News Round-Up

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• “Second leadership candidate withdraws from grooming gang inquiry” – The grooming gangs inquiry has been branded “toxic” by the former police chief who was set to lead it, reports the Telegraph.
• “Grooming gang victims tell Jess Phillips to step down over chaotic inquiry” – Calls have been made for Jess Phillips to step down from her role as safeguarding minister after three survivors on her Grooming Gang Panel quit, reports Channel 4 News.
• “Labour is shamefully betraying the victims of grooming gangs” – If the Government does not get the grooming gangs inquiry back on track, MPs’ commitment to finding out the truth will be questioned, warns Michael Deacon in the Telegraph.
• “Secretive grooming probe strategy meant to hide truth” – In the Mail, Maggie Oliver says the Government’s latest grooming gangs inquiry is another cynical whitewash.
• “Robert Jenrick is right about a burqa ban” – If Britain were to pass a law banning face coverings, it is Muslim women who would be the first to benefit, writes Kunwar Khuldune Shahid in the Spectator.
• “Secret report reveals Home Office ‘culture of defeatism’ on migration” – The Home Office is “set up to fail”, Shabana Mahmood has admitted after a secret report by Nick Timothy MP exposed an alleged “culture of defeatism” on immigration and other problems plaguing the department, according to LBC.
• “Criminal justice system in state of ‘slow-motion collapse’” – Labour is under fire over early releases after a report warns prisons are bursting at the seams and court backlogs are piling up, says the Times.
• “Asylum seeker who sexually assaulted three women spared jail” – Syrian asylum seeker Qais Al-Aswad, who sexually assaulted three women, has avoided jail, reports GB News.
• “Masked thugs ‘threaten to behead Israeli professor’ at City University” – Masked thugs allegedly threatened to behead an Israeli professor after storming his lecture at a London university, according to the Standard.
• “Met ‘lied’ about arrest of Jewish lawyer” – The Met Police has been accused of lying over the arrest of a Jewish lawyer for allegedly antagonising pro-Palestine protesters by wearing a Star of David, says the Telegraph.
• “Louis Theroux’s whitewashing of Bob Vylan is disgraceful” – Louis Theroux has “lost the plot”, says Nicole Lampert in the Telegraph, accusing him of nodding along to Bob Vylan’s antisemitic conspiracies instead of challenging them.
• “The saga of the Oxford Union president-elect has just reached a sinister level” – George Abaraonye’s supporters are now trying to stage a coup in order to keep him in his role, writes Serenhedd James in the Telegraph.
• “The Oxford Union has ditched its president – but he was merely a symptom of deeper decline” – The George Abaraonye saga was merely a symptom of a once-great debating society now lost to identity politics, laments Daniel Hannan in Conservative Home.
• “Others should follow the Met’s lead on non-crime hate incidents” – The Met’s decision to drop “non-crime hate incidents” is a welcome reality check, says the Times in a leading article.
• “The Met’s U-turn on ‘hate crimes’ is welcome, but our police are still in thrall to Leftist forces” – Despite this week’s victory too many officers continue to behave like East Germany’s Stasi, writes Allison Pearson in the Telegraph.
• “Non-crime hate incidents aren’t dead yet” – This has all the marks of an instinctively authoritarian government tossing the tiniest of bones to liberal opinion, says Andrew Tettenborn in the Spectator.
• “Reform UK most popular party among Gen Z men” – A poll of 5,000 people, conducted by JL Partners for the think tank Onward, has found a significant split in the political leanings of Gen Z men and women, reports the Telegraph.
• “Big Ange just can’t say sorry” – Angela Rayner strutted into the Commons, gave a self-serving, not-sorry speech full of platitudes and won back Labour MPs’ adoration, writes Madeline Grant in the Spectator.
• “Keir Starmer can’t blame the Cabinet Secretary for his own failures” – The PM’s woes stem not from his mandarins but from his own rubbish leadership and chronic failure to pick the right people, says Eliot Wilson in the Spectator.
• “Britain is frozen by fear” – Our leaders are too terrified to confront the crises they’ve created, writes Gareth Roberts in the Spectator.
• “Only a weak people will disappear” – Only weak nations vanish, and we’re looking worryingly fragile, warns Dr David McGrogan on Substack.
• “Britain’s rampant compensation culture is destroying growth” – The UK is paying the price for forgetting the simple principle of ‘buyer beware’, says Jeremy Warner in the Telegraph.
• “Jaguar Land Rover cyber attack ‘most expensive in UK history’” – The hack of Jaguar Land Rover has cost the UK economy an estimated £1.9 billion, according to the Guardian.
• “Ministers plan law to protect wetland — just as judges reduce red tape” – Ministers are being accused of making it more difficult to build thousands of homes by extending EU laws protecting spiders, insects and birds across swathes of the country, reports the Times.
• “Pursuing Net Zero makes the UK vulnerable to bad weather, BBC, not climate change” – The BBC says that climate change is harming the UK via bad weather, but really it is the pursuit of Net Zero, says Linnea Lueken on Climate Realism.
• “I’ll build new nuclear stations in Scotland if SNP kicked out” – Ed Miliband has pledged to start immediate work on building new nuclear power stations in Scotland if the SNP is kicked out of office in next year’s election, reports the Telegraph. 
• “BP abandons US wind farm after Trump’s assault on renewables” – JERA Nex BP is ending activities in the US after concluding there “is no viable path for development” of its Beacon Wind offshore project, according to Recharge.
• “Carbon credits failure: Sachs, Romm, Rockström” – Carbon offsets are failing hard, delivering a fraction of promised reductions and letting companies buy a get-out-of-jail-free card, warns Robert Bradley Jr. on Master Resource.
• “When in doubt, complicate” – Ursula von der Leyen promises a “just” EU carbon market expansion, but with higher costs looming the plan mostly sounds like Brussels buzzwords, says Irina Slav on her Substack.
• “Minecraft creates a Green peer pressure version of popular children’s game” – Minecraft has gone green with a new “CoastCraft” mode teaching kids about climate risks and coastal management, reports Eric Worrall in WUWT?
• “How the World Meteorological Organisation lies to you – using your taxes” – The WMO’s 2025 greenhouse gas report hides key data that undercuts the so-called climate crisis narrative – funded by your tax dollars, reveals Dr Matthew Wielicki in Climate Change Dispatch.
• “Why EVs lose value faster than gas cars and why that could be changing” – EV’s are cheaper to operate than a gas car, but they lose value faster, which adds costs. On CNBC, Robert Ferris explains why, and why it might change.
• “Why I stopped being a climate catastrophist” – Nordhaus is one of the giants of the climate alarmist movement – but in his own words, “I no longer believe this hyperbole”, writes Eric Worrall in WUWT?
• “Police stationed at Laura Loomer’s house amid antisemitic death threats” – An anti-Israel hate monger has been arrested for allegedly vowing to slaughter conservative commentators in a series of blood-curdling social media rants, reports the Mail.
• “Virginia Giuffre raped by ‘well-known Prime Minister,’ US version of posthumous memoir claims” – Virginia Giuffre, one of the most prominent victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring, wrote in her posthumous memoir that she was brutally beaten and raped by an unidentified prime minister and that she feared she might “die a sex slave”, according to CNN.
• “British universities in China ‘ignoring Communist brainwashing on campus’” – British universities are turning a blind eye to the “ideological indoctrination” of students by the Chinese Communist Party at their overseas campuses, reports the Telegraph. 
• “Episode 3: Community living” – Thrown into 24/7 community life at Academia Libera Mentis, 23 year-old Ukrainian refugee Daria reveals the shock, joys and difficulties of finding herself thrust into an actual community.
• “Speed up Covid inquiry or any practical insights will be lost” – Each day that passes Britain is further away from a report that might help create a robust system of crisis management and save lives in the future, writes Jawad Iqbal in the Times.
• “CDC study shows there is no scientific rationale for vaccine mandates for kids attending school” – People who think they are saving lives with vaccine mandates for kids attending school are both delusional and anti-science, says Steve Kirsch on Substack.
• “Will it take a death for IOC to get a grip on boxing gender-row lunacy?” – In the Telegraph, Oliver Brown blasts the IOC for letting boxers with male chromosomes punch women in the face.
• “Trans nurse triggered flashbacks of my child abuse” – A tribunal has heard how a nurse’s encounter with a trans colleague in a hospital changing room sparked a flashback to child sexual abuse trauma, reports the BBC.
• “Transgender identity really has fallen among young people” – Trans identification among young Americans is plunging, and nonbinary IDs are dropping too, according to Jean M. Twenge on the Persuasion Substack.
• “Mother of sacked ‘autistic’ volunteer at Waitrose speaks out” – The mother of a severely autistic volunteer whom Waitrose allowed to stack shelves for free has taken to national TV to complain after her son was sacked when she asked if he could be paid, says the Mail.
• “The problem with defining Islamophobia” – At the Battle of Ideas, Toby explains why an official definition of Islamophobia would have a chilling effect on free speech.

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