What a difference a year doesn't make. Theresa May clings on, obviously. So too Jeremy Corbyn. Brexit means Brexit, but nobody knows what that means. David Davis might resign. Boris Johnson has been caught saying something daft.
Nothing has changed, nothing has changed.
President Donald Trump on Thursday said he didn’t feel a need to prepare for his historic June 12 meeting with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, arguing that the high-stakes nuclear talks would be based more on “attitude” than advance legwork.
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“I think I’m very well prepared,” Trump said with Abe by his side. “I don’t think I have to prepare very much. It’s about attitude, it’s about willingness to get things done. So this isn’t a question of preparation, it’s a question of whether or not people want it to happen, and we’ll know that very quickly.”Hubris is usually followed by nemesis ...
She caved. According to sources close to Davis, "the backstop paper has been amended and expresses, in much more detail, the time-limited nature of our proposal".
So to be clear, there is now a termination date in May's backstop proposal.
That almost certainly means she faces a double defeat - because the EU will reject any plan that includes an end-date.
Or to put it another way, for May there is no victory, at all, in this defeat.
She'll be glad to get out of here pronto, as she is set to do on Thursday afternoon, with her trip to the G7 in Canada.
PS actually let’s see whether the end date is characterised as having legal force, or is just a hope. If just an expectation it could well be a fig leaf - to spare both sides’ blushes.
PPS few of Davis’s friends think he will stay for the long term. They see the compromise with May as no more than a sticking plaster, and say he remains alienated from her Brexit approach.
PPPS The end date, of December 2021, IS just an expectation. Even Davis’s closest friends concede he blinked. “He caved, for now” said one. So both he and May are wounded by this row. And I am not sure which of them is more damaged - but probably him.
And if the EU accepts this compromise, we can be wholly confident it is MEANINGLESS.Not really much further forward then ...
Prime minister’s questions is turning into a breeze for Jeremy Corbyn. Where previously he used to overthink things – admittedly not hard in his case – and tie himself up in knots with his own logic, he now just stands up and says, “how’s it going?”
As even May is just about sentient enough to realise that “badly” won’t quite cut it, she has no answer. Because she genuinely doesn’t know. There is no area of government policy over which she has a firm grasp. Least of all Brexit.
The Labour leader bounced to his feet and demanded to know if the government was going to publish the long-delayed white paper on its negotiating position before the Commons voted on the Lords amendments to the Brexit withdrawal bill next Tuesday. As it might be quite handy. If not essential to anyone hoping to make an informed decision.
May’s eyes rotated in opposite directions and her mouth opened and shut as if gasping for breath while struggling for words. “I agree that we want to publish a white paper,” she croaked eventually. The snag was that no one in the cabinet could agree on what should go in it. Or when it should be published. The white paper remained defiantly white.
Labour is proposing an “internal market” that would deliver a new and close relationship with the European Union but falls short of membership of the single market while maintaining many of its advantages.
The proposal was heralded by some as the party’s most significant move so far towards a soft Brexit.
But the move stops just short of calling for the full single market membership sought by a vocal group of Labour MPs, after the Lords backed a Norway-style membership of the European Economic Area (EEA).
Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, said: “Labour will only accept a Brexit deal that delivers the benefits of the single market and protects jobs and living standards.”The key point is that such a Labour proposition avoids the necessity for free movement of labour, an inherent part of the single market. As such, it will be unacceptable to Brussels.
Politics is a bit like playing Monopoly. Leaders start the game with a pot of political capital that is gradually eroded by power. As they go around the board dealing with events, they spend more to build up a property empire of popular support. There must be an element of risk-taking and ruthlessness, as well as responsibility. Luck is required, but also the wisdom to know that you must create your own good fortune. The winner is the person with the most capital left when the country goes to the polls, even if everyone is almost bankrupt.
Theresa May is terrible at the game. Having gambled and lost on an election she didn’t need to call, she is now stuck in Brexit jail, too frightened even to roll the dice for fear she will land on a leadership crisis. When it comes to the public services, the prime minister fritters away her reputation on the political equivalent of Whitechapel and the Old Kent Road instead of building up a portfolio of valuable long-term reforms that will pay out more in the end.If I were she, for the present at least, I would also look to avoid landing on the railway stations.
British homes are vulnerable to “a staggering level of corporate surveillance” through common internet-enabled devices, an investigation has found.
Researchers found that a range of connected appliances – increasingly popular features of the so-called smart home – send data to their manufacturers and third-party companies, in some cases failing to keep the information secure. One Samsung smart TV connected to more than 700 distinct internet addresses in 15 minutes.
The investigation, by Which? magazine, found televisions selling viewing data to advertisers, toothbrushes with access to smartphone microphones, and security cameras that could be hacked to let others watch and listen to people in their homes.And who knows what your smartphone gets up to behind your back ...
France is back: vigorous, lucid, ambitious. Hurray. But who else is there to help get Europe going again? Italy is having a nervous breakdown, Spain weighed down by trouble at home, Poland throwing a massive wobbly, Britain hovering near the exit, and Germany slumped on the sofa. Talk about a dysfunctional family.
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Far from a convergence towards a new Franco-German consensus at the European summit at the end of June, new divergences between Paris and Berlin have emerged. While the French president wants to give a firm, united EU response to Trump’s protectionism, Berlin is looking for compromise, in what one Macron adviser described to me as a “mercantilist” attempt to protect its own national exports. While France supports the tough line being taken by the European commission against a shocking erosion of the rule of law in Poland, Germany is again looking for a compromise.And so the supposed Franco-German motor sputters along; twas ever thus.
The United States and its traditional allies are on the brink of a full-scale trade war after European and Canadian leaders reacted swiftly and angrily to Donald Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminium producers.
The president of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, promised immediate retaliation after the US commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, said EU companies would face a 25% duty on steel and a 10% duty on aluminium from midnight on Thursday.
Europe, along with Canada and Mexico, had been granted a temporary reprieve from the tariffs after they were unveiled by Donald Trump two months ago.
However, Ross sent shudders through global financial markets when he said insufficient progress had been made in talks with three of the US’s traditional allies to reduce America’s trade deficit and that the waiver was being lifted.Call me timorous if you must but, in an economic world dominated by the trading blocs of the unholy trinity of the US, China and the EU, now would not appear to be the time for little UK to be setting off on its own on the threadbare ship of Brexit into the stormy sea of international trade.
Germaine Greer has called for the lowering of punishment for rape and said society should not see it as a “spectacularly violent crime” but instead view it more as “lazy, careless and insensitive”.
She suggested that a fitting sentence for the offence might be 200 hours’ community service and perhaps an “r” tattoo on the rapist’s hand, arm or cheek.
Speaking at the Hay literary festival, the feminist academic argued that rape is rampant in society and the legal system cannot cope with it because it always comes down to the issue of consent, with the victims becoming little more than “bits of evidence”.Is this a serious contribution?
King Lear review – Anthony Hopkins is shouty, vulnerable and absolutely mesmerisingNot really - he was just shouty.
AJP Taylor on How Wars BeginThis is no-nonsense history. Unlike modern BBC telly historians, there are no gimmicks - no dressing up, no striding about medieval castles, no half-baked reconstructions. And all the better for it.
Items we are urgently low on (i.e we have completely run out of) include:It is far from high living.UHT MilkFruit Juice (long life)Potatoes (tinned)Custard (tinned)Rice Pudding (tinned)Fruit (tinned)Cold Meat (tinned)Items we will run out of by the end of next week include:Veg (tinned)JamCoffee
Shareholders in BT may be under the impression their company had a lousy time last year. Investors did. BT’s share price fell by a third in a rising stock market and sits at its lowest level since 2012. The dividend was merely held, making a nonsense of the chief executive Gavin Patterson’s confidence a couple of years ago that double-digit increases were in prospect. Staff, too, may be less than cheerful. Some 13,000 are about to lose their jobs as Patterson confronts the fact that BT’s revenues are falling again.
But, no, it turns out that 2017-18 was a triumph, at least in the boardroom. The victory wasn’t the maximum possible under the terms of the executive bonus scheme but the outcome was “above target”, says the annual report. Even Patterson seems to have sensed that finding looks perverse because he volunteered for an “at target” score, meaning his bonus was £1.3m not the £1.6m that the mechanical formula said it should be.
Come on, though, awarding a £1m-plus bonus in these circumstances to a boss on a guaranteed basic whack of £997,000 is ridiculous.I can think of worse adjectives than "ridiculous" ...
NFL owners have issued new guidelines that will see teams fined if their players or staff do not show appropriate “respect” for the national anthem. According to the new rules, “a club will be fined by the league if its personnel are on the field and do not stand and show respect for the flag and the anthem”.
The NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, said the league had been “sensitive” on the issue. “We want people to be respectful of the national anthem. We want people to stand,” Goodell said. “That’s all personnel, and to make sure they treat this moment in a respectful fashion. That’s something that we think we owe. We’ve been very sensitive on making sure that we give players choices, but we do believe that moment is an important moment and one that we are going to focus on.”Is it just to inflict punishment on those who bravely exercise their freedom for motives which are otherwise commendable?
Donald Trump is expected to head to Scotland after his visit to London on 13 July to play golf with a high quality professional golfer or possibly a member of the royal family.
The president is being offered a range of low handicap golfers as a part of a UK government bid to make the visit as pleasurable as possible for him.
Trump owns two golf courses in Scotland, and his visit to the UK following a Nato summit will give him a chance to relax in the surroundings that give him greatest pleasure. British officials have recognised he is a serious golfer and will need an expert opponent to keep him entertained.
The trip is likely to include a meeting with the Queen, but at the same time efforts are being made to ensure that he does not encounter a series of protests in London. One option will be for the president to meet Theresa May outside London, such as at the prime minister’s rural retreat in Chequers.Do they think that he won't encounter protests in Scotland?
US President Donald Trump has said there is a "very substantial chance" a historic summit with North Korea's Kim Jong-un next month may not happen.
He said the North must meet conditions for the summit to go ahead though if it did not, it might happen "later".
He was speaking as he received South Korea's President Moon Jae-in at the White House.
The North has said it may cancel the summit if the US insists on it giving up nuclear weapons unilaterally.while on the other hand:
Donald Trump once claimed a trade war with China would be "easy" to win. But consensus is emerging that the president is losing the first battles.
His team has been trying to hash out a deal to boost US exports, but multiple rounds of negotiations have yet to yield progress on key priorities, like protection for US intellectual property.
Now the conflict has Mr Trump taking fire at home from two sides: those worried he is provoking a damaging trade fight, and those who fear he will give in too easily.
Mr Trump, citing a large trade deficit and unfair rules in China, says the US is starting from such a bad position that the country stands to gain no matter what happens.Is it all going a bit pear-shaped?
The frog-boiling is going well. Theresa May has turned up the temperature another notch and Boris Johnson has still not jumped out of the pan. Nor has Liam Fox, Michael Gove or David Davis.
At the meeting of the Brexit committee of cabinet on Tuesday, the prime minister came up with a plan so cunning no one could work out what it meant. She asked them to agree what would happen if there was no agreement about trade by the end of the transition period after Brexit.
The foreign secretary grumbled a bit, but agreed with the prime minister that the UK would then continue to apply the EU’s common external tariff until a new arrangement was ready. Considering that the systems to do anything else could not be in place by December 2020, the end of the 21-month transition period after leaving the EU, this did not appear to be a significant moment.Indeed, as any new customs arrangements could not be put in place until well after the next general election in May 2022, it may well be the case that we are blessed (or doomed) to remain in the EU's customs/single market regime for the foreseeable future. And the forces of inertia (better the devil you know and all that) may preclude any significant change in status thereafter.
Theresa May is expected to approve the creation of about 10 Tory peers and hand at least one to Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party in an attempt to improve her weak position in the House of Lords, which has already voted 15 times against her government over Brexit.
The elevations, which are expected to be announced in the coming days in Westminster, were immediately criticised by high profile remain Labour peer Lord Adonis as a desperate attempt by the prime minister to enlist people to boost her fragile position in the unelected upper house.
Tories tipped for elevation include former ministers Sir Eric Pickles and Peter Lilley. Adonis said: “This is a classic example of packing the Lords to try and make Brexit easier to endorse.”There are at present 780 peers in the Lords, far too many of whom are placemen collecting their £300 a day just for turning up. But if the Prime Minister wanted to bolster the Tories' presence there, it might have been more sensible to do it before the EU Withdrawal Bill reached the Lords.
Last week, Corbyn broke with the habit of a lifetime by asking six short questions about Brexit and had the best PMQs of his time as leader. So quite understandably, he opted for doing the same thing this week. With precisely the same result. At this rate Wednesdays could become a cushy number for the Labour leader. Why bother to spend hours mugging up on the NHS or Windrush, when all you need to do is casually inquire how the prime minister thinks Brexit is coming along and then sit back and wait for everyone to start sniggering.
“How is Brexit coming along?” Corbyn asked. Theresa was completely blindsided by this. As if she had never heard of Brexit, let alone had a solution to it. Her mouth opened and shut as she waited for her voice to synch with her lips. Umm, Brexit, she said, stalling for time as she willed an electrical charge to fire up her circuit board.
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Corbyn then further confused the prime minister by asking her epistemological questions on the nature of friction. How much friction was as little friction as possible? “The government has a policy,” the prime minister creaked, defaulting to her normal Maybot mode. A policy of having done almost nothing for two years. A policy of literally not having a clue.Oh dear ...
Apart from the junior director who tried to speak against the delusion in Carillion’s boardroom, nobody emerges with credit from the two select committees’ post-mortem on the contracting firm. The other directors, led by chairman Philip Green, chief executive Richard Howson and finance director Richard Adam, were directly responsible for the failure because they were either “negligently ignorant of the rotten culture” or complicit in it. But the entire system of checks and balances failed.
The auditors, KPMG, were useless, as was the audit industry’s passive regulator. The government, in the form of the Crown Representative, was asleep. The Pensions Regulator was feeble. City advisers to Carillion were paid to be supine. Big shareholders were not inquisitive. None of those judgments will surprise those who followed the evidence sessions, but the MPs’ report will count for little unless it forces action from government.Aye weel. I'll not be holding my breath in anticipation of any substantial action from this government.
Theresa May has announced plans to publish, ahead of a critical Brussels summit next month, a Brexit white paper setting out her priorities for Britain’s future relationship with the European Union.
In an attempt to get on the front foot in negotiations, the government will for the first time present a “detailed, ambitious and precise” explanation of what it hopes the final deal will deliver. The blueprint is expected to include a plan for a customs relationship that avoids re-establishing a hard Irish border, although the prime minister’s cabinet remains bitterly divided over how best to achieve this.
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As well as customs, the white paper will cover the future security relationship, the financial services sector, aviation and fisheries. It will form part of ongoing negotiations with Brussels ahead of a political declaration in the autumn.This might have been a useful exercise if it had been undertaken last year or, preferably, the year before. But announcing a White Paper before you have decided what it should say is political folly.
There was a time when the post of foreign secretary was considered one of the great offices of state. A person who could be guaranteed to remain calm under fire and take the heat out of global flashpoints. Someone other countries might take seriously and respect.
For reasons best known to itself, though, the Conservative government has abandoned any pretence of taking the foreign secretary seriously. Boris Johnson is now a one-man rogue state, free to do more or less exactly what he wants, safe in the knowledge that no one dares sack him. A latter-day Toby Young on speed who roams the world losing friends and alienating people at an alarming rate. His motto: there’s no bad situation that can’t be made worse.
Boris doesn’t hold with anything so old-fashioned as diplomacy. His mission is not the promotion of peace, it is the tireless promotion of himself. In Boris world, nothing really matters but Boris. Anything and everything is just leverage for his own career. A walking narcissistic personality disorder, the last remaining believer in his own genius who is oblivious to the destruction he creates.
Theresa May has divided her cabinet into two groups to fight out their differences over Britain’s post-Brexit customs arrangements, intensifying speculation that she is preparing to delay her decision on the issue.
No 10 sources confirmed that the prime minister had formed the working groups, which would report back on her preferred customs partnership model and the maximum-facilitation option at next Tuesday’s meeting of her inner Brexit cabinet.
Her senior ministers are split over how Britain should manage its customs arrangements with the European Union after it leaves the bloc, with the issue threatening to divide the cabinet and the Tory party itself.Does anyone in government consider the needs of the country? Or is it just personal and party survival and ambition?
One of Donald Trump’s luxury golf resorts in Scotland has risked offending the natives by banning the sale of Irn-Bru.
Guests at Turnberry have been forbidden from drinking Scotland’s favourite soft drink over fears its luminous orange colouring might stain the carpets.
The ban came to light after guests at the five-star hotel on the Ayrshire coast requested Irn-Bru but were refused because of concerns about potential spillages.The man is so not cool.
Sometimes it seems as if half this shareholder’s investment decisions — whether to buy, sell or hold — are expensive mistakes. The difficulty is knowing, in advance, which half the next decision will fall into. No wonder City cynics say there are only two types of expert when it comes to stock market predictions. Those who don’t know and those who don’t know they don’t know.
That is why this column makes no claim to have a crystal ball and, instead, sets out to report the rough and the smooth of DIY investing. There’s no one else to blame when things go wrong, and the idiot responsible is staring back at you in the mirror every morning.Been there, done that, got the t-shirt ...
Don’t laugh, but Scottish football really is on the rise after years in the doldrumsAs John Cleese once remarked, it's not the despair. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand.
My word of the week is “woke”, which, when I was in New York recently, I kept seeing used in articles. It’s an African-American political term that, basically, means socially aware, as in a quiz called How Woke Are You?
Well, at this point, I’m woke enough to know that I may not be woke at all.And so say all of us.
The Desert Island Discs host, Kirsty Young, and The X Factor presenter Dermot O’Leary are to join Huw Edwards in fronting the BBC’s coverage of the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
The corporation has put together a more diverse presenting team than the lineup for Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding in 2011.
Seven years ago, the Countryfile presenter Anita Rani was the only person from a BME background who was part of the core team fronting the main BBC coverage.
She will be repeating this role in just over a fortnight’s time, but will be joined by the Strictly Come Dancing winner Ore Oduba and the Radio 1 journalist Tina Daheley.
The final lead presenter of BBC One’s live coverage of the wedding on 19 May will be The One Show co-host Alex Jones, who was also part of the BBC’s lineup in 2011. But Fearne Cotton, who was criticised for her presenting style, misses out, along with Edith Bowman, Sophie Raworth and Fiona Bruce.The BBC at its worst, fawning over royalty, while desperately seeking diversity/
Fresh questions have been raised over Theresa May’s hardline stance on immigration after reports emerged suggesting she had intervened to stop doctors from overseas coming to the UK.
The prime minister is said to have overruled other cabinet ministers arguing that more foreign doctors were desperately needed to help meet staff shortages in the NHS.
Despite pressure from the home secretary, health secretary and business secretary, Ms May is said to have refused to budge on rules that restrict the number of visas given to specialist workers from overseas.Foreign doctors are not taking the jobs of British doctors and their arrival would obviously be in the interests of NHS patients waiting on operations or on GP appointments. But Theresa May would rather see people suffer than breach a notional, ill-defined policy of keeping out the foreigners.
The prime minister tries to sound thrilled by the future, but all the while her political body language cries out for the past. When talking about industrial strategy, she praises digital innovation. But her chief policy interest in the internet has always been how better to control it when terrorists and paedophiles thrive in its ungoverned recesses.
She says the things exuberant Brexiteers want to hear about the opportunities for Britain beyond the confines of the European Union. But she negotiates as if lost in a forest of terrible options, feeling her way to the path of greatest continuity. She is holding out for a way to change everything while keeping things the same, handling each crisis as it comes without dealing with the underlying problems, and so sowing the seeds of the next crisis.
Eventually the crisis will come that overwhelms her completely. But until then, May’s awkward political destiny is set: to be resisting and leading change at the same time; to be forced out into the world when she would rather stay at home; and to march reluctantly to a revolutionary drum when she looks as if she would rather be standing still.
The chief executive of Sainsbury’s has been filmed singing “We’re in the Money”on the same day he announced a blockbuster merger with Asda.
Waiting to be interviewed by ITV, Mike Coupe started warbling one of the best-known songs from the musical 42nd Street. In the clip released by the broadcaster, he is shown singing: “We’re in the money, the sky is sunny. Let’s lend it, spend it, send it rolling along.”
