News Round-Up

• “Starmer welcomes ‘extremist’ to Britain” – Sir Keir Starmer has been criticised for welcoming an Islamist extremist into the UK despite his past incendiary remarks, reports the Telegraph.
• “Forget working, you could be better off on benefits under Labour! How a couple with three children earning just £10,000 a year could ‘game’ the system to pocket the equivalent of a £140,000 salary” – A new analysis claims some families could be better off on benefits than in work under Labour’s changes, warns Oliver Price in the Mail.
• “‘Unavailable’ Boris Johnson forced MI6 to change how it spies” – MI6 has reportedly changed how it runs sensitive operations after Boris Johnson proved hard to contact while he was prime minister, reveals Gabriel Pogrund in the Times.
• “Free Speech Union legal counsel issues stark warning on GB News after claiming Chinese spies targeted him” – The Free Speech Union’s Chief Legal Counsel was targeted by Chinese spies posing as researchers, writes Susanna Siddell on the GB News website.
• “Britain’s 40,000 migrant crossings are nothing, suggests UN refugee chief” – The outgoing UN refugee chief has said Britain shouldn’t complain about 40,000 refugees a year crossing the Channel and entering the country illegally, writes Nick Gutteridge in the Telegraph.
• “We can’t go to the pub because we’re too poor – and it will have shut anyway” – Rachel Reeves has added tens of billions to the tax burden while borrowing is out of control and pubs face mounting pressure, says Simon Heffer in the Telegraph.
• “Starmer under pressure to ‘consider EU customs union’” – Sir Keir Starmer has come under pressure from trade unions to consider taking Britain into the EU customs union, says Nick Gutteridge in the Telegraph.
• “Starmer isn’t taking us back into the EU. It’s actually worse than that” – Sir Keir Starmer if offering concessions to Brussels while securing little in return, argues Dan Hannan in the Telegraph.
• “Was this the year Nigel Farage peaked?” – Reform’s momentum has shown signs of stagnating while talk of a Tory pact grows, reports Josh Glancy in the Times.
• “PM Miliband with Polanski as his deputy? It’s not as crazy as you might think” – Reform’s rise has shaken up the two-party system and made unexpected coalition scenarios seem plausible, writes James Frayne in the Telegraph.
• “Mansion tax raid is ‘burglar’s charter’” – Labour’s proposed mansion-tax surcharge is a ‘burglar’s charter’ because anyone will be able to discover an area’s most expensive properties on a databse, warns Camilla Turner in the Telegraph.
• “Civil servants who let in sex offender migrants would lose pensions under Reform” – Reform UK has pledged that civil servants who knowingly let foreign sex offenders into Britain will face prosecution, says Camilla Turner in the Telegraph.
• “When a Foreign Censor Claims Constitutional Injury” – The headlines say a judge has blocked action against Imran Ahmed; what they don’t explain is why the US Government acted in the first place, writes Sayer Ji on his Substack.
• “Christmas Tales from the Frontline” – Gaps in community and social care are pushing end-of-life patients into A&E, says Carl Heneghan on his Trust the Evidence Substack.
• “Shoppers ‘gaslit’ over Net Zero grocery tax” – Local councils have been asked to guarantee the Net Zero “grocery tax” will just be used to fund recyling initiatives and not  to fund other services, writes Camilla Turner in the Telegraph.
• “Why New Zealand’s disastrous pay-per-mile rollout should worry Labour” – New Zealand’s pay-per-mile rollout has been held up as a warning as Labour floats similar road-pricing ideas, says Joe Wright in the Telegraph.
• “How Ed Miliband nationalised Britain’s electricity market by stealth” – Ed Miliband has been accused of nationalising parts of the electricity market by stealth, reports Matt Oliver in the Telegraph.
• “We can’t breathe because of a Drax pellet plant subsidised by UK tax” – Residents near a Drax-linked pellet plant have accused it of choking them, according to the Times.
• “Veganuary champion quits to run meat-eating campaign” – A former Veganuary cheerleader has quit to help run a meat-eating campaign in a high-profile reversal, writes Amy Gibbons in the Telegraph.
• “Ricky Gervais: The only group you can mock now is the working class” – In an interview in the Times, Ricky Gervais says the working class has become the last socially acceptable target for mockery.
• “West Side Story reclassified over ‘transphobic remarks’” – The BBFC has reclassified West Side Story as a 12 citing its “transphobia”, reports Joe Pinkstone in the Telegraph.
• “Britain doesn’t need to become great again – it already is” – Britain has remained one of the world’s most remarkable and globally powerful countries despite a spreading national pessimism, maintains Poland’s former ambassador to the UK, Piotr Wilczek, in the Spectator.
• “It has allowed us to have honest debates about mass migration, which Britain is struggling with now” – On GB News, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, Sarah Rogers, explains why the First Amendment is integral to American democracy and why it was right for the US to deport Imran Ahmed and Clare Melford.

If you have any tips for inclusion in the round-up, email us here.