News Round-Up

• “Why Jeremy Clarkson could be Britain’s Donald Trump” – Jeremy Clarkson’s current defence of farmers may catapult him into mainstream politics, says Guy Kelly in the Telegraph.
• “Jeremy Clarkson’s time has come” – It’s a reasonable bet that if Jeremy Clarkson stood for prime minister tomorrow, he’d win by a country mile, writes Philip Patrick in the Spectator.
• “Starmer’s brand of politics is dying – Clarkson could deliver the fatal blow” – The public are turning to heterodox outsiders all over the world. One man is ideally placed to do so here, says Allister Heath in the Telegraph.
• “Jeremy Clarkson: populist tribune” – Starmer needs to do everything he can to ensure Clarkson’s ideas do not involve the words: “Reform U.K.”, “Start Up Party” or worst of all “the Tories”, writes Tom McTague in UnHerd.
• “Allison Pearson’s police interview ‘Stasi-like’, says Labour MP” – Graham Stringer, the MP for Blackley and Middleton South, says the police should be focusing on fighting crime rather than intimidating journalists and threatening press freedom, according to the Telegraph.
• “‘I don’t always agree with Allison Pearson but I will defend her right to free speech’” – “Unlike some cowardly liberals, I believe in solidarity among journalists when one of us is under attack”, says Suzanne Moore in the Telegraph.
• “Millions wasted on Police and Crime Commissioners who refuse to stand up for us” – In the Telegraph, Dia Chakravarty exposes the wasteful £100 million spent on Police and Crime Commissioners, who, despite earning six-figure salaries, have overseen a dramatic failure in solving actual crimes.
• “Essex Police ‘forced me to quit as their hate crime ambassador’” – A hate crime ambassador at Essex Police claims she was “forced out” of her job after raising concerns about Black Lives Matter, according to the Telegraph.
• “BBC Verify used Labour activist to back Government’s claims on farm inheritance tax” – The BBC’s fact-checkers relied on a Labour activist, billed as an “independent tax expert”, to analyse the farm tax raid, reports the Telegraph.
• “BBC Verify quietly changes farm tax ‘fact check’ amid political bias row” – Guido Fawkes exposes BBC Verify’s sly edits to its farm tax “fact check”, from mislabelling Labour activist Dan Neidle as an “independent tax expert” to cutting his dubious claim of “below 500 farms affected”.
• “Full timeline: Rachel Reeves’s CV claims” – As the curious case of the Labour MP’s CV rumbles on, the Spectator’s Steerpike has pulled together a list of exactly which of her claims have been challenged and when. 
• “Rachel from accounts” – Of course, all politicians lie and exaggerate. But our Chancellor Rachel Reeves is comedy gold at it, writes Paul Sutton on his Substack.
• “The NHS neurologist freely spouting antisemitic hate online” – Blaming Mossad for 9/11 and sharing speeches by Holocaust deniers may sound like the actions of an anonymous conspiracy theorist, but are in fact attributable to an NHS consultant neurologist of 21 years standing, says George Chesterton in the Telegraph.
• “Why is the National Book Award going to a publisher of antisemitic books?” – One might have thought that the announcement that a National Book Award will be given to a purveyor of antisemitic and homophobic tracts would have caused a bit more of a stir, writes Mark Oppenheimer in the Free Press.
• “Labour has opened more migrant hotels than it has closed, admits minister” – The border security minister says more hotels for asylum seekers have opened since Labour came into government, reports Sky News.
• “Baillie Gifford winner refuses prize money over fossil fuel ties” – The winner of an unprecedented literary double has refused to accept a £50,000 prize until the sponsor publishes an exit strategy for its fossil fuel investments, says Sky News.
• “Europe’s extensive use of renewable energy leads to an unexpected challenge: electricity becoming excessively cheap” – According to Smith Noah in Jason Deegan, Europe’s triumph in green energy has ushered in an unforeseen predicament: excessively cheap electricity!
• “‘A little dirty’: inside the secret world of McKinsey, the firm hooked on fossil fuels” – In the Guardian, Ben Stockton and Hajar Meddah expose McKinsey & Co as “capitalism incarnate”, revealing how the consulting giant profits from both greenwashing and fuelling the climate crisis.
• “The truth about ‘workshy’ Britain” – Whether it is down to illness or laziness, a rising number of Britons are living on the charity of the state, says Ross Clark in the Spectator.
• “Covid Inquiry set to cost £208 million – enough to pay more than 5,000 doctors’ salaries” – The Covid Inquiry is set to become the most expensive in British history with a projected total cost of £208 million, reports the Telegraph.
• “What RFK Jr. can do as Secretary of Health and Human Services” – On Substack, Alex Berenson presents 10 ideas to shake up America’s $4 trillion healthcare-industrial complex.
• “Army drones among swathe of defence projects to be axed in post-Budget cuts” – The British Army’s main drone system is to be axed in a swathe of post-Budget cuts to the military, reports the BBC.
• “Labour is scaling back our defence capabilities while our enemies do the opposite” – Scrapping amphibious assault ships, helicopters and drones leaves our Armed Forces all at sea, warns Ben Wallace in the Telegraph.
• “Europe prepares for WW3 as Germany reveals national defence plans” – European nations are gearing up for an all-out war as Ukraine launched U.S.-made missiles into Russia for the first time and Putin officially lowered the threshold for Moscow to consider a nuclear strike, reports the Mail. 
• “Putin, ascendant in Ukraine, eyes contours of a Trump peace deal” – Putin is open to discussing a Ukraine ceasefire deal with Trump but rules out making any major territorial concessions and insists Kyiv abandon ambitions to join NATO, according to Reuters.
• “Tweeting the poop emoji at a cabinet minister, quoting politicians inexactly, calling a Green fat and stupid – all of this is criminal speech in the freest and most democratic Germany of all time” – Activists, police and Green politicians have been conducting a years-long stealth campaign to prosecute Germans for their political speech on the internet, writes Eugyppius on Substack.
• “Social media ban for under-16s ‘on the table’ says U.K. Government” – Tech Secretary Peter Kyle says banning under-16s from social media is “on the table” to keep kids safe online, according to the BBC.
• “What on earth is Jaguar thinking?” – Morse famously died of a heart attack on his final case. If he could see what has been done to his beloved cars, it would break his heart all over again, says Alexander Larman in the Spectator.
• “Jaguar, the car of McQueen and Jagger, is plumbing new lows” – Jaguar, once a symbol of pride in British design and engineering, has been reduced to empty platitudes, laments Ed Cummings in the Telegraph.
• “Backlash as diversity activist champions controversial Jaguar rebrand” – According to the historic carmaker’s vocal diversity champion, a widely ridiculed rebrand of Jaguar is designed to “shift it to a whole new space”, reports the Telegraph. 
• “Jaguar’s bizarre rebrand will drive away customers” – By turning its back on heritage and history, Jaguar risks paving the way for its decline, warns Matthew Lynn in the Telegraph.
• “The Left’s war on men is backfiring disastrously” – Young males are moving to the Right. But as birth rates collapse, this is a bigger problem than politics, says Joel Kotkin in the Telegraph.
• “California’s next governor or head of Planned Parenthood — what Kamala Harris could do next” – Taking the top job in her home state of California might be on the Vice President’s agenda, but she could also be eyeing a presidential run in 2028, writes Susie Coen in the Telegraph.
• “Meet the Rees-Moggs” – The first trailer of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s reality TV show has been released.

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