News Round-Up

• “First by-election poll shows Reform narrowly ahead… but Labour would romp to victory if Andy Burnham had not been blocked” – The first poll for the crunch Gorton & Denton by-election has shown Reform narrowly on track for victory, reports the Mail.
• “Greens shun ‘tree-hugging’ and embrace Gaza in by-election battle” – Zack Polanski has swapped the usual tree-hugging talk for a focus on Gaza at the Gorton & Denton by-election launch, writes Pieter Snepvangers in the Telegraph.
• “The Greens vs Reform by-election will expose Britain’s real dividing line” – The Gorton & Denton by-election is shaping up to be a moral clash between the Greens and Reform UK, says Brendan O’Neill in the Spectator.
• “Labour reported to police over ‘misleading’ attack on Reform UK election candidate” – Labour has been reported to the police for sharing a misleading clip of Reform UK’s by-election candidate Matthew Goodwin, according to GB News.
• “Labour council leaders ‘leant on’ to cancel elections” – Senior Labour figures have been accused of pressuring councils to scrap elections affecting millions, reports the Telegraph.
• “Farage’s defection deadline could make a Tory-Reform pact more likely” – Nigel Farage’s May 7th deadline could pave the way for a Tory-Reform pact to unite the Right and block Labour’s path, writes Andrew Tettenborn in the Spectator.
• “Reheated centrism is no way for Tories to prosper” – Ruth Davidson and her band of has-beens have had their day and lack the radicalism required to shake Britain out of its stifling malaise, says Juliet Samuel in the Times.
• “Badenoch shrugs off trio of Tory defections” – Despite three recent defections, Kemi Badenoch is staying cool and plotting her comeback, writes James Heale in the Spectator.
• “Convicted terrorist who plotted to bomb British consulate and was linked to hook-handed hate preacher Abu Hamza stands in Birmingham council elections to ‘unify the people’” – A convicted terrorist has announced plans to stand in Birmingham council elections, reports the Mail.
• “Ofsted clears school that cancelled Jewish MP’s visit” – Ofsted has found “no evidence” of political bias at a school that cancelled a visit by a Jewish MP, says the Mail.
• “‘Never again’ feels like an increasingly hollow promise” – Jews continue to live in fear as our institutions pander to Islamists, writes Allison Pearson in the Telegraph. It’s clear we are no longer the country that fought the Nazis.
• “The Left’s latest ‘anti-capitalist’ mob will cause chaos in Britain. I’ve seen it first-hand” – In the Telegraph, Chris Matthews warns of a new activist movement openly planning disruption and disorder across Britain.
• “Why Lambeth’s ‘loony Left’ council is still getting ‘rewarded for failure’” – In the Telegraph, Rosa Silverman captures the fury of residents fed up with Lambeth Council’s mismanagement and broken promises.
• “The university bosses getting rich while they’re cutting jobs” – While academics are losing their jobs and students are piling up debts, vice-chancellors have been cashing in with soaring salaries, reveals Melissa Twigg in the Telegraph.
• “Axing gold-plated public sector pensions would save £37 billion a year” – New analysis shows that moving all new public sector workers to less generous pension schemes would save the Treasury more than £37 billion, reports the Times.
• “Keir Starmer will not overhaul welfare system for at least a year” – Starmer has pushed back welfare reforms, making it unlikely any big changes will be made before the next election, according to the Times.
• “Who needs a British FBI when non-woke policing can do the job?” – Traditional policing, without the woke spin, is a better option than a British FBI, argues Bishop Ceirion H. Dewar in TCW.
• “Free speech fears as Scots cops still recording non-criminal ‘hate incidents’” – Cops in Scotland are still recording non-criminal “hate incidents” despite the controversial practice being earmarked for the axe in England and Wales, reports the Scottish Sun.
• “Keir Starmer led witch hunt against UK troops for free” – Sir Keir Starmer spearheaded a legal case that paved the way for hundreds of British soldiers to be charged with alleged war crimes, says the Express.
• “The Iraq veterans ‘betrayed’ by Starmer” – Soldiers hit by false accusations tied to Starmer’s ‘lawfare’ tell the Telegraph about the lasting damage to their lives.
• “Starmer’s oikophobia is erasing so much that is great about Britain” – Starmer’s dislike of British traditions and loyalty to global institutions is wiping out a lot of what makes Britain special, warns Allister Heath in the Telegraph.
• “Brits are being kept in the dark about asylum crime” – Official silence on asylum-related crime is misleading the public, says our very own Laurie Wastell in the Spectator.
• “Labour failed to terminate asylum deal, claims Rwandan Government” – Labour has been accused of “incompetent bungling” after it emerged the Rwandan Government is suing the UK for £100 million over the ditched asylum deal, reports the Mail.
• “Mass immigration deprives Europe of everything European” – Mass immigration is hollowing out Europe’s cultural foundations, warns Freedom Research on Substack.
• “Starmer is kowtowing to China” – In the Telegraph, Kemi Badenoch accuses Sir Keir Starmer of giving away leverage to Beijing before talks had even begun.
• “Starmer claims US spy chiefs backed Chagos deal” – Sir Keir Starmer insists that US intelligence chiefs supported the Chagos deal, despite the President’s recent condemnation of it, according to the Irish News.
• “Britain’s online censorship is as bad as Iran’s, says US” – Washington officials have slammed Britain’s plan to ban VPNs, saying it’s just as bad as Iran’s internet censorship, reports the Telegraph.
• “Two DHS agents put on leave over deadly Minneapolis shooting of nurse Alex Pretti” – The two Border Patrol agents who shot and killed protester Alex Pretti in Minneapolis have been placed on paid administrative leave, confirms the Mail.
• “ICE is melting” – US immigration enforcement is slowly unravelling under political pressure, writes Alex Berenson on his Substack.
• “Iran braces for possible US attack as Trump’s ‘beautiful armada’ arrives in Middle East amid claims regime has slaughtered 30,000 protesters” – Iran is bracing itself after Trump announced a major US naval build-up in the Middle East, says the Mail.
• “This was about killing as many people as possible” – In the Free Press, Amy Kellogg shares the harrowing story of an Iranian protest survivor’s experience of the regime’s brutal crackdown.
• “New Lucy Letby evidence could show she is innocent as expert claims infection that killed child in Glasgow is linked to death she was convicted of” – New medical evidence has raised fresh doubts about Lucy Letby’s convictions, reports the Mail.
• “Case against Lucy Letby is like a soggy sandcastle” – In the wake of recent CPS decisions, the case against Lucy Letby looks dangerously weak, writes Peter Hitchens in the Mail.
• “How to solve the birth rate crisis: lower standards” – In the Spectator, Rebecca Reid says the secret to fixing the UK’s birth rate crisis is simple: lower parenting standards.
• “Hundreds of jobs lost at wind turbine factory despite £20 million bailout” – Wind and solar developers have slammed the Government’s decision to squeeze subsidies by shifting their payments to a lower inflation measure, reports the Telegraph.
• “Retired engineer blew up Ulez camera with homemade bomb” – A retired engineer has been jailed after blowing up an Ulez camera with an improvised explosive device, says LBC. 
• “Why ESG is now a tax on enterprise” – Green policies are draining cash from British businesses, warns Ted Newson in CapX.
• “I must help the planet before I die” – The King has shared his hopes about saving the planet for his grandchildren in a new documentary coming out next month on Amazon Prime, reports the Mail.
• “Women aren’t sure who to blame for rising energy bills, but they don’t like it” – Rising energy bills have left many American women worried and frustrated, reveals the Daily Caller.
• “On the entitlement of political elites” – In Cliscep, John Cullen draws a sharp parallel between the 19th Century Corn Laws protecting elite interests and today’s costly Net Zero policies.
• “The Church of England is broken – is Sarah Mullally really the right person to fix it?” – Our new Archbishop of Canterbury has spent too long in bureaucratic positions and not enough time in ordinary parish ministry, notes Bijan Omrani in the Telegraph.
• “Custody officer claims unfair dismissal over prisoner pronoun refusal” – In the latest FSU case, a former trainee prison custody officer claims he was unfairly sacked for objecting to calling men in women’s prisons ‘she/her’, according to the BBC.
• “Order in the streets and liberty in the tweets” – On Harry Cole Saves The West, Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers warns that a law to shield the US from Ofcom trying to impose the Online Safety Act on US tech companies is on its way, saying the UK has “telegraphed authoritarian intentions”.

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