News Round-Up

• “Polanski and Davey under pressure to resign” – The Green and Liberal Democrat parties are tearing themselves apart amid infighting sparked by poor by-election results, fuelling speculation of an early General Election, reports the Telegraph.
• “A snap election looms after Polanski’s abject failure” – Labour’s by-election victory has left the Greens, Reform and the Tories all in retreat, handing the Prime Minister a potential window to call a snap election, says the Telegraph.
• “PM warned that Holborn result doesn’t imply snap election win” – Election guru Sir John Curtice says the PM would be wrong to draw the conclusion that Labour can win a General Election on the back of the Holburn and St Pancreas by-election result, notes the Mail.
• “Police investigating Northern Ireland First Minister over Orange Order” – Northern Ireland’s First Minister has received a letter confirming a police investigation into her role in a protest which blocked the Orange Order march on the Garvaghy Road, says the Telegraph.
• “Christian woman pleads not guilty after being charged for silently praying outside abortion facility” – Isabel Vaughan-Spruce has become the first person to face criminal charges under the UK’s ‘buffer zone’ legislation, according to GB News.
• “Labour mayors revolt against Burnham’s water reforms” – Andy Burnham faces a rebellion from fellow Labour mayors alarmed by his plans to hand them control over water companies, reveals the Telegraph.
• “Larger proportion of boat migrants reaching Britain under Andy Burnham” – A staggering 1,739 migrants – one every six minutes on average – reached the UK in the first week of October, says the Mail.
• “Andy Burnham and the high price of Abu Dhabi’s billions” – Having authorised a £55 million loan to the owner of Man City from a fund supposed to pay for affordable housing, the Prime Minister faces growing questions, reports the Times.
• “Poor degrees ‘eating up’ young people’s lives, says former Ofsted chief” – Amanda Spielman has called on policymakers to “fundamentally” rethink higher education, warning that low-value degrees are consuming the best years of young people’s lives, says the Telegraph.
• “I was afraid to call myself English, until Kemi Badenoch delivered her speech” – Sherrelle Jacobs says that Kemi Badenoch’s conference address – in which she pooh-poohed claims that only white people who can trace their lineage back generations can claim to be English – finally made her unafraid to call herself English, writes the Telegraph.
• “Two English ladies” – On his Substack, Gawain Towler argues that Badenoch and Braverman are far closer in outlook than the commentariat will permit them to acknowledge.
• “The activist who defaced Churchill’s statue should be deported” – In an interview in the Telegraph, Andrew Roberts says the pro-Palestinian protestors who defaced Churchill’s statue should be deported.
• “Navi Pillay wins 2026 Nobel Peace Prize” – The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, the South African judge who headed up the UN panel that accused Israel of genocide, reports the Telegraph.
• “Student riots spread to Belgium as hooded protesters clash with police” – The student unrest plaguing France has spread to Belgium, where hundreds of hooded thugs have clashed with police on the streets of Brussels, reports the Mail.
• “ADHD surge fuelled by benefits, report warns” – A new review finds that demand for an ADHD diagnoses is being driven by the benefits system, with medical labels seen as “the single reliable key to support”, says the Telegraph.
• “Artificial intelligence systems crack hundreds of unsolved problems” – OpenAI has announced that an unreleased AI system has solved hundreds of previously unsolved mathematical problems, sparking a crisis in the mathematics world, according to the Mail.
• “Assisted suicide does not mean a dignified death” – The case of Christa Pike raises serious questions about the reliability of substances used in assisted suicide procedures, writes Isabel Jackson in Christian Concern.
• “Britain risks running out of gas by end of winter” – A new report warns that harsh winter weather could deplete Britain’s gas reserves entirely, amid mounting pressure over the Jackdaw North Sea field, reveals the Telegraph.
• “Britain must stockpile its own oil to avoid a new energy crisis” – The closures of the Lindsey and Grangemouth refineries now looks dangerously shortsighted as calls grow for Britain to build up its own strategic oil stockpile, notes the Telegraph.
• “NESO agreed to spend £400,000 of public money on PR after near-blackout” – The National Energy System Operator paid a PR company hundreds of thousands of pounds following whistleblower allegations about its handling of grid stability during a heatwave, reports the Times.
• “Early winter ENM rings alarm bells” – NESO’s highly unusual eight-hour Energy Margin Notice issued on October 6th – which deteriorated before improving and featured large forecast errors – raises serious questions about grid resilience, writes Kathryn Porter in Watt-Logic.
• “Super El Niño could trigger power cuts that leave millions offline” – Experts warn that an ‘unprecedented’ El Niño event could unleash severe storms and power cuts, leaving millions of Britons offline this winter, says the Mail.
• “Trump ‘strikes deal with Putin’ to release 4.8 million tonnes of diesel” – With diesel prices surging worldwide after the outbreak of war in Iran and midterm elections looming, Donald Trump is reported to have reached a deal with Vladimir Putin to release 4.8 million tonnes of diesel onto global markets, according to the Times.
• “Father ‘got e-bike battery repaired before fire that killed family’” – A father allegedly had an e-bike battery repaired shortly before a blaze tore through the family home in Cambridge on June 30th 2023, killing his partner Gemma Germeney and their two young children Lilly Peden, eight, and Oliver Peden, four, reveals the Mail.
• “I’m joining the fight to save Britain’s moorland from wind turbines” – In the Telegraph, Ian Botham warns that 23 turbines, each 200 metres high, are planned for the hills around Barningham Moor near Barnard Castle, and declares he is lending his name to the campaign against them.
• “Four in 10 farmers prepare to quit as Labour hammers countryside” – With 77% of food producers calling Government policy a disaster for British farming, four in 10 farmers are now considering quitting the industry altogether, reports the Telegraph.
• “Chris Packham’s war on farmed salmon is a problem” – Chris Packham’s bug-eyed crusade against salmon farming is coming under scrutiny, notes the Telegraph.
• “The Tories are right: the Environment Agency must go” – The pendulum has swung too far towards conservation and too far away from protecting homes and property, writes Ross Clark in the Spectator.
• “How Bob Marley became an unlikely beneficiary of the slave trade” – A historian claims that the seed capital for Island Records, which launched the reggae superstar, stemmed from a fortune built on salvery, reports the Times.
• “The trouble with casting women as men” – In his Substack, Andrew Doyle argues that Eliot Sumner playing Mr Palmer in the new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility cannot help but damage the film’s credibility.
• “Inch by inch, we’re getting there” – On X, I describe the Free Speech Union’s efforts, along with Sir Nick Timothy, to force the Working Group on Islamophobia to disclose what groups it consulted with about its definition of ‘anti-Muslim hostility’

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