are destroying Europe’s auto industry” – Europe’s luxury auto makers have great brands. But when it comes to EVs their brains get scrambled, says Matthew Lynn in the Telegraph.
• “Lib Dems at loggerheads over trans guidance” – Civil war has broken out among the Liberal Democrats after Sir Ed Davey pledged to oppose the EHRC guidance on trans access to single sex spaces, reveals the Telegraph.
• “Baby ‘routinely abused’ by gay foster parents before his death at 13 months, court hears” – In TCW, Laura Perrins reports on the grim court case of a baby who was allegedly subjected to months of abuse by his gay foster parents before dying at just 13 months old.
• “Sicko surgeon jailed after claiming on TV he lost legs to sepsis when he’d injured own limbs with dry ice is struck off” – A twisted surgeon has been struck off after it was found he amputated his own legs to fulfil a bizarre sexual fantasy, according to the Sun.
• “Five armed officers ‘banned from royal residences’ after complaints” – Five armed officers have been barred from royal residences after a female staff member alleged they made a series of “inappropriate” comments, says the Mail.
• “We can’t take the Government’s assurances that the definition of anti-Muslim hostility won’t inhibit free speech” – On GB News, Toby Young discusses the case of a hate crime adviser who was sacked after complaining that officers were tiptoeing around the subject of Islamist extremism after the Manchester synagogue attack.

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