News Round-Up

• “Why Labour’s Budget is a ‘closure of the mines’ moment for British farming” – Farmers are united in outrage and disbelief over the Government’s tax grab on their livelihoods, reports the Telegraph.
• “Labour’s farm tax makes no sense” – Some farming families will tighten their belts, but paying inheritance tax will be the final nail in the coffin for many, writes Jamie Blackett in the Spectator.
• “Rachel Reeves tells livid farmers it is ‘fair’ they pay more death tax” – The Chancellor defended her decision to reform the way death taxes affect farms amid fury from the industry and high-profile celebrities like Jeremy Clarkson and Kirsty Allsopp, according to the Mail.
• “How the Environment Secretary’s £420 wellies are fuelling a farmers’ revolt” – With the world of agriculture still reeling from Rachel Reeves’ Budget, the Environment Secretary’s expensive gumboots (a gift from Lord Alli) have added insult to injury, says the Telegraph.
• “Reeves may not have thought farmer tax raid through, says Ed Balls” – Ed Balls thinks the Chancellor hasn’t thought through her plan to change the inheritance tax rules for farmers, says the Telegraph.
• “Agri-avengers assemble! Farmers to hold major Westminster tax protest” – The National Farmers Union is to hold a major Westminster rally next month to protest about the IHT hike in the Budget, reports the Mail.
• “Musk tells Starmer: Your tax raid on farmers is wrong” – The tech billionaire has weighed in on the row over changes to the inheritance tax rules for farmers, according to the Telegraph.
• “Care homes and GPs face closure as tax hikes pose ‘existential threat’” – The employers’ national insurance increase could “fatally undermine” Labour’s promise to cut NHS waiting lists, reports the Times.
• “Darren Jones admits Budget will hit working people” – Rachel Reeves’ Budget is beginning to unravel, according to the Spectator’s Steerpike, following the Chief Secretary to the Treasury’s admission on Sky News that the Government has indeed raised taxes for working people.
• “Gold-plated public sector pensions spared from Labour’s inheritance tax raid” – The Chancellor has widened the gulf between lucrative state and not so lucrative private sector pensions, reports the Telegraph.
• “Revealed: Labour’s £975 million stealth tax blow for savers” – A freeze on the Isa allowance will push investors to move cash out of tax-free product, predicts the Telegraph.
• “Can Labour save its Budget?” – After the OBR’s assessment of the Budget was published on Wednesday, the cost of government borrowing started to rise, says Kate Andrews in the Spectator.
• “Rachel Reeves thought she was being clever: punishment has been swift” – The Chancellor’s tax-and-spend Budget has paved the way for an illusory boomlet to become a very real bust, writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph.
• “Labour’s plot to surrender Brexit is advancing” – Reeves is moving Britain’s economy away from U.S. dynamism towards full throated EU sluggishness, according to David Frost in the Telegraph.
• “Ryanair blames Reeves’s ‘idiotic’ tax grab as it cuts thousands of flights” – Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary says the Chancellor has “no clue” how to deliver growth, reports the Telegraph.
• “Reeves’s £25 billion National Insurance raid hits foreign investment plans” – Budget tax rise for employers makes Britain “less attractive”, warn U.S. bosses in the Telegraph.
• “Britain has PTSD from Liz Truss’s budget, says Labour minister” – Darren Jones blames the market jitters over Rachel Reeves’ Budget on PTSD from Liz Truss’s mini-budget, according to the Times.
• “The economic blob that brought me down is shielding a failing Chancellor” – Getting rid of Rachel Reeves won’t be enough to unleash economic growth – the Quangocracy needs to be dismantled, says Liz Truss in the Telegraph.
• “Budget has finally killed the aspiration of Thatcherism” – Rachel Reeves’ Budget will come to be understood as the moment when the post-1979 consensus was abandoned, writes Dan Hannan in the Mail.
• “Reeves’s NI raid will cost surgery equivalent of five nurses salaries, GP reveals” – Dr. Richard West warns GP practices could be forced to shut up shop after National Insurance hike and increase in the National Living Wage, reports the Telegraph.
• “Lenders raise mortgage rates amid Budget market jitters” – Borrowers urged to secure deals quickly as sub-4% rates come under threat, says the Telegraph.
• “A government’s first Budget sets the tone for the whole Parliament – Reeves has flunked it” – “Wednesday’s statement reminded me of an earlier Chancellor – Denis Healey in 1974,” writes Charles Moore in his Telegraph column. “It might end equally disastrously this time.”
• “Rachel Theeves has taken aim at the U.K. economy” – “This Labour Budget has made me so angry that I scarcely know where to begin,” says Boris Johnson in the Mail. “But let’s start with the duplicity.”
• “Just saying the word ‘growth’ 31 times will not make it happen” – High tax, high spending and high borrowing are milestones on the road to chaos, writes Liam Halligan in the Telegraph.
• “Tories overtake Labour in Sunak’s final poll” – It’s Rishi Sunak’s final week as Tory leader, but should he be asked to carry on? On Wednesday he charmed the Commons at PMQs before stealing Rachel Reeves’s thunder with a virtuoso Budget speech, reports the Spectator.
• “Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick vow to serve in each other’s shadow cabinet” – The winner of the Tory leadership contest will be announced today, according to the Telegraph, and the loser has vowed to serve in the winner’s Cabinet.
• “Tory is a dirty word, they must change their name, says election guru” – Sir Lynton Crosby, the election strategist known as the Wizard of Oz, says whoever wins the Conservative leadership contest needs to ditch the name ‘Tories’, reports the Times.
• “Those who govern Britain are increasingly unaccountable – it’s making them corrupt” – We still see ourselves as an honest nation – but we are far too soft on official wrongdoing, writes Robert Tombs in the Telegraph.
• “Speech Tyranny in the U.K.?” In the National Review, Frederick Attenborough writes about Labour’s plans to ruin pubs, bars and restaurants to ruin customers’ lives by employing ‘banter bouncers’.
• “Labour-linked investors attempt to gatecrash sale of the Observer” – A consortium including Dale Vince is make a rival bid to buy the Observer, reports the Telegraph.
• “Trump sues CBS for $10 billion over Kamala Harris editing scandal” – Network’s actions amounted to voter interference, claim lawyers for the former president, according to the Telegraph.
• “Joe Rogan exposed the J.D. Vance the liberal media don’t want you to see” – Over more than three free-wheeling hours, the Republican vice-presidential candidate showed he’s both bro and pro, says Tim Stanley in the Telegraph.
• “Identity Politics, for the Win!” – With an assist from Michelle Obama, the increasingly desperate New York Times tries to pull Kamala Harris across the finish line by stressing race and gender resentment, writes Heather Mac Donald in City Journal.
• “Does liberal democracy end next week?” – Yes, our tribalist hysteria sucks, says Andrew Sullivan on his Substack. But don’t count liberalism out just yet.
• “Save democracy from informed citizens: vote censorship!” – Media Matters, the New York Times and the Washington Post have unleashed a joint effort to silence Kamala Harris’s critics, write Matt Taibbi and Paul Thacker in the Disinformation Chronicle.
• “Epstein and Trump placed bets on who’d sleep with Princess Diana” – Michael Wolff says “sex-obsessed” Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein had a competition over who could bed the most women and included the famous royal as part of a wager, reports the Mail.
• “School charging $65,000 a year allows students to take day off if they’re stressed over election” – The Ethical Culture Fieldston School has been criticised for letting pupils stay at home without homework during “high-stakes and emotional time”, i.e., the US presidential election, says the Telegraph.
• “The liberal media’s distortion of Trump’s Liz Cheney comments exposes how panicked they are” – Brendan O’Neill in the Telegraph says it’s as plain as day that Trump wasn’t calling for Liz Cheney to be shot in the face and the media meltdown about his comments shows how worried they are.
• “When anti-woke becomes pro-Trump” – Cathy Young in Persuasion says Trump is no friend of those who want to see the back of woke.
• “Kamala Harris ahead in enough swing states to win, Times poll says” – The Times’s final survey before the U.S. election shows the Democrat leading Donald Trump in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – enough to win the presidency.
• “Why it’s Trump’s election to lose” – As both campaigns ramp up the rhetoric in the closing days, some positive signs for Kamala Harris do not outweigh the Republican’s advantage, says Tony Diver in the Telegraph.
• “When will the U.S. election results be announced? The key timings” – The different states’ rules on counting votes means it could take several days before Donald Trump or Kamala Harris is announced president-elect – and the result may well be contested in any event, says the Times. It could be weeks before the contest is decided.
• “A tidal wave of immigration is swamping my country. It may not survive” – Everything that historically made Canada what it was is rapidly being destroyed, says Maxime Bernier in the Telegraph.
• “German drivers could be banned from reversing out of parking spaces under Green proposal” – The German Greens want to make it illegal to reverse out of a parking space in the hope of reducing accidents, according to the Telegraph.
• “Germany’s gender madness is a worry for women everywhere” – Germany’s Self-Determination Act, which comes into effect today, makes it far easier for people to change gender, warns Julie Bindel in the Spectator.
• “Radiohead’s Thom Yorke has the perfect riposte to the anti-Israel bores” – At a solo gig in Melbourne, Thom Yorke was heckled by an audience member asking why he hasn’t spoken out about Israel’s ‘genocide’ in Gaza. Yorke challenged him to a fight, which shut him up fast, says Brendan O’Neill in the Spectator.
• “BBC staff sign letter accusing broadcaster of pro-Israel bias” – “Dehumanising Palestinians” and failing to provide “fair and accurate” coverage were among claims in a letter from BBC staff to their bosses, according to the Telegraph.
• “‘People were shaking with fear’: The Jewish community centre besieged by pro-Palestine activists” – An event which included voices openly critical of Israel aroused fury among pro-Palestinian protestors, raising questions about their motives, reports the Telegraph.
• “Migrant who ‘threatened to kill’ Nigel Farage detained after arrival in U.K. in small-boat crossing” – The TikTok user who aggressively addressed the Reform U.K. leader saying “I want to marry your sister” has been detained by police after arriving here in a small boat, according to the Telegraph.
• “Son of first rioter to die in prison wants to know why he was jailed in first place” – Casey Lynch is demanding an investigation into the sentencing of his father Peter and questions why his previous suicide attempts were “not taken seriously”, says the Telegraph.
• “The Women’s Equality party deserves its fate” – A so-called women’s party that sided with biological men over women in fights over access to women’s spaces deserved to go tits up, says Julie Burchill in the Spectator.
• “Ireland’s new hate-crime law gives legal status to 72 genders” – Ireland has passed a new Hate Crime Act and it’s a complete dog’s breakfast, according to leading Irish gay and feminist commentators, says the Brussel’s Signal.
• “Scotland’s wokerati would rather rewrite children’s songs than fix the country” – Given the state of Scotland, you’d think people would have more important things to worry about than policing what toddlers sing, argues Judith Woods in the Telegraph.
• “The National Academy of Medicine is only inducting Covid commenters who were incorrect” – I recently looked through the last few years of inductees to the National Academy of Medicine and noticed they are all lockdown and vaccine zealots, says Dr Vinay Prasad on his Substack.
• “The climate scaremongers: A million more green jobs? Pull the other one, Mr. Miliband” – A million more green jobs by 2030? Paul Homewood in TCW – Defending Freedom isn’t convinced.
• “Teachers on school trips to Slavery Museum told they should acknowledge ‘white privilege’” – The International Slavery Museum in Liverpool has advised white teachers showing schoolchildren around that they should engage in ritual acts of self-flagellation, reports the Telegraph.
• “Woke London Labour council bans ‘Sir/Madam’ to start letters and formal emails” – Woke town hall bosses have banned staff from starting letters and formal emails with “Sir/Madam”, according to the Sun.
• “National Trust traditionalists rage at ‘activism’ and vote system” – A group of insurgent members are attempting to depoliticise the National Trust, but the wokesters in charge are engaging in electoral dirty tricks to preserve their power, reports the Times.
• “The phantom of polarisation” – Do people actually disagree that much? asks Ed West on his Substack.
• “In a civilised society, sin is not passed down through the generations” – Listen to Dominic Sandbrook tell Will Kingston on Fire at Will why he doesn’t think Britain should pay reparations for slavery.

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