News Round-Up

• “Rishi Sunak’s manifesto is thin gruel” – Rishi Sunak’s Conservative election manifesto won’t save his party from electoral defeat, says Patrick O’Flynn in the Spectator.
• “Sunak’s manifesto is not credible” – The best Sunak can hope for is that voters walk into their polling stations angry with the Conservatives but full of doubt about Labour, says the Spectator‘s Isabel Hardman.
• “The nasty tax surprise hidden in the Tory manifesto” – Rishi Sunak revealed a plan that is essentially a continuation of the past two years – including the relentlessly rising tax burden, says the Spectator‘s Kate Andrews.
• “Even the Tories don’t believe in their manifesto” – In UnHerd, Henry Hill says his Government sources tell him the Conservative manifesto has been written by people who know they’re going to lose under “a very cynical process: eye-catching initiatives designed to create dividing lines with Labour”.
• “‘Reform voters could leave us on just 57 seats’, says new Tory election ad” – The Conservatives are adopting an increasingly defensive tone as their campaign seeks to limit potential losses, the Telegraph reports.
• “Nigel Farage is already the leader of the Conservatives” – “He makes for a stronger and more convincing Tory than Rishi Sunak,” says Allison Pearson in the Telegraph, “and I’m not alone in thinking that”.
• “Why greens were the biggest losers in the EU elections” – The EU’s punishing climate policies are facing an almighty public backlash, says Spiked‘s Tim Black.
• “Biden Asks Why Europe Didn’t Just Arrest Conservative Candidates Before Election” – As shockwaves continued to reverberate around the globe following sweeping victories for the European political Right, U.S. President Joe Biden asked aides why Europe didn’t just arrest the conservative candidates before the election, according to the satirical Babylon Bee.
• “Update on Cochrane Review of Masks” – It’s devastating for the Editor who has had to back down after throwing Tom Jefferson and colleagues under the bus, says Dr. Vinay Prasad on Substack.
• “Former GB News presenter says Ofcom killed his career over Covid vaccine claims” – Mark Steyn says GB News wanted him to pay fines after the watchdog ruled that his shows could be be a potential “harm to viewers”, the Telegraph reports.
• “See you in court! Mark Steyn bites back at Ofcom” – TCW‘s Kathy Gyngell updates readers on the popular broadcaster’s coming courtroom clash with the regulator.
• “A Court Victory over Vaccine Mandates” – Medical freedom advocates have won their appeal in the U.S. Ninth Circuit on LAUSD’s Employee Covid Vaccination Mandate, with the court allowing that the vaccines did not prevent transmission so failed to function as vaccines, writes Leslie Manookian for Brownstone.
• “June temperatures at half the level of this time last year” – Temperatures in June 2024 are at half the level of 2023, the Met Office has said, reports the Telegraph. Another record breaking month then, we can expect.
• “Windless nights make Net Zero impossible” – It is very simple, says David Wojick in WUWT. “The cost of storing electricity is so huge it makes getting through a single windless night under a Net Zero wind, solar, and storage plan economically impossible.”
• “Hamas leader believes civilian deaths are ‘necessary sacrifices’ in Israeli war, leaked letters show” – Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind behind Hamas’s October 7th attacks on Israel, is stalling ceasefire talks and using the mounting Palestinian death toll to his advantage, leaked messages have revealed, reports the Telegraph.
• “Rescued Israeli hostages beaten ‘almost every day’ in Hamas captivity” – The Israeli hostages who were rescued at the weekend were beaten while in Hamas captivity and left malnourished by a lack of food, the doctor in charge of their treatment has said, according to the Telegraph. “It was a harsh, harsh, experience, with a lot of abuse, almost every day,” he said.
• “No, Hamas-loving liberal media. Israel’s hostage rescue was not an unjustified bloodbath” – It is the vicious terrorists using the people of Gaza as shields who are to blame for innocent deaths, argues Isaac Schorr in the Telegraph.
• “Penny Mordaunt’s Conspiratorial Advice to MPs” – On her Substack page, Gillian Jamieson takes a closer look at Mordaunt’s ‘facts’ on 5G and their sources.
• “Vegan activists vandalise King’s official portrait” – Animal Rising protesters have defaced the recent red royal painting using Wallace and Gromit stickers, reports the Telegraph.
• “Annabel Croft reveals she was mugged by a phone snatcher on a bike in broad daylight outside King’s Cross station – as star becomes latest victim of London’s phone theft epidemic” – The former tennis star said her mobile was stolen “clean out of her hands” while she waited for a taxi outside the station, the Mail reports.
• “Prince of the Cuddlecrats” – Dr. David McGrogan’s latest Substack post examines the “sociology of political nihilism and our recovery from it”.
• “How an ‘anti-woke’ U.K. police chief turned around a failing force in just three years” – Stephen Watson inherited Greater Manchester Police in disarray, but his back-to-basics approach has radically improved the force, says the Telegraph.
• “Hunter Biden guilty of federal gun charges” – Hunter Biden was found guilty of all three counts of federal firearm charges Tuesday after short deliberations by the jury, reports the Spectator.
• “Welsh Labour is writing the white working class out of history” – Coal miners, who sweated and sometimes died down the pits, deserve better than to be airbrushed out of the Industrial Revolution, says Robert Tombs in the Telegraph.
• “In the first episode of the Sceptic, the Daily Sceptic‘s new podcast, law academic David McGrogan tries to get to grips with why Sajid Javid, a self-proclaimed libertarian, supported Rishi Sunak’s smoking ban” – To watch or listen to the whole podcast, click here.

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