Mayor will say city could look at bidding for 2036 or 2040 Games as post-Covid morale boost for nation
Sadiq Khan is pledging to look at bringing the Olympics back to London within 20 years if he is re-elected as mayor on Thursday.
In a speech at an amateur boxing club in Earlsfield, south-west London, on Tuesday, Khan will set out the prospect of another London Olympics as a post-Covid morale boost that he argues would extend beyond the capital.
Continue reading...Country Milk’s trade with the EU has nosedived with the dairy industry particularly badly affected by new customs rules
A small error in the paperwork – a box ticked by mistake – and the tanker of butter oil was held at French customs for five days, with veterinary authorities at the border threatening to destroy it. The debacle nearly cost the tanker’s exporter, dairy company County Milk, a six-figure sum. After fraught negotiations, the cargo was eventually repatriated.
“You don’t need too many of those to be destroyed and you are in dire straits,” says Phil Langslow, trading director at County Milk, the UK’s largest privately owned dairy ingredients business.
Continue reading...Ciaran Martin criticises post-Brexit attempts to ‘redesign’ UK based on old notion of English sovereignty
The United Kingdom’s unity faces being destabilised by “flag-waving unionism” from English nationalist politicians, one of the most senior officials to emerge from Northern Ireland’s traditionally Catholic community has warned.
Ciaran Martin, who created the framework for Scotland’s 2014 independence poll as the Cabinet Office’s constitution director, said the “complex identities” of Northern Ireland faced being undermined by post-Brexit attempts to “redesign” the British state based on “a narrow 17th-century notion of English sovereignty”.
Continue reading...Foreign secretary says it is ‘difficult to argue against’ suggestion the dual national is being held state hostage
Iran’s treatment of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe amounts to torture, the British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has said, as the Foreign Office downplayed an Iranian state TV report saying Britain would pay a £400m debt to secure her release.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said the family had “heard nothing” about a deal to secure her release, as hopes were raised by the suggestion that the long-running dispute had been resolved.
Continue reading...As it marks its hundredth year, figures from the region talk of identity and allegiance – and the humour running under it all
The centenary of the founding of Northern Ireland is to be marked on Monday – albeit overshadowed by political turmoil and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Eight figures from Northern Ireland reflect on a contested centenary and the nuances of identity.
Continue reading...Foreign secretary says he has ‘no idea’ if claim is true and he will not comment on ‘tittle-tattle’
Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, has said he does not know if a Conservative donor was asked to pay for Boris Johnson’s childcare costs, amid new allegations of undeclared donations and loans to fund the prime minister’s lifestyle.
Following reports that Johnson sought payments from a donor to help pay for his one-year-old son’s care, Raab told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday: “I have no idea, you don’t have conversations like that with the PM. I can’t comment on every little bit of gossip that’s in the newspapers. The last thing you asked me about, I think, is an example of tittle-tattle.”
Continue reading...Stories of Conservative sleaze appear to be having an impact as Keir Starmer faces his first electoral test as Labour leader on 6 May
Labour has slashed the Tories’ poll lead in half as more voters conclude that Boris Johnson is corrupt and dishonest ahead of this week’s bumper set of local and devolved elections.
The latest Opinium poll for the Observer shows the Conservative lead has fallen from 11 points to five points after a week in which the prime minister was at the centre of allegations over the refurbishment of his Downing Street flat, and criticised for reportedly saying he would rather see “bodies pile high” than order another Covid-19 lockdown.
Continue reading...Stella Creasy launches campaign to change law after a boy took pictures of her feeding her baby on a train
An MP has described her “horror” after she was photographed while breastfeeding on public transport, as she and a fellow MP launch a campaign to criminalise the taking of such pictures.
Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow, said she was breastfeeding her then four-month-old on a overground train near Highbury and Islington in north London when she noticed a teenage boy laughing and taking pictures.
Continue reading...This is about so much more than wallpaper. A pattern of lying, betrayal and callousness is ruining lives
Yes, it’s a real scandal. Despite the apparent absurdity of a Westminster village obsessing over soft furnishings and the precise class connotations of the John Lewis brand, there is a hard offence underneath all those cushions and throws. By refusing to tell us who first paid for the refurbishment of his Downing Street flat, Boris Johnson is denying us – his boss – the right to know who he owes and what hold they might have on him.
Offence is the right word because, even before the Electoral Commission determines whether the law on political funding was broken, Johnson’s failure to come clean may well be, by itself, a breach of the ministerial code. That bars not only actual conflicts of interest between ministers’ “public duties and their private interests” but even the perception of such conflicts. In refusing to tell us who first paid that bill for overpriced wallpaper, or to give full details of who paid for his December 2019 holiday in Mustique, Johnson has offended the public trust.
Continue reading...Some programmes will have their funding cut by 85% or more as the UK reduces its spending
Britain announced last year that it would cut aid spending from 0.7% of national income to 0.5% – a reduction of more than £4bn. The cuts are not split evenly, with some programmes having funding reduced by 85% or more.
The Foreign Office said it would still spend more than £10bn this year to fight poverty, tackle the climate crisis and improve global health and would return to its 0.7% target when economic circumstances allowed – but it did not give a date or criteria for this. Among the cuts so far are:
Continue reading...Leading UK expert says loss of funding certain to damage attempts to tackle virus and variants
Vital coronavirus research, including a project tracking variants in India, has had its funding reduced by up to 70% under swingeing cuts to the UK overseas aid budget.
One of Britain’s leading infectious disease experts said the UK government cuts were certain to damage attempts to tackle the virus and track new variants.
Continue reading...In Enniskillen for a long time, the unionists kept winning. Now the feeling is of Britishness being lost
Covered up and boxed in a storage vault in the town of Enniskillen, two historic oil paintings gathered dust. King William III commissioned the portraits of himself and Queen Mary after he routed Catholic forces in the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, a turning point in Irish history that established Protestant ascendance.
Unionists revere King Billy, also known as William of Orange, as a hero who saved their settler ancestors. The portraits used to gaze down from Enniskillen town hall, a reminder of their link to the crown, until the council voted to remove them in 2002.
Continue reading...Analysis: Boris Johnson’s fiancee has no official role, but has helped shape the personnel and vision of the PM’s office
“She’s buying gold wallpaper,” Boris Johnson is said to have told panicked aides last February of his fiancee Carrie Symonds’ interior decorating plans for their No 11 flat. The costs far exceeded the £30,000 allowance for prime ministers, and apparent attempts last year to cover them by other means – Conservative party funds, a charitable trust and Tory donors – seem to have failed.
As well as Dominic Cummings’ diatribe over the “unethical, foolish and possibly illegal” refurbishment spending saga, Helen MacNamara, the Cabinet Office’s director general of propriety and ethics, was also reported to be strongly opposed.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Labour asks parliamentary commissioner for standards to investigate any potential breach of MPs’ code of conduct
Boris Johnson’s refurbishment of his Downing Street residence could be investigated by parliament’s sleaze watchdog, a move that would mean the prime minister could be personally sanctioned if found to have breached conduct rules.
The Guardian understands an extensive complaint has been submitted to the parliamentary commissioner for standards, Kathryn Stone, with powers that can lead to suspensions of MPs or even byelections if serious breaches have occurred.
Continue reading...PM makes solo visit to memorial wall despite families asking him for weeks to meet them there
Boris Johnson has made a solo visit under cover of darkness to the National Covid Memorial Wall, infuriating bereaved families who have been asking for weeks for him to “walk the wall” and meet them there.
Johnson was spotted at the wall on Tuesday night, a day after allegations – which he denies – that he made remarks to the effect he would rather let “bodies pile high” than announce another lockdown.
Continue reading...Electoral Commission believes there are ‘reasonable grounds’ to suspect offences around renovation of 11 Downing Street
The Electoral Commission has launched an inquiry that has the potential to imperil Boris Johnson’s premiership as the “cash for curtains” row increasingly engulfed the prime minister.
With sweeping powers to call witnesses and refer matters to the police, the watchdog said its probe was necessary because it already believed there were “reasonable grounds” to suspect that payments for expensive renovations to Johnson’s Downing Street flat could constitute several offences.
Continue reading...Foreign Office says Britain ‘first out of the blocks’ with help but Labour calls it a drop in the ocean
The UK has been “the first out of the blocks” with help for India, but will not send vaccines to the Covid-ravaged country until Britain has surplus supplies, the Foreign Office minister Nigel Adams has told MPs.
He said the UK was responding to the Indian government’s needs, and had been the first country to provide practical support “in the face of heartbreaking scenes that had shocked us all”. He said he had friends of Indian heritage who were “at their wit’s end”, and vowed the UK would be at the forefront in providing aid.
Continue reading...Labour leader’s attack on PM came an hour after Electoral Commission launched inquiry into No 11 refurbishment
A furious Boris Johnson tried to fight off allegations he broke donation reporting rules, as Sir Keir Starmer branded him “Major Sleaze” in the “cash for curtains” row increasingly engulfing the prime minister.
An hour after the Electoral Commission launched an investigation and said there were “reasonable grounds” to suspect payments for renovations to Johnson’s Downing Street flat could constitute several offences, the prime minister was accused of focusing on petty personal issues instead of the pandemic.
Continue reading...Scale of aid cut emerges in leaked FCDO memo, prompting experts to describe it as ‘a national shame’
The UK is to slash funding for lifesaving water, sanitation and hygiene projects in developing nations by more than 80%, according to a leaked memo.
The cuts have been described as “savage”, “incredible” and “a national shame” by experts highlighting that sanitation and handwashing is a key line of defence during the coronavirus pandemic. The reduction to the bilateral aid budget was revealed as details emerged of cuts in the foreign aid budget.
Continue reading...UK and EU senior figures hail moment as a ‘new chapter’ of friendly relations after four years of division
The European parliament has given its overwhelming backing to the Brexit trade and security deal, prompting senior figures on both sides to speak of hope for a “new chapter” of friendly relations after four years of division.
Five MEPs voted against the deal, with 660 in favour and 32 abstentions, although in an accompanying resolution the chamber described the referendum result of 23 June 2016 as a “historic mistake”.
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