News Round-Up

• “How the blinkered Covid inquiry ignored the true impact of lockdown” – Five years and £200 million later, the profound effects of Britain’s damaged economy remain an afterthought in the flawed investigation, say Gordon Rayner and colleagues at the Telegraph.
• “Baroness Hallett’s £200 million Covid inquiry failed to answer big questions” – On Covid there are two big questions, says Boris Johnson in the Mail: where did the virus come from and were the lockdowns worth the terrible price we paid? “Baroness Hallett’s hopelessly incoherent £200 million inquiry failed to answer either.”
• “Baroness Hallett has dodged the key Covid questions” – The long-running inquiry asserts that 23,000 lives could have been saved by an earlier lockdown but lacks the evidence to prove it, says Fraser Nelson in the Times.
• “To inquiry officials any notion that the lockdowns were worse than the disease is inconceivable” – The official inquiry into COVID-19 had made up its mind before it began, says Daniel Hannan in the Mail.
• “Errors, omissions and illogicalities galore at the Covid inquiry” – The investigation tells us much about what we already know but little about what we need to know — whether lockdowns work and, if so, are worth the damage, says Jonathan Sumption in the Times.
• “We’ll need good data next time or lockdown arguments multiply” – There’s too much we still don’t know about the true efficacy of the draconian Covid measures, says Tom Whipple in the Times.
• “The Covid Inquiry has ducked the most important questions” – The biggest lesson to come out of the first report of the official Covid Inquiry is what a mistake it was to hand to job to lawyers, says Ross Clark in the Spectator.
• “The Covid Inquiry Report: An unscientific whitewash of a monumental scandal” – The Covid Inquiry has delivered exactly what it was designed to deliver, and the rest of us should treat its conclusions with the scepticism they richly deserve, says Professor Roger Watson in TCW.
• “The real lasting lesson of the Great Covid Panic is that most of us don’t want to be free” – In the Mail, Peter Hitchens draws a depressing conclusion from the inquiry’s latest lockdown report.
• “Kemi Badenoch: Labour’s migrant reforms don’t go far enough” – Shabana Mahmood’s immigration and asylum plans look a lot like the Tories’ version, but Labour lacks the courage for crucial elements such as bringing Britain out of the ECHR, says Kemi Badenoch in the Times.
• “Believe it, there is such a thing as Mahmoodism” – In a Labour Party whose leader stands for nothing, the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is singular: a devout outsider driven by conviction politics, says Patrick Maguire in the Times.
• “Cadets face being marched from barracks as migrants move in” – Adult cadet instructors in Crowborough are considering suspending training as they do not believe they can ensure the safeguarding of the cadets when the 600 migrants arrive for housing in the barracks, a source familiar with the matter has told the Telegraph.
• “Pakistanis use holiday visa loophole to lodge record asylum claims” – Pakistanis are exploiting holiday, work and student visa loopholes to get to Britain and lodge asylum claims in record numbers, new data have revealed, according to the Telegraph.
• “Starmer would lose leadership contest to Streeting, Rayner, Burnham and Miliband” – Wes Streeting, Angela Rayner, Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband would all win a head-to-head leadership contest against Keir Starmer, polling of Labour members by LabourList reveals.
• “Keir Starmer attempts to brush aside coup claims” – The Prime Minister has insisted he is working “very closely together” with Andy Burnham despite fresh suggestions of a coup plot, as another Labour MP calls on him to quit, the Mail reports.
• “Business owners flee Britain before ‘doomsday’ Budget” – Business owners are leaving Britain for other countries as Rachel Reeves’s ‘doomsday’ Budget looms, says the Telegraph.
• “Don’t blame Trump. We’re the ones who falsely raised Ukraine’s hopes” – The US President’s cynicism was never in doubt, but why did Europe promise the world and then withhold it, asks Matthew Syed in the Times.
• “Here’s why delusional Europe won’t keep Ukraine in the fight” – What has been conspicuously lacking are actual transfers of sufficient hard cash and weaponry from Europe to allow Ukraine to prevail, says Owen Matthews in the Telegraph.
• “Trump is behaving precisely as he would if he were a Russian asset” – Trump’s Ukraine proposals are not peace terms, they are the exactions that a victorious power wrings from a conquered rival, says Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph.
• “Arm twisting won’t stop licence fee refuseniks – or the BBC’s demise” – Instead of shining a light through the fog of digital distortion which blights all our efforts to learn the truth, BBC News has become part of the problem, writes Andrew Neil in the Mail.
• “£1.5 billion package announced to help Britain switch to electric vehicles” – Despite the massive tax rises expected in the Budget, Labour is reported to be planning to announce a further £1.3 billion for the Electric Car Grant, along with £200 million to speed up the rollout of thousands of charging points across the UK, bringing the total investment to £1.5 billion, reports Sky News.
• “Is The Gulf Stream Really Collapsing? Debunking Another Climate Doomsday Claim” – In the No Tricks Zone, Pierre Gosselin debunks the claim that global warming could paradoxically shut down the Gulf Stream, plunging Europe into a new cold spell.
• “Solar panel companies shut down for ‘exploiting’ vulnerable pensioners” – Two solar panel companies have been shut down after “deliberately exploiting” vulnerable pensioners, reports the Telegraph.
• “Miliband says COP30 was ‘step forward’ despite lack of explicit fossil fuel plan” – Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said he “would have preferred a more ambitious agreement” at COP30 in Brazil, reports the Independent.
• “EV drivers to be bombarded with in-car adverts” – Drivers of electric cars are being hit with a wave of in-car digital advertising as vehicles’ large touch-screens become a route for brands to reach more eyeballs, says the Telegraph.
• “Puberty blockers to be given to children in NHS-backed trial” – A controversial clinical study will see as many as 226 children as young as 10 years-old who believe they are transgender be given gender-bending drugs, reports the Mail.
• “How CDC and FDA Defrauded the American Public about Serious Vaccine Harms” – In Brownstone Journal, Peter C. Gøtzsche explains how the American public was systematically misled by the very institutions they are supposed to trust.
• “BBC headlines ‘three times as likely to vilify Israel over Hamas’” – A study of BBC headlines since the October 7th attacks has found three times more were critical of Israel than of Hamas, reports the Telegraph.
• “Archbishop of York’s ‘genocidal acts’ charge against Israel is neither wise nor appropriate” – Given the Church’s history of antisemitism, the second-most senior Anglican bishop should have thought again before using an accusation that has the stink of prejudice, says Professor Nigel Biggar in the Jewish Chronicle.
• “Inside the fracturing pro-Palestine movement: Purges, paranoia and a far-Left revolt” – Jewish News reports on the struggle taking place within the wider anti-Zionist movement in Britain over who should be embraced and who held at arm’s length.
• “Junior doctors could get guaranteed pension of £125,000 a year” – Junior doctors have gone on strike demanding more money, but analysis of their pension progression shows they could end their careers very comfortably off, according to the Times.
• “It’s time to end the brutal blacklisting of Kevin Spacey” – Hollywood’s continued shunning of the great screen actor of the millennial age is cruel and stupid, says Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
• “Killing female foetuses to protect women encapsulates what now counts as progress in the West” – Western ‘feminists’ are lending their support to the evil practice of killing female babies in the womb in order to seem ‘anti-racist’ and prevent communities being racially profiled, says Dia Chakravarty in the Telegraph.
• “Owner of the Daily Mail strikes £500 million deal to buy the Telegraph” – The owner of the Daily Mail, Lord Rothermere, has struck a £500 million deal to buy the Daily Telegraph with the aim of securing the future of the paper, but worries about media pluralism have been raised.
• “Trump has threatened to sue the BBC for deceptively editing his January 6th speech. Maybe he should also go after the German public broadcasters who did exactly the same thing” – Eugyppius points out that Germany public broadcaster ARD is guilty of the same sin as the BBC.
• “Bolsonaro arrested for ‘trying to escape’ before start of 27-year sentence” – Jair Bolsonaro has been arrested for allegedly trying to escape days before he was set to start his 27-year prison sentence for ‘plotting a coup’, the Telegraph reports.
• “Labour council bans couple from building flagpole for Union flag” – Labour-run Warrington borough council has banned a couple from erecting a garden flagpole from which they had planned to fly a Union flag, the Telegraph reports.
• “Brain worms and blue eyes: the RFK love triangle shocking America” – A book by journalist Olivia Nuzzi has unleashed a chaotic slew of revelations about her transgressive relationships with wayward politicians — and the US is hooked, says the Times.
• “Archbishop urges Reeves to back down on church VAT raid” – The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, has pleaded with Rachel Reeves not to hit churches with a de facto VAT raid on building repairs in her upcoming Budget, the Telegraph reports.
• “The CPS is desperate for a backdoor blasphemy law” – Clearly, the CPS wants to be able to continue to prosecute and convict anyone whose actions violate Islamic blasphemy codes, says David Shipley in the Spectator.
• “Britain’s free speech paradox” – In UnHerd, Jonathan Sumption argues the UK’s speech laws have become incoherent.
• “America’s tradition of public debate is under attack. Nothing exemplifies this better than the assassination of Charlie Kirk at a college campus event in September” – Watch DadSavesAmerica on X on the corruption of high school debate.

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