The big picture
After a break-up she didn’t want, Theresa May heads to Berlin today to meet German chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss the divorce terms. They’ll talk Brexit negotiations and the delicate timetabling of article 50, after which we’ll be treated to pictures of their shoes and analyses of their jackets or some such rubbish.
Still, let’s cheer ourselves up with the prospect of a top-level political meeting that passes the Bechdel test.
May will be taking her Brexit-means-Brexit banner with her to the meeting with Merkel, and on Thursday with French president François Hollande:
I am determined that Britain will make a success of leaving the European Union and that’s why I have decided to visit Berlin and Paris so soon after taking office.
I do not underestimate the challenge of negotiating our exit from the EU and I firmly believe that being able to talk frankly and openly about the issues we face will be an important part of a successful negotiation.
Germany’s foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier – who’ll be on his way to Washington as May goes to Berlin – is urging haste along with that frankness and openness:
I think we can expect that Britons will act as quickly as possible to end this period of uncertainty in Britain and in Europe.
Despite Brexit, we need the cooperation with Britain in our international relations, particularly in these times of crisis.
Those personalities that campaign for Brexit are now obligated and responsible to make the decision a reality.
Here’s one of those personalities, the new foreign secretary Boris Johnson, not feeling obligated to make amends for previous statements about “the part-Kenyan president’s ancestral dislike of the British empire” (that’s Barack Obama, by the way) or likening Hillary Clinton to “a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital”. Diplomacy is such a yawn, isn’t it?
Oh my. AP reporter Brad Klapper lays it in to Boris Johnson. Quite the question. https://t.co/jd638DmDfx
— SimonNRicketts (@SimonNRicketts) July 19, 2016
Meanwhile, back at Westminster
May will host her first PMQs at noon against – *checks news* – Jeremy Corbyn, still the leader of the opposition, despite the efforts of his own opposition.
That unity candidate has been chosen now, and it’s Owen Smith, who secured the backing of more MPs and MEPs than challenger number one, Angela Eagle – 90 for Smith v 72 for Eagle, according to Guardian calculations. Eagle has stepped out but insists she remains “in lockstep together” with Smith to oust Corbyn.
Smith, perhaps having decided that “I am normal” isn’t the most inspiring of rallying cries, made a fresh appeal:
I want to say to all members of the Labour party tonight, young and old, longstanding and new members: I can be your champion. I am just as radical as Jeremy Corbyn.
But, ask some, how radical was Smith when he worked as a lobbyist in the pharmaceutical industry before becoming an MP in 2010? That depends on your definition of radical, perhaps, with the Times reporting today:
In October 2005, commenting on a Pfizer-backed report into offering patients a choice between NHS services and private-sector healthcare providers, Mr Smith said: ‘We believe that choice is a good thing and that patients and healthcare professionals should be at the heart of developing the agenda.’
Smith’s campaign responded:
Owen has been crystal clear that he is 100% committed to a fully publicly owned NHS, free at the point of use. He has repeatedly argued passionately for this.
Would-be Labour influencers have until 5pm Wednesday to register (and shell out £25) to vote in the leadership bout.
You should also know:
- Nick Clegg returns to frontline politics – as the Lib Dem Brexit spokesman.
- Meanwhile, Nigel Farage is at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland (which just made Donald Trump its official presidential candidate, cementing 2016 as the year that all those things people said would never happen have happened).
- IMF cuts UK growth forecasts following Brexit vote.
- May and Rudd distance themselves from Cameron pledge to cut immigration to tens of thousands.
- Liberals, celebrities and EU supporters set up progressive movement.
Diary
- At 10.30am, we should hear whether Jeremy Corbyn will be added as a second defendant, alongside Labour general secretary Iain McNicol, in a high court action over the NEC decision to guarantee Corbyn a place on the leadership ballot.
- At noon, it’s Theresa May’s first PMQs.
- After lunch, May travels to Berlin to meet Angela Merkel, with a news conference around 6pm.
- Shadow chancellor John McDonnell will use Labour’s last opposition day debate before the recess next week to challenge the government to drop its fiscal charter.
- At 5pm, the window to sign up as a £25 Labour registered supporter slams shut.
Read these
The latest in the Guardian’s Europe after Brexit series shines a light on France, where the far-right has seen an opportunity in the UK’s vote to leave the EU.
Sam Bright, writing in the New Statesman, says the major parties ought to keep an eye on a refreshed Ukip:
Farage’s doom-mongering about repressed wages, overwhelmed public services and burgeoning crime is being supplanted by a positive message focused on opportunity and success. Ukip is casting off its petulant whinging and is starting to evolve into a grown-up political party.
Yet, even as it crafts a more professional, forward-thinking image, Ukip will retain its hero status as the anti-establishment victor of the referendum. Thus, if the Tories’ centre-ground pitch proves to be a rhetorical illusion, Ukip will surely entice those who are attracted by the promise of social mobility, but are fed up with the backsliding of mainstream politicians.
More of a “saving you from reading” choice, as Sarah Vine’s return to her Daily Mail column swerves the only issue we want to hear about, but offers this harrumph:
An infuriating new cliche has entered the vernacular: ‘life chances’. It crops up everywhere, from interviews with politicians to reports by charities, and has no meaning other than to ostentatiously display the user’s social conscience.
All I can say is this: the next person who says it to me may find theirs drastically curtailed.
Would it be churlish to point Vine in the direction of this speech by Michael Gove, when education secretary?
The essence of this attack is a belief that teaching cannot actually make that much of a difference to the life chances of children.
And from the same speech:
Why do these schools succeed, transforming poor children’s lives and life chances, for good?
Hmmm of the day
“Politics is not a game,” May told her new cabinet on Tuesday, sitting next to the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson.
Celebrity parallel-drawing of the day
Ralph Fiennes, currently appearing as Richard III at London’s Almeida theatre, sees some modern-day reflections of Shakespeare’s scheming king:
Michael Gove is closest. Because all those protestations about ‘I could never lead, it’s not in my DNA to lead’ – that’s classic Richard.
Director Rupert Goold admitted he’d originally had a different character in mind:
I thought Boris is this figure who is physically strange and yet sexually predatory and potent, inherently comic, outside the rules, of questionable motives, ultimately ambitious. It was going to be very crude ... Milibands as princes in the tower.
The day in a tweet
The Big Brother contestants found out that Theresa May is our PM last night. It went as well as you would expect. pic.twitter.com/ivWvWJRi0I
— Scott Bryan (@scottygb) July 19, 2016
If today were a GCSE German question
It would be wie komme ich am besten zum Brexit, bitte?
And another thing
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