News Round-Up

• “People smugglers offer half price summer discount to cross Channel” – People smugglers have halved their prices for migrants to try to cash in on the summer heatwave, reports GB News.
• “Moment migrant ‘taxi boat’ stops to collect UK-bound asylum seekers” – The Mail has footage of the moment French police officers declined to intervene as UK-bound migrants boarded “taxi boats” off the coast of Calais.
• “French police fail to stop Channel migrant on crutches” – French police failed to prevent a man using a crutch from getting into a migrant boat setting out across the Channel, according to the Telegraph.
• “France won’t stop the small boats” – Britain certainly won’t receive much in the way of help from the pro-migrant Emmanuel Macron, despite what Keir Starmer may claim, says Gavin Mortimer in the Spectator.
• “Justice Secretary accuses ECHR of blocking foreign criminal deportations” – Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has aligned the UK with other EU countries demanding major reform of the European Convention on Human Rights, reports the Express.
• “Labour’s obsession with ‘Islamophobia’ will put more girls in danger” – In the Telegraph, Michael Deacon warns that Labour’s push for a new definition of “Islamophobia” risks silencing victims and shielding grooming gangs.
• “Why liberals ignored the grooming gang scandal” – Too many children have paid the price for the silence of liberal do-gooders, says Nick Tyrone in the Spectator.
• “No jail sentence is long enough for the cowards who covered up for the Pakistani rape gangs” – Baroness Casey’s report revealed what many of us already knew – political correctness allowed systemic abuse to go unpunished, writes Allison Pearson in the Telegraph.
• “These are not ‘Asian’ grooming gangs, they are Kashmiri Muslim” – There should be no space for mollycoddling particular minorities if we are serious about delivering justice for the victims of the child rape gangs, says Rakib Ehsan in the Telegraph.
• “Abortion decriminalisation ‘undermines feminism’” – Gender-critical academic Kathleen Stock argues that the recent Commons vote to decriminalise abortion up to birth “undermines feminism” and lacks a public mandate, reports the Telegraph.
• “Will this provoke a pro-life movement like in the US?” – In the Mail, Sarah Vine warns that by allowing abortions up to full term, MPs have handed the Left its wish: the birth of a hardline pro-life movement in Britain.
• “Assisted dying risks being Labour’s Brexit” – Assisted dying could become Labour’s Brexit – a divisive, identity-defining issue with long political aftershocks, warns James Heale in the Spectator.
• “‘UK joining war on Iran may be illegal’” – Sir Keir Starmer has been warned by Lord Hermer that UK involvement in a US attack on Iran could be illegal, according to the Telegraph.
• “Cowardly Starmer has put Britain on the wrong side of history” – If Trump and Netanyahu disarm Iran, they will be richly deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize, says Allister Heath in the Telegraph.
• “‘De-escalation’ won’t work on Iran” – In the Spectator, Eliot Wilson argues that Keir Starmer’s call for “de-escalation” in the Iran-Israel conflict is naïve and counterproductive.
• “‘We can do it in the US, why not here?’: the Western activists’ march to Gaza that became a farce” – They expected a warm welcome, but campaigners crossing Egypt in a peace convoy were met, instead, with a very undemocratic show of force, writes Guy Kelly in the Telegraph.
• “Kneecap fans wave Palestinian flags as Mo Chara arrives at court” – Fans of rap group Kneecap have gathered outside court to support one of its members accused of a terrorism offence, reports the Mail.
• “Food prices surge after Reeves tax raid” – Food prices have risen at their fastest pace in more than a year, amid suspicions that grocers have passed on the cost of Rachel Reeves’s tax raid to consumers, reports the BBC.
• “Why is the ONS saying inflation has gone down?” – The ONS’s reluctance to correct its errors risks further undermining trust in official statistics and just makes them look ridiculous, says Michael Simmons in the Spectator.
• “UK’s largest fibreglass factory to shut in blow to Government’s industrial strategy” – Hundreds of workers are set to lose their jobs after the owners of the UK’s largest fibreglass factory announced its closure, reports the BBC.
• “‘Scrap the fracking ban and bomb Iran’” – Would a Reform government lift the ban on fracking? “Abso-bloody-lutely” is the answer Nigel Farage gives William Atkinson in the Spectator.
• “HS2 boss was accused of covering up rail delays” – The new chairman of HS2 was accused of covering up delays in another large-scale rail project, reveals the Telegraph.
• “Britain to rely on France to avoid blackouts this winter” – Britain will rely on electricity from France to guard against the risk of blackouts this coming winter, reports the Telegraph. 
• “Labour has turned the UK into Europe’s energy beggar” – In the Conservative Post, Claire Bullivant slams Labour’s “energy masochism”, accusing it of gutting Britain’s energy independence and leaving us reliant on foreign powers for power.
• “Hydrogen giant abandons £2 billion British factory plans Labour refused to back” – The world’s largest hydrogen producer has abandoned plans to build a £2 billion green energy factory in Britain, dealing a blow to the Government’s bid to attract foreign investment, according to FCW.
• “Renewable energy to blame for Spain’s blackouts, official investigation finds” – Spain’s disastrous national blackout was triggered by solar farms switching off in response to plummeting power prices, reports the BBC.
• “Spain’s impossible dream of ‘green’ electricity” – In WUWT?, Paul Driessen explains how thousands of wind turbines and millions of solar panels generated a massive blackout in Spain.
• “Spain’s power cut shows the risks of gas-free Britain” – The UK risks exposure to Iberia-style blackouts for the sake of a few symbolic minutes of ‘zero carbon’, warns Kathryn Porter in the Telegraph.
• “Big, beautiful coal here for many more years despite ‘green’ demonisation” – Coal is expected to dominate the energy sector for at least three more decades – predictions to the contrary are just so much hot air, says Vijay Jayaraj in the Daily Caller.
• “Another wheel has just flown off the EV dream” – Electric cars cost more to run, break down more often and hand the future of motoring to China, argues Matthew Lynn in the Telegraph.
• “‘Lucy Letby’s case must be re-examined’” – Ex-Health Secretary Sir Jeremy Hunt has called for an “urgent re-examination” of the case of Lucy Letby, just months after he apologised to the families of her victims at a public inquiry, reports the Standard.
• “Trump, Tucker and the war tearing apart MAGA” – As Trump dunks on Tucker Carlson, officials inside the White House are feuding privately over Iran, writes Gabe Kaminsky in the Free Press.
• “ONS chief under fire for wearing trans badge” – Britain’s under-fire chief statistician has been condemned for wearing the “flag of transgender activism” during her first address to staff, reports the Telegraph.
• “Green Party accused of silencing gender critical voices” – Ex-Green Party spokesman Dr Pallavi Devulapalli, who was expelled for raising concerns about trans ideology, has accused the party of silencing gender critical voices, says the Telegraph.
• “Bluesky is dying” – Bluesky was invented to create a nicer space than Twitter, writes Sean Thomas in the Spectator; the problem is that too few people have joined and most are smug and boring.

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