News Round-Up

• “Sunak must embrace traditional Conservative values to win election, poll suggests” – Eight in 10 former Tory voters think the party would have a better chance of winning the election with a leader who embraces “traditional Conservative values”, a poll circulating among MPs has found, the Telegraph reports.
• “Tories eye May election to ‘stop the bleeding’ and head off Sunak mutiny” – A senior Tory source tells the Mirror that a May election might be necessary, following polls suggesting the party will be “obliterated”, with an announcement potentially soon.
• “Tory chicken run: more than 100 MPs could resign before election” – Some predict the number of Tories abandoning ship will be as high as 150 if the polls continue to show Labour on course for a landslide, says Tim Shipman in the Times. 
• “How did Navalny die? Russian spies ‘visited prison’ days earlier” – FSB agents are accused of disconnecting CCTV as the Putin critic’s mother demands his body back, according to the Times.
• “Israel claims dozens more UNRWA staff took part in October 7th attacks” – Israel has identified dozens more UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) workers who it claims took part in the October 7th Hamas attacks, the country’s Defence Minister has told the Telegraph.
• “Metropolitan Police arrest 12 people at pro-Palestine protest” – The arrests were for a string of alleged offences, including inciting racial hatred, suspicion of support for a proscribed organisation in relation to a placard and assaulting emergency workers, the Mail reports.
• “Michael Gove criticises housing association for suspending peer over Hamas ‘murderers’ comment” – Michael Gove has criticised a housing association for removing Lord Austin, a former Labour minister, as its Chairman after the peer tweeted derogatory remarks about Hamas, the Telegraph reports.
• “Britain has raised a generation of anti-Semites. It might be too late to fix” – The poisonous fruits of this educational and moral madness have become impossible to ignore – and Jews are paying the price, says the Telegraph‘s Zoe Strimpel.
• “Germany announces wide-ranging plans to restrict the speech, travel and economic activity of political dissidents, in order to better control the ‘thought and speech patterns’ of its own people” – While other countries have endured the rise of new parties and political structures with some measure of equanimity, politicians in Germany are terrified of losing power, and they will use all the tools at their disposal to keep hold of it – up to and including the suspension of democracy itself, says Eugyppius.
• “Joe Biden’s catastrophic Presidency represents the final surrender of the West” – While Russia has put its economy onto a full war footing, China continues to push its military exercises and Iranian proxies fire missiles across its region, the British and American armies have serious recruitment problems fuelled by DEI wokery, says Douglas Murray in the Telegraph.
• “A letter to the Cochrane Board” – Tom Jefferson and Carl Heneghan express their concern that for Cochrane, junk rapid reviews are taking the place of evidence reviews.
• “Clergy warn of ‘doom spiral’ as church attendance drops off at record rate” – Sunday services have dwindled in popularity by 20% since 2019, despite Church of England’s claims it has “bounced back” after the pandemic, the Telegraph reports.
• “The feuding tearing apart the Royal Society of Literature” – The Spectator‘s Sam Leith tries to get a handle on the blazing row engulfing the RSL.
• “Salman Rushdie, Bernardine Evaristo and the Royal Society of Literature at war” – Next week, when the council of the RSL holds its quarterly meeting, it will be responding to a barrage of angry criticism from figures such as Salman Rushdie, Philip Pullman and Hermione Lee, says Patrick Marnham in the Times.
• “SNP bans use of ‘remote’ to describe Highlands” – The SNP has banned use of the word ‘remote’ to describe the Scottish Highlands and Scottish islands over fears it is putting people off living there, according to the Telegraph. Which appears to misunderstand why people like living in remote areas…
• “In The Navy” – Dr. Roger Watson bemoans the state of the military in the New Conservative.
• “I’m done with mayor’s performative politics” – Sadiq Khan’s naming of London’s rail lines typifies a style that prefers virtue-signalling to tackling real problems, says Janice Turner in the Times.
• “Trans ideology has taken over Shakespeare’s Globe” – In Spiked, Zoe Cairns says her former employer dismissed her concerns about women’s spaces and child safeguarding.
• “Foreign dentists to be allowed to work in U.K. without qualification checks” – Foreign dentists are to be allowed to work in the U.K. without taking an exam to check their qualifications under Government plans to solve the dental crisis, reports the Telegraph. What could go wrong?
• “Six-car pile up on smart motorway while entire safety system shut down” – The smart motorways computer safety system shut down across the country, leading to a “terrifying” six-car pile up after a vehicle broke down in a live lane, reports the Telegraph.
• “‘Bankrupt’ council at centre of budget-cut protest holds ‘Queering Nutrition’ event” – Birmingham City Council, which has declared itself ‘bankrupt’ and been the subject of protests over proposed budget cuts, has held a ‘Queering Nutrition’ event, according to the Telegraph.
• “Riot erupts on streets of the Hague as ‘migrants’ attack cops” – Dozens of rioters were filmed surrounding the Opera conference hall along Fruitweg in the Netherlands, as multiple police vans drove to the scene this evening, reports the Mail.
• “Just Stop Oil’s secret plot to ‘occupy the homes of MPs’” – Just Stop Oil activists are plotting a nationwide blitz to ‘occupy’ MPs’ homes ahead of the General Election, a Mail on Sunday investigation has found.
• “‘They lied’: plastics producers deceived public about recycling, report reveals” – Companies knew for decades recycling was not viable but promoted it regardless, a Centre for Climate Integrity study finds, reported in the Guardian.
• “Sunak is ‘squandering Brexit freedoms’ by approving more EU rules” – Rishi Sunak has been accused of squandering Brexit freedoms after quietly introducing sweeping EU equality rules into British law that “gold-plate” judgments by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and amount to a significant expansion of the Equality Act, the Telegraph reports.
• “Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies” – Citizen Free Press tweets the classic 90-second video showing the fast-declining claims made for the Covid vaccines.

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