Top story: May seeks to shift focus to Brexit
Good Monday morning to you, Graham Russell here with the latest news.
The chancellor has become the latest target of Tory infighting, facing calls for his head over his handling of Brexit, and accusations his department is helping the EU scupper any deal. Philip Hammond’s Treasury “seems blind to the facts, preoccupied with preserving ‘access’ to the EU market seemingly at any cost”, MP Bernard Jenkins, who was director of the Vote Leave campaign, writes in the Guardian.
The fresh proxy war broke out as those on the right of the party flexed their muscles following days of criticism of Boris Johnson and suggestions May might demote him.
Despite the squabbling behind her, Theresa May will attempt to get on the front foot in parliament today by warning that Britain has made sufficient Brexit concessions to the EU. “The ball is in their court. But I am optimistic we will receive a positive response,” she will tell MPs.
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Harvey Weinstein sacked – The Hollywood mogul’s tenure at the company he co-founded has ended after its board of directors decided to act on “new information”. He had been on voluntary leave after a slew of sexual harassment allegations emerged last week. Weinstein has expressed regret for his inappropriate behaviour towards women stretching back decades, saying “I own my mistakes”.
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Tender feelings ignored – Thousands of small businesses look set to ignore the Royal Mint’s deadline to stop accepting the old, round pound coins. The Federation of Small Businesses said the changeover period had been “fairly short” and that shops would provide a “useful community service” in giving customers an extra few weeks. The Treasury said it had been working with the industry for three years on the project. The coins will lose their legal tender status this Sunday, making way for the 12-sided version.
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Bob Corker – Donald Trump’s approach to foreign diplomacy risks putting the nation “on the path to world war three”, a senior Republican who heads the Senate foreign relations committee has said. Bob Corker said Trump acts “like he’s doing The Apprentice or something” and criticised his provocative tweets issued during sensitive talks on North Korea. The US president earlier blamed his former political ally for the Iran nuclear deal, leading Corker to tweet back: “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”
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‘Silent too long’ – The Catalan government’s push for independence has roused the voice of a so-called silent majority who want to remain part of Spain. Anywhere between 350,000 and a million people (depending on who you believe) turned out in Barcelona to call for unity. Demonstrator Alejandro Marcos said: “It seems that the one who yells the most wins the argument. So we have to raise our voices and say loud and clear that we do not want independence.”
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Dove, do better – The skincare brand has been forced to apologise (again) for an ad that featured a black woman turning into a white woman after applying body lotion. It pulled the ad which it said had “missed the mark”, a response that did little to assuage anger that manifested in thousands of comments below its apology tweet. Ava DuVernay, director of the film Selma, said: “You can do better than ‘missed the mark’. Flip + diminishing. Deepens your offence. You do good work. Have been for years. Do better here.”
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Lunchtime read: Inside the CIA’s black site
The torture of detainees at a CIA “black site” in Afghanistan is revealed in astonishing detail, with 274 declassified documents revealing the regime designed by contract psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. Prisoner Gul Rahman, naked from the waist down and shackled to a cold concrete floor, was subjected to sleep, food and water deprivation and interrogated for 18 hours a day. “The atmosphere was very good,” Jessen told an investigator. “Nasty, but safe.” Five days after Jessen had interrogated him, Rahman was dead.
Sport
The US vice-president, Mike Pence, left the 49ers-Colts NFL game in Indianapolis in a planned walkout, after about a dozen San Francisco players kneeled during the national anthem. Gordon Strachan has refused to discuss his future and offered effusive praise of his players after Scotland’s World Cup hopes were dashed by their failure to beat Slovenia in Ljubljana. Meanwhile, England manager Gareth Southgate expressed delight at the way Harry Kane captained the side in the final two World Cup qualifying wins, against Slovenia and Lithuania, but admitted he is yet to decide who will be the permanent leader.
Business
Our economics editor, Larry Elliott, says the housing market is so dysfunctional that the only thing standing between Britain and a housing crash is the Bank of England’s willingness to spare borrowers a rise in interest rates. He suggests five steps to prevent a crisis, including increasing supply and reform of the tax system. On the markets, Chinese stocks reached a 21-month high before next week’s Communist party congress in Beijing, while the pound was up slightly at $1.31 and €1.116. The FTSE100 is expected to open flat.
The papers
After days of political tennis twixt the May and Johnson camps, the PM has delivered a deft slice to try to divert the ball into the, er, EU’s court (this tortured metaphor works fine – Ed). The Times and Express went for it, focusing on Theresa May’s assertion that Britain had made enough Brexit concessions (Times: The ball’s in your court, May tells EU leaders”).
The Telegraph volleys back (too much?) with the front page line that Johnson would resist any attempts to demote him and that the chancellor should go instead for being “miserable”. It gives more room to the story of shops refusing to adhere to the deadline to phase out the old pound coin. The i goes somewhere in the middle, with May fighting to gain control of the party as well as Europe, while the Sun has a non-committal postage stamp mentioning May has been told to sack either Johnson or Hammond.
The Guardian leads with Brexit Tories taking aim at the Treasury, accusing it of seeking to scupper Brexit, with side stories on Catalonia’s pro-unity marches and GPs worrying that overwork is putting their patients at risk.
The Mail gets its teeth into the concept of the gender question in the next census being optional, saying there are fears civil servants might not know how many men and women there are in the country.
The Mirror reports on most households losing the “basic right” of weekly rubbish collections and having to pay for private contractors, while the Sun focused on what Louise Redknapp looks like and – under the headline “Ryanscare” – fears for the airline’s safety after images emerged of maintenance staff apparently playing pranks.
The FT makes us all feel suitably juvenile in our worldviews by giving its front page over to Germany’s outgoing finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, who has warned spiralling levels of debt and liquidity pose a threat to the global economy.
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