Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
International trade secretary tells PM and chancellor plans risk smuggling and damage to UK reputation
An extraordinary cabinet row has erupted over Brexit with Liz Truss warning that Boris Johnson’s border plans risk smuggling, damage to the UK’s international reputation and could face a legal challenge from the World Trade Organization.
The international trade secretary wrote to the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, and Michael Gove on Wednesday warning of four “key areas of concern” over their plans for the border next January.
Boris Johnson is learning the hard way that the UK’s position on the globe is a relevant factor in its negotiations with Brussels
It is possible that Boris Johnson meant it when he said last year that Brexit would not involve checks on goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but only if he did not understand the deal he had signed. His position made sense as dishonesty or ignorance. It was never true.
As Brexit talks continue in London this week, it turns out the government has submitted to the EU its application to put border control posts at Irish Sea ports. That is a necessary act of compliance with the Northern Ireland protocol in the withdrawal agreement.
While ministers insist that it is too early to fully consider what lessons might be learned from the coronavirus outbreak, the UK’s death toll – the highest in Europe – is expected to prompt an inquiry into the handling of the pandemic.
In recent weeks, the government has been accused of seeking to pre-emptively shift the narrative on responsibility for the country’s response to the Covid-19 outbreak and blame others for what went wrong.
The Department of Health and Social Care has recorded a further 155 deaths in the UK in its latest daily update on coronavirus. That takes the official UK death total to 44,391.
As we try to point out every day, this official headline total used by the government is not the actual total. That is because these figures only include people who tested positive for coronavirus and died. Taking into account the deaths of people who did not have a test, but where coronavirus was cited on the death certificate, the real total is more than 55,000.
The Welsh health minister has expressed concern that workers at a food factory where there has been an outbreak of Covid-19 might be spreading the virus because they take it turns to use the same bed.
Speaking at the Welsh government’s daily briefing, Vaughan Gething said there had been a suggestion that workers were coming off shift and jumping into a bed just vacated by a housemate who then went off to work.
I’m genuinely concerned about the conditions that people live within, not just in houses of multiple occupation where people may share bathroom and toilet facilities or kitchens, and the opportunity for contact indoors and surfaces is an obvious concern. You’ve heard that from our scientists, and others.
But in particular, if there is reality to the suggestion that people are sharing beds, there’s an obvious risk if people finish one shift, then return from that shift to get into a bed that someone has just got out of. So there are real issues here about accommodation and how it may be an unhelpful factor in driving transmission within that workforce.
PM claimed there had been ‘loads’ of consultations over department which faces a £2bn cut this year
Boris Johnson has been accused of misleading parliament over who was consulted before the merger of the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Sarah Champion, chair of the international development committee (IDC), said despite the prime minister’s assurances that there had been “massive consultation” ahead of the announcement last month, evidence suggested there had not been.
Ads pulled after Haxby Bakehouse owner and Labour member Phil Clayton complains
There are thousands of bakeries from which the UK government had to choose to star in its latest public information campaign. The Haxby Bakehouse was probably the only one to have produced loaves flour-stencilled with “F*ck Boris” during last year’s general election.
Nonetheless, a photograph of its owner, Phil Clayton, dusted with flour and carrying a tray of freshly baked goods appeared in national newspapers on Saturday with the headline “Welcome back to freshly baked bread”, to promote the government’s “Enjoy summer safely” campaign.
After PM’s behaviour with the Bullingdon Club, evidence emerges of further antics at Union Society fundraiser
It may have only merited a few paragraphs in the student newspaper and have taken place 33 years ago, but an Oxford Union Society “slave auction” in which Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were involved is powerful proof of how politicians’ pasts can come back to haunt them.
“Union slave auction” was the headline in Cherwell, the journal for Oxford students, on 12 June 1987. The small story has escaped the notice of the two men’s biographers and their profile writers until now.
Boris Johnson has refused to criticise his father over trip to holiday home during lockdown
The prime minister’s father, Stanley Johnson, has defended travelling to his villa in Greece amid growing condemnation by saying that he was making the property “Covid-proof”.
Government guidelines state that British nationals should avoid all but essential travel, but his son Boris has refused to criticise the trip and, on Friday, suggested the media should raise the issue directly with his father.
Trip by Stanley Johnson could weaken message on Covid-19 rules, warns Sage adviser
The decision by the prime minister’s father to travel to his Greek villa in apparent breach of Foreign Office guidance has been criticised by a government scientific adviser.
Boris Johnson has refused to condemn his father, Stanley, for flying to Greece, despite current advice for British nationals to avoid all but essential international travel.
Campaigner Simon Cheng, granted asylum in UK, says shadow parliament would send ‘clear signal’ to Beijing
Hong Kong pro-democracy activists are discussing a plan to create an unofficial parliament-in-exile to preserve democracy and send a message to China that freedom cannot be crushed, campaigner Simon Cheng has said.
Hong Kong, a former British colony that returned to Chinese rule in 1997, was convulsed by months of often violent, pro-democracy and anti-China demonstrations last year, resisting Chinese interference in its promised freedoms and posing the biggest political crisis for Beijing since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier complained of lack of respect and engagement by UK
The latest negotiations in Brussels on an EU-UK trade and security deal have broken up early, with the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, complaining of a lack of respect and engagement by the British government.
The two sides ended the week’s talks – the first held in person since February – a day ahead of the jointly-agreed schedule amid evident frustration at the lack of progress in bridging what both Barnier and his UK counterpart, David Frost, described as “serious” disagreements.
In wide-ranging interview, PM says jobs furlough not healthy and urges restraint as pubs open
Boris Johnson has expressed opposition to removing a statue of Cecil Rhodes from Oxford University, in a rare newspaper interview in which he also said the jobs furlough scheme was not “healthy” for the economy in the long term and would end soon.
Speaking to the Evening Standard, the prime minister said he did not agree with the decision of Oriel College to take down its statue of the Victorian imperialist, as he was “in favour of people understanding our past with all its imperfections”.
International pressure on Israel escalates as Netanyahu misses self-imposed target date
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has missed his self-imposed target date for annexation of occupied Palestinian territories, as France warned of “consequences” and Boris Johnson made an appeal to Israel to reconsider the move in an article in the Hebrew media.
Johnson, who described himself in the opinion piece as a “passionate defender of Israel”, said any annexation would be a “violation of international law”, adding the UK would not recognise any changes to the pre-1967 borders in the West Bank that were not agreed by both Israelis and Palestinians.
Unit based in No 10 will help researchers navigate post-Brexit immigration system
Downing Street is to set up a cross-departmental unit called the “office for talent” as a way to help leading scientists, researchers and others live and work in the UK in the post-Brexit immigration system.
The plan, which the Liberal Democrats said was simply trying to make up the damage caused by Brexit, is intended to “ensure excellent customer service across the immigration system”, a government announcement said.
Green campaigners and housing experts warn Boris Johnson’s recovery plan could swiftly become a liability
Boris Johnson’s plan to build tens of thousands of new homes risks locking in high carbon emissions for decades to come, if they are built to today’s poor efficiency standards instead of being designed for net zero carbon.
The prime minister’s plans to “build, build, build” form the centrepiece of his “new deal” to lift Britain’s economy out of the coronavirus recession. About £12bn will go to building 180,000 new homes to relieve the housing crisis, while new hospitals and schools will be constructed to improve degraded public services.
Opinium poll also shows Labour more trusted over Covid-19 response
Labour leader Keir Starmer has overtaken Boris Johnson as the public preferred choice for Prime Minister, according to the latest Opinium poll for The Observer.
Starmer is preferred to lead the country by 37% of voters polled on Thursday and Friday last week, compared with 35% who say Johnson would be the best Prime Minister.
Moscow accused of trying to give money to the Taliban as part of its campaign to destabilise America and its allies
The Russian intelligence unit behind the attempted murder in Salisbury of the former double agent Sergei Skripal secretly offered to pay Taliban-linked fighters to kill British and American soldiers in Afghanistan, according to US reports.
The revelation piles pressure on the UK to take robust action against the Kremlin amid continuing anger over the government’s delay in publishing a key report on Russian attempts to destabilise the UK.
The ‘gobocracy’ that surrounds the PM is capable of doing Russia’s work for it
As Boris Johnson is leading Britain’s first government of pundits, “a gobocracy”, if you like, it is worth repeating Humbert Wolfe’s scathing poem on the press: “You cannot hope to bribe or twist,/ thank God! the British journalist./ But, seeing what the man will do/ unbribed, there’s no occasion to.”
In a gobocracy, there’s no need to become too conspiratorial about why a prime minister betrays his country. Put a Telegraph columnist in charge, throw in Michael Gove from the Times and Dominic Cummings from Vote Leave’s propaganda arm, and their bottomless cynicism and instinctive charlatanism will bring ruin with or without foreign assistance.
Labour hardens stance to apply imports ban if highly controversial proposals go ahead in face of mounting international opposition
The UK must ban the import of goods from illegal settlements in the West Bank if the Israeli government presses ahead with annexation plans this week, Lisa Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary, has said.
The move would be a “major step” and require “courage that so far ministers have not been willing to show”, she told the Observer. But “such a blatant breach of international law must have consequences”.
$1bn gold hoard subject of dispute between Nicolás Maduro and rival Juan Guaidó
Claims that the Bank of England is unlawfully blocking the release of 31 tonnes of gold valued at nearly $1bn(£805m) and intended to combat the coronavirus in Venezuela have been heard in the high court this week.
The bars are among the 400,000 bars of gold held in the Bank’s vaults, but there is a political dispute about their rightful owner.