When Will the Arts Realise Woke has Peaked?
By Joanna Gray
In a recent staging of Jack and the Beanstalk, the giant was revealed to be ‘Mother Earth’, enraged by humanity’s littering and environmental destruction. This dreary and outdated message was delivered to a blameless audience of children and elderly relatives in a tidy, entirely litter-free West Country market town only last week. It was humourless, heavy-handed and left the audience distinctly unmoved. Letters of complaint have been submitted by the grandfather who generously purchased tickets for 14 members of his family. The pantomime nonetheless served as a neat illustration of what might be termed ‘the lag’ – the woke hangover in the arts – which we should expect to persist into 2026. While the EDI/DEI and Net Zero supertankers are indeed beginning, slowly, to change course, a substantial volume of pantomimes, television series, radio plays, advertising campaigns and even £100 million Church of England ‘reparations’ funds were commissioned during the high-water mark of the woke era and have yet to emerge. They will continue to trickle out over the coming months and years, and are unlikely to dry up entirely until late 2027.
The question of whether culture is upstream of politics is a tough one. Andrew Breitbart famously argued that “politics is downstream of culture”, and the recent case of Alaa Abd el-Fattah appears to support the claim. Politicians responded eagerly to public appeals from actors including Olivia Colman and Emma Thompson to secure the release of a supposedly gentle poet, only to discover that they had taken up the cause of an individual who has posted openly antisemitic and anti-white material online.
That said, much contemporary ‘culture’ has not arisen organically at all, but has instead been deliberately confected and financed through political and campaigning initiatives. It is well-documented that the CIA funded and promoted America’s abstract expressionist movement. Conceived in explicit ideological opposition to the Soviet Union’s state-mandated socialist realism, abstract expressionism was deployed as a soft-power vehicle to showcase American individualism and creative freedom. Individual artists such as Pollock and Rothko were not themselves bankrolled, but institutions, museums and arts bodies were. Funding streams were aligned with the geopolitical message the US wished to project: abstract individualism versus state-enforced conformity.
Comparable mechanisms have since been used to advance green and EDI agendas across the arts and wider cultural sphere. In some cases, the ‘art’ produced is a direct function of the funding criteria attached to it. Programmes such as the Arts Council Environmental Programme or the British Council’s International Collaboration grants explicitly tie financial support to commitments on climate change and equality, diversity and inclusion. Charlotte Gill has been particularly effective in documenting and exposing this kind of contrived cultural production.
At times, artists and producers are refreshingly candid about their intentions. British soap operas, for example, openly incorporated climate change storylines to coincide with and support the COP26 summit. Returning to the pantomime in question, it strains credulity to suppose that such a sanctimonious environmental message emerged spontaneously from local playwrights in a pristine market town. It is far more plausible that the message originated with cultural elites and filtered down, in diluted form, as ‘vibes’ to a provincial theatre in 2025.
Although certain funding streams – USAID in particular – are now being curtailed, there remain many millions of dollars’ worth of arts grants in circulation, with woke ideology still working its way through the system. The British Council’s planned 2026 exhibition, An Ecological Alarm at the Science Museum, is an obvious example. If you find yourself quietly rolling your eyes at the television or cinema screen when an improbable actor is cast against type – Will Sharpe as Mozart in Sky’s adaptation of Amadeus, or Hong Chau as that most northern of Englishwomen, the housekeeper Nelly Dean, in Emerald Fennell’s 2026 Wuthering Heights – it is worth remembering that these decisions were taken at the tail end of the woke era.
As the tap of EDI and Net Zero funding and narratives emanating from the US is turned down – if not shut off altogether – the arts are likely to follow. There are already signs of improvement. The recent Christmas advertisement created by House 337 for the Royal Navy offers a straightforward story of quiet male heroism and female domesticity; a campaign that would have been unthinkable just two years ago. Likewise, the intense anticipation surrounding Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey – a story of male war, endurance and the struggle to return home – suggests that our recent embarrassment about human achievement, in favour of cartoons and Marvel franchises, may finally be waning.
If the dead hand of state-funded, arm’s-length arts propaganda is indeed losing its grip, we may be entering a period of genuine artistic revival. Pantomimes might once again aim to be funny rather than admonitory; television panel shows might rediscover humour; ambitious feature films might even be commissioned about the small band of keyboard warriors who created Lockdown Sceptics in opposition to Covid authoritarianism. The BBC could conceivably produce an epic 12-part adaptation of Flashman, starring Dominic West. One can only imagine how much fun we might all have.
Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence coach.
National Trust Bans Volunteer After He Pointed Out Spelling Mistakes
By Will Jones
The National Trust blacklisted a volunteer, banning him from volunteering, after he pointed out spelling mistakes on its website. The Telegraph has the story.
Andy Jones, 71, a volunteer at the trust for more than a decade, sent a dossier of thousands of misspellings and factual errors to the charity’s Director-General in the hope that they would be corrected.
After sending a strongly worded complaint to his local branch, in which he criticised the trust’s Director-General for not responding, he was told that his comments were “not in line with our organisational values” and was banned from volunteering at any of its sites.
His case is the latest example of the trust dismissing or suspending volunteers over claims that they do not meet its “culture” or “values”.
Earlier this year, more than a dozen volunteer gardeners on the Isle of Wight were suspended after managers claimed that some of their behaviour did not align with the trust’s “inclusive culture”.
The separate cases appear to be examples of the organisation’s pursuit of a progressive culture, which has included exploring properties’ links with slavery and colonialism and asking some staff to wear rainbow lanyards.
Responding to the cases highlighted by the Telegraph, Restore Trust, a pressure group comprised of members and supporters of the organisation, accused the charity of “disciplining or sacking volunteers for their opinions”.
Mr Jones volunteered for the National Trust for 14 years, first at the Woolbeding estate, in West Sussex, and later at Hindhead Commons and the Devil’s Punch Bowl in the Surrey Hills. His roles included everything from gardening and burning waste to dealing with membership queries and offering guidance to visitors on walks.
Last year, on his own initiative, he reviewed the trust’s web presence and created a dossier of the mistakes.
These ranged from typos such as “toliets” and “permanant” and grammatical errors such as “take a peak” to misspelling the name of the pre-Raphaelite artist Lucy Madox Brown as Maddox Brown.
In November 2024, he sent the dossier to Hilary McGrady, the trust’s Director-General, who is from Northern Ireland, in a politely worded email asking if she would “be so kind as to forward this to whomsoever has the authority and resources to address these errors”. Ms McGrady was awarded a CBE for “services to heritage” in the King’s New Year Honours.
Mr Jones received no reply and sent a follow-up email in January 2025, part of which said: “I sincerely hope my work is helpful to the National Trust.” Again, he received no response.
Frustrated, he quit as a volunteer at his local site. He sent a strongly worded email to his manager, part of which said: “Still no reply, acknowledgement, let alone thanks from the Oirish [sic] Dame on over 400 hours spent on her crappy not fit for purpose webs–te.”
A manager responded: “I was really disappointed by the language contained within your email. These comments are not in line with our organisational values.”
She said his relationship with the trust had “irreversibly broken down” and that “we will no longer consider you for any future volunteer positions at any of our places”.
Mr Jones admitted to the Telegraph that his comments were not appropriate but claimed that he was stressed at the time as he was suffering from stage-two prostate cancer.
Worth reading in full.
The Marvellous Miseries of Multiculturalism
The writer is in Australia.
I start this first column of the new year with the heavy heart that I am sure all our readers have for the families of the victims of the horrific mass-murders on Bondi Beach just before Christmas. And let us not deal in the usual Labour Party euphemisms, misdirecting abstractions and Kumbaya platitudes. This was the deliberate attempt to murder Jews, by Islamic extremists, done solely because they wanted to kill Jews. And they did, with the odd non-Jewish bystander thrown in. That makes Australia, outside of Israel itself, the country where the most Jews have been murdered in a single incident since the Second World War. Embarrassed? And all this happened after (let’s be blunt and truthful) Labour governments around Australia allowed radical Islamic clerics to preach their poison. And after they (with a bit of help from the courts) allowed pro-Palestinian protesters to shut down the Sydney harbour bridge – when no sane person believes an anti-Covid lockdown protest would ever have been allowed to do that. And after this country was the only one on earth to let in large numbers of Gaza people, the very same people who have been subjected for years, both at school and in their media, to the most vile anti-Jewish indoctrination imaginable. Nor is there any remotely sane comparison to be made of Islamic terrorism to ‘far-Right, neo-Nazi’ extremism – the go-to comparison of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Cabinet. Go and count up whether Islamic terrorists or neo-Nazis have caused more deaths in Australia. Or Britain. Or anywhere in the last 50 years. The death count for each isn’t in the same galaxy, let alone solar system or postcode. In fact, have a look at the statistics on mass murders motivated by religion around the developed world these past few decades. One religion is the cause of well over 90% of all these myriad murders – more than all other religions put together and multiplied by your favourite integer. And you know which religion it is. I know which one. And so do the politicians.
It gets worse. You see there is good reason to be ashamed of this country that I came to in 2005. That’s because it is simply a fact, today in 2026, that many Jewish Australians now feel safer in Israel than they do here in Australia. And yes, I have Jewish friends who are leaving here to move to Israel in the name of their family’s safety. Who can blame them because that is a highly defensible call. Still, let that sink in and then feel the seething anger I feel for what the political caste in this country has done to the place over the last 40 years. Of course, this Albanese Government has been the worst. But let’s not forget that Coalition governments also ran huge incoming immigration programmes with little thought of assimilation or selectivity, all in the name of some feel-good, trite notion of multiculturalism.
And this brings me to the topic of multiculturalism. As I have said in past columns, it has been a massive failure. Be clear though. I don’t mean that sane immigration that accepts people with specific skills to offer, that refuses to deal in doling out welfare to new arrivals and that aggressively insists on assimilation has been a failure. That works. Indeed, my wife and I are beneficiaries of that sort of immigration. No, what is and has been a disastrous failure is this progressive-Left, vague-and-amorphous warm fuzzy known as ‘multiculturalism’. You see, multiculturalism deals in either untruths or patently unwise outcomes. The untruth is that all cultures are equal. In fact, they simply are not. Judeo-Christian Western culture has delivered the freest, wealthiest societies in human history, ones that gave birth to the industrial revolution and the scientific worldview. In significant part that was due to the Enlightenment (and in my view the Scottish Hume-Smith variant more so than the French Rousseau-Voltaire one). Cultures that kill or scare witless those deemed apostates have, shall we say, not done so well. Cultures that downplay curiosity and open debate and disagreement in favour of enforced orthodoxy don’t deliver those either. One of the worst things to happen to the anglosphere has been the progressive cancer from within that has eaten away at our patriotism (in the sense of love of country) and our understanding of the net-benefit greatness of our heritage, imposing a sort of hairshirt ‘only focus on our faults’ worldview. In short, our schools and universities have been captured (and in my time here Coalition governments have done nada, nothing, zero about it – in fact, unis got worse every single year of the nine years of Liberal (conservative) Prime Ministers).
And this brings me to the bluntly stated claims of New South Wales Premier Chris Minns. In effect, late last year he said that the reason we Australians can’t have freedom of speech of the sort he said you see in the US is because Australia wants to hold together a multicultural community. So the obvious inference is that Minns thinks multiculturalism comes at the cost of free speech. Or at least it eats into our scope to speak freely, to criticise and even to point out actual true facts about the world (think here of our woeful, Coalition-appointed eSafety Commissioner who tried to shut down a video of an actual attack by a Muslim extremist on a Christian Bishop). And in a way Premier Minns is correct. If (and do note the ‘if’) we are going to turn Australia into a latter-day Beirut or Lebanon, a country of tribes and competing religious blocks, then words can and will set off violent confrontations and killings. So we would then have to limit speech. And we would have to characterise open, honest criticisms of religious outlooks as ‘racist abuse’ because we would have created Beirut-style ghettos of incompatibility. Free speech is being attacked in this country because our political caste has failed us. Its members are protecting their own arses. ‘Holding together a multicultural community’, Premier Minns ultimate good, is not worth the paper it shouldn’t have been written on. Open criticism. Free speech of the sort Australians enjoyed for decades if not a century. Thick skins. A ‘names can never hurt me’ resilience. These and more are all being sacrificed by today’s political failures, the people who have brought us to where we are. It’s time for change. We need a massive cut in immigration. We need to stop propping up a Ponzi scheme university sector. We need assimilation. But Lord knows it would be miracle to expect this from the Coalition.
Dr James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law at Queensland University. This article was first published in Spectator Australia.
Sadiq Khan’s “Disappointing” Fireworks Slammed for Shoehorning in Advert for Wicked
By Will Jones
Sir Sadiq Khan’s New Year firework celebrations in London were slammed as “disappointing” after shoehorning in an advert for the new Wicked movie. The Mail has the story.
The display from the Mayor featured prominent visuals and songs from Wicked: For Good in an ‘event partnership’ between his office and Universal Pictures.
Cynthia Erivo, who stars as Elphaba in the movie, recorded a message encouraging people to “embrace the magic that we all have inside and come together, for good”.
The 100,000 people lining the banks of the River Thames and millions more watching on BBC television saw visuals from the film projected onto the London Eye.
But viewers were unimpressed, with one tweeting: “I found the fireworks boring, and why was there basically an advert for Wicked in the middle?”
Another wrote: “The Wicked ad in the middle of the fireworks OMFG. Late-stage capitalism has gone too far.” And a third said: “The Wicked ad felt weird though, yes? Why did my fireworks come with a side of marketing?”
The song “Defying Gravity” played as fireworks lit up the sky in the film’s pink and green colours along with images of Elphaba and Glinda, played by Ariana Grande.
The message from Erivo – recently made an MBE – said: “Hello fellow Londoners. As we travel the Yellow Brick Road into a New Year, let us stand for positivity and hope, embrace the magic that we all have inside and come together, for good.”
This was followed by an excerpt from “Defying Gravity”, before Erivo added: “Happy New Year.”
It follows the release of Wicked: For Good in cinemas on November 22nd 2025.
The production used a technology called hologauze, which uses semi-transparent fabric to create 3D-like visual effects by projecting images onto it.
It came just hours after London-born Erivo was made an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) in the New Year Honours list for services to music and drama.
This year the 38 year-old will play Dracula in an adaptation of the novel in London’s West End and is expected to be Oscar nominated for her role in Wicked: For Good.
Worth reading in full.
US Government Halts Major Offshore Wind Construction Citing Fears of Radar Interference
In a move that has sent shock waves through the offshore wind business, the Trump Administration has ordered a pause in the leases of five turbine projects under construction. Affecting large industrial parks off the US East Coast, the building pause has been ordered due to national security radar interference risks that are said to have been identified by the Department of War in recent classified reports. The growing problems of radar interference have been known for some time so it is hardly a surprise that the wind-despising US Government has acted on the threat. Meanwhile, the UK is currently run by wind farm fanatics and the Government was recently forced to spend £1.5 billion on vital air defence systems to mitigate ‘clutter’ corruptions caused by increasingly large offshore turbines blades.
Large wind turbines cause Doppler effects that can create false targets for radar. The possible corruption of the tracking of approaching enemy threats is a real and growing military concern, but the general clutter can also affect civil coastal surveillance, air traffic control and even meteorological observations. A real worry is that there does not appear to be a simple, inexpensive fix. To keep the Net Zero fantasy flying, the British Government has been forced to spend 2.5% of the annual defence budget to try to fix the problem with a number of experimental solutions.
With President Trump in charge, the Americans are less inclined to be so generous with taxpayers’ money. Announcing the move, the Government said its action “ensures that national security risks posed by offshore projects are appropriately addressed and the United States’ Government retains its ability to effectively defend the American people”. New information on wind farm radar risk might be contained in the classified files, but it is interestingly that a 2024 Department of Energy report is said to have noted a radar’s threshold for false alarm detection can be increased to reduce clutter, “but an increased detection threshold could cause the radar to ‘miss actual targets’”. In other words, trying to eliminate clutter also runs the danger of taking out vital life or death information.
There is now considerable political risk in building wind farms in America, with Ørsted’s share price plunging around 14% following news of the East Coast pause. Overall, the largest wind farm operator in the world has lost about 60% of its value in the last 12 months.
With no definitive solution to hand, the radar problem in territories like the UK will only get worse. Bigger blades and political demands for more wind energy inevitably mean more radar clutter. To date, mitigating ‘solutions’ include computer fixes, radar upgrades, alternative sensors and the use of specialised manufacturing materials. Alas, none of the fixes are proven to fully eradicate the growing problem. Coming down the track in the future are floating wind turbines, which further complicate radar tracking due to positional variability.
In the worse-case basis, Britain may need a secondary backup by a costly transfer of clutter-corrupted ground facilities to the air. Professor Justin Bronk is a leading expert on air power and technology and he recently noted that unless there was a “breakthrough” in mitigating the effect of wind turbines on ground-based radar, “Britain is going to need a more capable airborne detection service”. This should not surprise. Having a reliable back-up system available at enormous expense is a regular feature of many Net Zero policies.
It has been a very bad year for the windmills. Inconvenient facts have been popping up everywhere, although the Net Zero fixated mainstream media almost invariably turn a blind eye. It has recently become obvious that the Amazon rainforest is being looted for balsa wood, an important core ingredient of turbine blades, following the decimation of sustainable plantations. Such is the demand for the strong but extraordinarily lightweight wood, it is estimated that at least 50% of the world’s balsa demand is currently being supplied by illegal logging in virgin rainforest.
If this scandal troubled the consciences of the 50,000 people attending the recent COP30 in the Brazilian rainforest city of Belém, their concerns failed to make their way into the public prints. But then trees cut down to assuage the mythical climate crisis don’t seem to count, as evidenced by the 100,000 mature specimens that were destroyed to build an eight-mile highway to carry delegates to and from the conference airport.
Bats and birds don’t seem to count for much either when humans try to fiddle with the weather. Millions are killed around the world every year by fast-revolving skyscraper-high blades and few green activists care. It is not uncommon to hear the excuse that bats and birds are more at risk from climate change, an unproven suggestion that is simply beneath contempt. A fiscally incontinent British government is prepared to spend £100 million on a 1,000 metre bat protection tunnel on the new high-speed railway from London to Birmingham, but stays silent on the avian windmill scandal. Elsewhere, evidence grows of the widespread ecological damage caused by wind turbines. A recent paper published in Science found massive ecological effects cascading through the waters around offshore wind parks. Not only did such installations increase sea and atmospheric temperatures but they reshaped the upper ocean by destabilising marine food supplies.
In the hard-Left Net Zero fantasy world, bats and eagles don’t matter a flying flamingo. But national security trumps all. Popularist governments-in-hoping such as Reform in the UK present a clear political risk to the financial wellbeing of the wind energy business. Efforts to bodge together some fix to the radar problem are likely to continue in the next couple of years, whatever the financial cost.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.
Zohran Mamdani Becomes First New York Mayor Sworn in Using Koran
By Will Jones
Zohran Mamdani has become the first New York Mayor sworn in using the Koran, the Muslim election winner taking the oath of office as the clock ticked past midnight on Thursday night. The Telegraph has more.
The ceremony was laden with symbolism.
As well as using Islam’s holiest book, the self-proclaimed democratic socialist chose a disused gilded age subway station at Old City Hall as the setting to symbolise the city’s ability to think big and as a nod to the workers who keep modern New York running.
“When Old City Hall Station first opened in 1904 — one of New York’s 28 original subway stations — it was a physical monument to a city that dared to be both beautiful and build great things that would transform working peoples’ lives,” Mr Mamdani said ahead of the ceremony.
The station was closed in 1945, its tiled arches, chandeliers and vaulted ceilings seen only by a handful of visitors each year.
New York law requires that a new mayor take over on January 1st. It has become traditional to take the oath of office at midnight, before a bigger celebration later in the day.
He will use three Korans throughout the day, including his grandfather’s for the midnight ceremony, according to the New York Times.
It represents the end of an extraordinary journey for the 34 year-old politician. He upended the Democratic Party to win its nomination before overcoming a lack of name recognition to win the election in November with a populist manifesto that focused on affordability.
He campaigned to create universal child care, make public buses free and to freeze rents on a million apartments.
His radical programme helped inspire a record-breaking turnout of more than two million voters. And his supporters propelled him to a 10-point victory over Andrew Cuomo, the former Democratic state governor running as an independent, and well ahead of Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate.
Read the full report here.
Writing in the Telegraph, David Christopher Kaufman warns that Mamdani is “every bit as bad as many New Yorkers fear”.
For both the slim majority of New Yorkers who voted for him and the near half of the electorate who opposed him, Mamdani’s entry into Gracie Mansion caps the most improbable political journey in modern American history.
How on earth did a man, barely 34 years old, with an Ozempic-slim resume and practically zero managerial experience, rise to lead the cultural and economic heart of the United States, if not the entire planet? And how will his populist, socialist, anti-Zionist worldview translate into governing a city of nearly nine million residents and overseeing a workforce some 300,000 strong?
The truth is nobody really knows. But the evidence of the months since his election victory in November isn’t promising.
Mamdani is sticking with his penchant for Trumpian showmanship, hosting a massive block party to celebrate his swearing in literally at the doorstep of City Hall. However, the festivities are likely to ring hollow for millions of New Yorkers nervous about what is likely to come next.
Some will have been reassured that he is retaining Jessica Tisch, New York’s popular police commissioner, a billionaire heiress and long-time public servant who, under Eric Adams, New York’s outgoing mayor, has helped usher in the largest drop in violent crime in New York City’s recent history. To most voters, keeping Tisch makes obvious sense, particularly given Mamdani’s own reputation for being soft on public safety.
Mamdani’s base, however, isn’t so happy. Last week, more than 3,500 public defenders and legal service attorneys released a statement demanding Mamdani send Tisch packing. Rather than laud ongoing NYPD successes, the Left-leaning group claims she has led a campaign against political protest – particularly when it comes to the violent pro-Palestinian demonstrations which have roiled New York City for the past two years.
So far, Mamdani insists that Tisch is here to stay. But few should be confident that he will stick to his word. The police commissioner’s fate – and the fate of New York safety – stands as the first test of Mamdani’s ability to face down New York’s increasingly fractious ‘progressive’ voters for the good of the city. My guess? Tisch will be out by springtime.
Mamdani’s other major challenge will be convincing New York City Jews – or at least the two-thirds who did not vote for him – that they need not be afraid. Again, the signs are not promising.
According to a late December Anti-Defamation League report, 20% of Mamdani’s administrative appointees have ties to anti-Zionist groups. Some have gone on record as describing Hamas’s October 7th attack as “justified” and “resistance”; others backed pro-Palestinian campus encampments. The fact that Mamdani has also appointed celebrity anti-Zionists such as actor Cynthia Nixon and YouTuber Ms Rachel to his influential inauguration committee is adding to the community’s feelings of unease.
Mamdani has insisted that he will prioritise combating antisemitism, boosting anti-hate violence programme funding by 800%. But he also intends to dismantle the NYPD’s strategic response group, whose specially-trained officers responded to the waves of pro-Palestinian protests, as well as mass-casualty incidents such as July’s Midtown Manhattan office shooting.
Worth reading in full.
Small Boat Crossings Surge Despite Starmer’s Pledge to Smash Gangs
By Will Jones
Small boat crossings of illegal migrants surged last year despite Sir Keir Starmer’s election pledge to smash the people-smuggling gangs. The Telegraph has the story.
A total of 41,472 migrants arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel in 2025 – up from 36,816 in the previous year and 41% higher than 2023’s total of 29,437.
It meant last year was the second highest annual total for small boat crossings on record, 9% below the all-time high of 45,774 in 2022. Some 65,000 migrants have reached Britain across the Channel since Labour came to power in summer 2024.
The average number of people per boat rose again in 2025, continuing a trend that began in 2018. There was an average of 62 arrivals per boat last year, up from 53 in 2024 and 49 in 2023.
For much of last year, the number of arrivals was running at the highest level since data was first published in 2018. However, it fell short of setting a new record because of bad weather in the last two months of the year, including a 28-day period when no migrants arrived.
The surge in crossings comes despite Sir Keir’s pledge in the run up to the general election to “smash the gangs”, with new legislation giving law enforcement agencies counter-terrorism style powers to crackdown on people smugglers.
Labour has also sought new agreements to prevent migrants from crossing the Channel in the first place, including a pledge from France to intervene at sea for the first time to stop the boats before they leave French waters.
The strategy, agreed with France at the same time as the ‘one in, one out’ deal to return Channel migrants to France, has yet to be implemented because of police union concerns at the risk to life from stopping small boats at sea.
The ‘one in, one out’ agreement has also so far remained a trial, with 193 migrants sent back to France and 195 legitimate asylum seekers entering the UK since the scheme was launched in the summer.
Worth reading in full.
News Round-Up
- “Crans-Montana fire: at least 40 people killed in ski bar tragedy” – At least 40 people were killed and 115 injured, including many teenagers, when fire ripped through a bar popular with British holidaymakers during New Year’s Eve celebrations at a Swiss ski resort, reports the Times.
- “Uber swerves Rachel Reeves’s ‘taxi tax’” – Uber has rewritten contracts to shift VAT liability on to drivers and blunt Labour’s tax plans, reveals DM News.
- “Poor get poorer under Labour” – Britain’s cost-of-living squeeze has continued to hit lower-income households hardest, reports the Telegraph.
- “Take on ‘weird’ Whitehall, Keir Starmer told after Fattah row” – Sir Keir Starmer must confront vested interests in Whitehall whose “fringe” obsessions are “emasculating” the Government, his former Director of Strategy tells the Times. Read his piece here.
- “Starmer’s mentor attacks plan to scrap jury trials” – Edward Fitzgerald, regarded as one of the most brilliant lawyers of his generation, has criticised proposals to limit jury trials, says the Telegraph.
- “Islamist killer wins £240,000 battle over his human rights” – A convicted double killer has secured a large compensation settlement from the British state, reports the Mail.
- “Alaa Abd el-Fattah and our misplaced priorities” – In the UK, everything that should be a priority is not a priority, and the last things that should be a priority are made a priority by governments of all stripes, writes Douglas Murray in the Spectator.
- “Don’t be surprised by failure – that’s what our state is designed to do” – Politicians are deluded if they believe they could do a better job leading without committing to a total reorganisation of government, says David Frost in the Telegraph.
- “Dominic Cummings on Whitehall’s plan to destroy Nigel Farage” – Cummings says Whitehall is preparing to bend the rules to stop Reform winning power, writes Tom Goodenough in the Spectator.
- “Michael Gove admits regret at turning on Boris Johnson” – Michael Gove has expressed regret about his decision to blow up Boris Johnson’s leadership bid after the Brexit referendum, according to Sky News.
- “Wes Streeting must stop puberty blocker trial – it is about right and wrong” – The NHS is set to run a shameful experiment on children, warns Jonathan Hinder in the Express. It must be stopped.
- “Johnny Rotten slams Kneecap’s ‘Death to IDF’ chants and backs Israel” – Johnny Rotten has condemned anti-Israel chants in music culture and voiced support for Israel, according to Israellycool.
- “Just how insane did Democrats become on immigration?” – On Substack, Alex Berenson charts the US Democratic Party’s shift on borders through its own rhetoric and policies.
- “Former FBI agent Nicole Parker explains how DEI split the agency and led to disaster” – A former FBI agent has blamed diversity policies for falling standards and collapsing morale, reports Miranda Devine in the New York Post.
- “No, Yale Climate Connections, dramatic photos don’t prove climate change effects” – Climate is measured over decades, not captured in a frame, says Anthony Watts in ClimateRealism.
- “Climate policies make California unaffordable, not climate change” – California’s soaring living costs are a result of policy choices, not climate change, writes Linna Lueken in ClimateRealism.
- “Good news, everyone! Extreme weather isn’t getting deadlier – despite what the media says” – Extreme weather is a fact of life, but it kills far fewer people now because societies are better prepared, better informed and more resilient, says Anthony Watts in Watts Up With That?
- “Claim: some populations are approaching the limits to climate adaption” – Claims about climate adaptation limits are misleading and repetitive, writes Eric Worrall in Watts Up With That?
- “Solar is 10 times more expensive than gas” – On RealClearEnergy, the Heartland Institute’s James Taylor shows that solar power remains far more expensive than gas.
- “King Charles’s documentary calls for eco ‘revolution’” – A documentary about the King’s “call to revolution” is set to be released as he hopes to spread his philosophy about humanity and nature to a new audience, says the Times.
- “Class struggle” – In the Claremont Review of Books, Heather Mac Donald reviews Scott Johnston’s The Sandersons Fail, a Manhattan satire on modern identity politics seen through the lens of class conflict.
- “Legendary footage from Iran today” – On X, Nioh Berg posts footage of Iranian security officers being chased by revolutionaries on the streets of Tehran.
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