Newslinks for Sunday 13th July 2025

Streeting to hold talks with BMA seeking to avert strikes

“Talks between Health Secretary Wes Streeting and the British Medical Association (BMA) will take place next week in a bid to avert strike action in England’s NHS, the BBC understands. Resident doctors, previously known as junior doctors, announced earlier this week that they will walk out for five consecutive days from 25 July until 30 July over a dispute about pay with the government. The BMA said strikes would only be called off if next week’s talks produce an offer it can put to its members.” – BBC

• Doctors’ strike: hospitals face bill of £4,000 a shift – Sunday Times
• Striking doctors are really capitalists and they may have a point – Robert Colvile, Sunday Times
• I’ve been a doctor for over 50 years, and I am appalled by the strike – Karol Sikora, Sunday Telegraph
• Militant union bosses urge doctors not to tell their hospitals if they are striking, sparking fears for patient safety – The Sun on Sunday

>Today: ToryDiary: Our Survey is clear on recent matters of life and death, but are such issues becoming more party political? And should they?

McMurdock took bank salary while ‘claiming Covid loans’

“A former Reform MP who allegedly borrowed tens of thousands of pounds in Covid loans received a salary from an international bank throughout the pandemic. James McMurdock suspended himself from Reform UK last week after The Sunday Times posed questions about £70,000 he borrowed through two firms in 2020: one previously dormant, the other with negligible assets. The South Basildon & East Thurrock MP later said he had quit Nigel Farage’s party after taking “specialist advice” which “is privileged and which I choose to keep private at this time.” – Sunday Times

• Essex MP investigated by standards commissioner – BBC

Labour to ditch first past the post mayoral vote system after Reform victories

“Labour is changing the voting system for mayors after Reform UK swept to victory in two mayoral elections in May. As part of a “radical reset”, Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister and Local Government Secretary, will ditch the UK’s first-past-the-post voting system, in which the candidate with the most ballots wins. It will be replaced at mayoral level by a European-style system known as the ‘supplementary vote’, where candidates are ranked by preference.” – Sunday Telegraph

Anti-Semitism ‘normalised in Britain’ report finds

“Anti-Semitism has been normalised in middle-class Britain, a Government-backed report has found. The review warned that Jewish people in the UK were suffering increasing prejudice “in our professions, cultural life [and] public services” and felt they were “tolerated rather than being respected”. The report, commissioned by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the country’s largest Jewish community organisation, found anti-Semitism to be pervasive in the NHS, at universities and in the arts.” – Sunday Telegraph

• Evidence of UK anti-Semitism stunned us – this issue is urgent for the whole country – Penny Mordaunt and John Mann, Sunday Telegraph
• Labour’s war on landlords has an ignoble and rancid pedigree – Zoe Strimpel, Sunday Telegraph

Badenoch: We need a post-Covid reset on the role of the state

“As part of our policy renewal work, the Conservative Party are now working on what a post-Covid reset could look like. This goes beyond slashing spending, which we must do, but is more about reimagining the modern economy and redesigning the state to fit this new model. What does this look like? Smarter welfare that supports people into work. Simpler tax rules that reward those who take risks. And a government that knows when to step back and stop burdening the people who create growth, and instead focus on tough enforcement against those cheating the system. We will be the party of the makers, the workers and the creators.” – Kemi Badenoch, Sunday Telegraph

Philp: We should consider introducing same prison sentence as France on hiring illegal workers here

“The Home Office must urgently end illegal working based at the hotels they run which taxpayers are funding. Action by Immigration Enforcement and the police against illegal working must also be ramped up. The likes of Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just East must face massive fines for what they are enabling. Allowing illegal immigrants to work on their platforms has become part of the business model. They are complicit. Log-ins to work on the platforms are openly bought and sold — a practice called “substitution”, where one person can work in place of another. Deliveroo and others claim driver substitution is fine but it is allowing illegal immigrants and unverified people to make deliveries without proper checks. Those running companies which enable illegal immigrants to work on their platforms, or do not have systems to identify substitutes and verify they are in the UK legally, would be deterred by facing prison. In France, employers can get up to five years in jail for hiring an illegal worker. We should now consider introducing that same prison sentence here.” – Chris Philp, The Sun on Sunday

DUP leader calls for unionist parties to cooperate

“The leader of the Democratic Unionist Party called for more co-operation among unionist parties in his address following the Belfast Twelfth of July parade. “When unionism splits, unionism loses,” said Gavin Robinson, who was the main speaker at the Belfast field. He cited the loss of the Lagan Valley Westminster seat to Alliance in the 2024 general election as an example and called for talks between unionists on more political co-operation.” – BBC

Labour MPs call for cut in Net Zero levies

“Sir Keir Starmer must cut Net Zero levies on industry or risk killing off manufacturing jobs for good, Labour MPs have warned. They say oil and gas producers in particular are at risk of shutting up shop and being moved abroad because of the barmy rules.The report is a major challenge to the PM’s hugely controversial Net Zero policies. British factories are slapped with massive charges for every tonne of carbon they produce. But other big countries – including China and the US – have far lower levies or none at all. In a new hard-hitting report, the Commission for Carbon Competitiveness calls for these levies to be urgently eased to save jobs. Labour MP Henry Tufnell, chairman of the commission, said: “We cannot afford to sleepwalk into a future where the UK achieves its climate goals through deindustrialisation, putting vital jobs at risk.” – The Sun on Sunday

Union chief denounces Rayner as “despicable”

“The head of the Unite union has branded Angela Rayner as ‘despicable’ for failing to back striking bin workers in Birmingham. Deputy Prime Minister Ms Rayner has already been kicked out of Labour’s largest union paymaster over the bitter row, amid fury at her stance on the fiasco blighting Britain’s ‘second city’. And now, in the latest deepening of the rift between Labour and Unite, the union’s general secretary Sharon Graham has issued a barbed broadside at Ms Rayner, claiming she had acted in a ‘despicable way’.” – Mail on Sunday

Reeves to pledge cut in financial regulation

“Rachel Reeves will promise to usher in a Thatcher-style “Big Bang” in the City this week as she vows to slash regulation on banks. The Chancellor will try to put some desperately needed boosters under Britain’s stuttering economy by luring big financial firms to Britain. In her hotly-anticipated Mansion House speech, Ms Reeves will tell banking bosses to forget New York and Paris and bring their staff to London or Leeds instead. But she is under massive pressure as the economy is shrinking and millionaires are fleeing Britain over sky-high taxes.” – The Sun on Sunday

• Reeves has never run a business or created a job that’s why she’s failing – Mel Stride, Sunday Express

Other political news

• EU and Mexico criticise Trump’s proposed 30% tariff – BBC
• Police arrest 70 under terror law at Palestine Action protests – Sunday Times
• Britain must keep the Elgin Marbles, Nigel Farage says – The Sun on Sunday
• Khan’s secret new war on London’s motorists – Mail on Sunday
• MBE for man who led Muslim police boycott over grooming scandal – Sunday Times
• Planning bill is sowing division, says Blake Stephenson – BBC
• Mandelson: ‘There’s a kernel of truth in everything Trump says’ – Sunday Times
• Labour to spend millions on electric car handouts – Sunday Telegraph
• Some school staff in Wales earn less than minimum wage claims Unison – BBC
• Ministers step in to save Teach First – The Observer

Hannan: Only the Conservatives offer limited government

“In Birmingham, one in four working-age adults is inactive. One. In. Four. Even at the height of the Great Depression, the proportion in our second city never rose so high. Then, mass worklessness was treated as the most important challenge facing the nation; now, we barely notice…The rise of Reform means that the Conservatives have little option but to position themselves as the only party that stands for fiscal responsibility, enterprise and limited government. Although that position may attract less than 50 per cent of the electorate, it attracts more than the 18 per cent that the Tories are currently polling. In any case, it is the right thing to do. Labour’s inability to slow, let alone halt, the rise in bills is dooming Britain to a full-scale budgetary and currency crisis. The Conservatives need to provide the diagnosis now so that, when the crash happens, the electorate is ready to gulp down its medicine.” – Daniel Hannan, Sunday Telegraph

• Young people want to work. Yet we are stopping them. – Rocco Forte, Sunday Telegraph

Lawson: Remembering Tebbit’s decency

“I was a beneficiary of his decency when in 1990 Tebbit made his immediately notorious “cricket test” remark. Then, as today, the Indian team was playing a Test series in England. Tebbit declared that those British Asians who cheered for the away team could not be considered loyal British subjects, or properly assimilated. He was at the time a director of the Spectator magazine, and I was its editor. We published a leading article under the headline “No Cheers for Mr Tebbit”, which, among other disobliging observations about his remarks, declared he was “confusing yobbo chauvinism with citizenship”. I wondered if there would be an eruption at the next board meeting, but Tebbit, after making the point that he had been “traduced” by the magazine of which he was a director, went on to say this was a great tribute to its editorial independence, and that this independence was intimately connected with the magazine’s success.” – Dominic Lawson, Sunday Times

Yusuf: We are already finding wasteful council spending

“We uncovered over £10,000 of spending on streaming services Netflix and Disney+, somehow justified as council expenses. This is on top of the thousands that Kent Council spent on TV licences for asylum seekers. The fast food bill alone will turn your stomach. A staggering £118,000 was spent across councils on McDonald’s, Domino’s, Greggs, Nando’s and UberEats. Most of the McDonald’s spend was booked into the education budget. Some education. Then there’s Durham County Council. It blew £23,000 on Amazon, £12,000 on gift cards, £11,000 at Currys, £9,700 via PayPal and nearly £2,000 on Virgin Atlantic – all tied to asylum-related budgets.The public never voted for its money to be lavished on electronics and gift cards for adult asylum seekers, let alone TV licences, Domino’s or trips to bowling alleys. No democratic mandate exists for this grotesque misuse of public funds.” – Zia Yusuf, Mail on Sunday

• Why the Co-operative party is Labour’s best shot at stopping Reform’s rise – The Observer

News in brief

• Why the Lords doesn’t have to accept the Assisted Dying Bill – Nikki Da Costa, The Spectator
• How to save Britain’s high streets – Paul Swinney, CapX
• The Lord’s Prayer is still the most recognised text in English language – Harry Phibbs, Daily Sceptic
• Macron’s swipe at Brexit was an outrage against diplomacy – Brendan O’Neil, Spiked Online
• Why DEI is in decline – J.C.D. Clark, The Critic

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