News Round-Up

• “Sir Keir Starmer has become a national laughing stock” – No wonder the Prime Minister’s approval rating has sunk so low: his policies are as vicious as they are incoherent, says Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph.
• “Go it alone and let Ukraine fire missiles, Keir Starmer told” – After talks in Washington reached a stalemate, five former Defence Secretaries said Britain shouldn’t wait for U.S. backing, reports the Times.
• “Inside Starmer’s feuding No. 10” – Factionalism and distrust stalk Downing Street, says Tom McTague in UnHerd.
• “How Brexit Britain became Europe’s most migrant-friendly country” – The Telegraph reports on figures that show the U.K. has become easier to get into than some other countries in the EU – despite us supposedly taking back control.
• “The Left can no longer hide from the terrible costs of mass migration” – Far from benefiting the country, too many unskilled migrants are a net cost to other taxpayers, says Camilla Tominey.
• “Sweden offers immigrants £26,000 to return home” – Sweden has announced that it will pay immigrants up to £26,000 to return to their native countries, raising the existing financial incentive by a factor of more than 30, reports the Times. What’s to stop them just coming back again?
• “The killer who claimed asylum” – The case of Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai exposes the lethal dysfunction of our asylum system, says Tom Slater in Spiked.
• “Labour adviser claims failure to study anti-racism in schools helped fuel summer riots” – A Labour education adviser with no understanding of the white working class has claimed that a failure to teach anti-racism in schools helped fuel the summer riots, the Telegraph reports.
• “Is Reform the Right Future for Britain?” – Warren Alexander takes a closer look at the Reform party in the New Conservative.
• “Sadiq Khan’s mad new plan for crime is an insult to law-abiding Londoners” – Allowing convicted criminals to jump the housing queue would not just be unfair. It could also cause crime to increase, says Michael Deacon in the Telegraph, spelling out the obvious.
• “Coconut ‘not a racist slur’ as pro-Palestine protester cleared” – A teacher who held a placard at a pro-Palestine protest portraying Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman as coconuts has been found not guilty of a racially aggravated public order offence after the judge ruled the image was political satire, not abuse, reports the Times.
• “Jeremy Bowen dismisses report that says BBC ‘breached guidelines 1,500 times’ over Israel-Hamas war” – The BBC’s anti-Israel International Editor Jeremy Bowen has dismissed a report that found the BBC breached its own editorial guidelines more than 1,500 times at the height of the Israel-Hamas war, the Telegraph reports.
• “A Stupid Cartoon and the University Ideology” – An essay by Paul Berman in Quillette on Frantz Fanon, Stokely Carmichael and the roots of the recent uproar over Zionism in American universities.
• “Britain’s war on second-home owners is backfiring disastrously” – Second-home owners are selling up as taxes on the properties head skyward, but locals will miss them when they’re gone, says Matthew Lynn in the Telegraph.
• “The truth about the city where Trump claims migrants are eating pets” – In the Mail, Greg Woodfield goes to Springfield to try to get to the bottom of the rumours.
• “Doctor who helped convict Letby previously said there was ‘no objective evidence’ against her” – At Letby’s trial, Dr. Ravi Jayaram was said to have caught the nurse “virtually red handed” dislodging a breathing tube from a baby, but documents leaked to the Telegraph show that the consultant paediatrician did not mention the incident when interviewed at the time.
• “How unusual was the spike in neonatal deaths when Lucy Letby was working?” – Norman Fenton and a colleague go through the statistical evidence on the Letby baby deaths that even preprint servers are now refusing to publish.
• “Evidence against Lucy Letby and what may show her innocence” – In Part One of his analysis for the Mail, Guy Adams covers Lucy Letby’s ‘suspicious’ Facebook searches and alterations to medical records to help readers make up their own mind about the verdict.
• “NHS staff drafted into schools to coach lockdown children on potty training” – NHS nurses are being deployed to toilet train lockdown babies starting their first term of school this month, the Telegraph reveals.
• “Kamala Harris’ worst plan yet: bringing the NHS to America” – Democratic politicians seem determined to drag American healthcare into a statist quagmire, says Sally Pipes in the Telegraph.
• “Special education spending surges 70% amid autism wave” – One in every hundred schoolchildren are now entitled to support due to autism, a figure that has doubled in the last five years, as local authority spending on special needs jumps 70%, the Telegraph reports.
• “Divisive vote to legalise assisted dying ‘could be held within weeks’” – According to the Mail, the Prime Minister is privately paving the way for a vote before Christmas on helping old people into their graves.
• “‘Citizens’ juries’ are an attempt to subvert democracy” – ‘Citizens’ juries’ like the one that has just backed euthanasia are glorified focus groups and often designed to reach a preferred conclusion, says Tom Harris in the Telegraph.
• “Mobile phones banned at 44 schools across U.K.” – A national academy chain is believed to be the first to prohibit 35,000 students from using their tech devices, according to the Telegraph.
• “Households face £630m bill as Miliband takes control of Britain’s electricity network” – Energy secretary Ed Miliband has announced a £630m deal that will see the Government take control of the organisation behind Britain’s power systems, with the cost clawed back from households through their energy bills, reports the Telegraph.
• “Labour to back away from 2030 petrol car ban” – Ministers are planning to back away from a total ban on the sale of new petrol-powered cars by allowing hybrid vehicles to remain on the market until 2035, according to the Telegraph.
• “The Natural History Museum has an important job – and it isn’t agitprop” – The South Kensington institution has entranced generations of children, but with its new climate agenda it has grand ambitions rather beyond its remit, says Michael Mosbacher in the Telegraph.
• “Free speech storm embroils church after vicar sacked over ‘anti-woke’ YouTube channel” – CofE breakaway group the Free Church of England sacked Rev Brett Murphy after ruling the anti-woke videos he posted online had brought the church “into disrepute”, reports the Telegraph.
• “Dependence on China is putting British values at risk in higher education, says Lord Patten” – Dependence on Chinese students threatens to erode British values at universities, outgoing Oxford Chancellor Lord Patten has warned, according to the Telegraph.
• “Female barristers rebel against crackdown on ‘unfashionable views’ amid trans tensions” – Some gender-critical barristers have raised concerns about the proposed changes to the professional code of conduct, under which barristers would be punished if they do not act in a way that “advances equality, diversity, and inclusion”, the Telegraph reports.
• “How gender ideology corrupts rape crisis centres” – The male trans head of the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre has resigned after a scathing report on the centre revealed how it had been corrupted by gender ideology, writes Julie Bindel in the Spectator.
• “NSPCC’s ‘confused’ gender guidance puts children at risk, warns charity” – The NSPCC’s gender guidance is “confused” and potentially putting children at risk by encouraging them to use opposite-sex changing rooms, a charity has warned, according to the Telegraph.

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