Top story: Rebellion or just parliament doing its job?
Hello – it’s Warren Murray flicking through the news with you this morning.
“Rebelling once gives you a taste for it.” That was the assessment of one party whip after both remainers and leavers in Labour joined with rebel Tory MPs to inflict a major defeat on Theresa May. They backed an amendment by Dominic Grieve to guarantee a decisive parliamentary vote on the final terms of Brexit.
The passing of Grieve’s amendment to the EU withdrawal bill by 309 votes to 305 triggered bursts of apoplexy from among Conservative leavers (and corresponding newspapers). Nadine Dorries, the MP for Mid Bedfordshire, accused Grieve of “treachery” and said the rebels “should be deselected and never allowed to stand as a Tory MP, ever again”. But the rebellion has heartened proponents of a soft Brexit, who hope they can use May’s narrow working majority in the Commons to shift government policy towards a closer ongoing relationship with the EU.
Polly Toynbee says the reaction of Brexiteers is telling: “At the referendum they said sovereignty was sacred; but now it turns out that ‘taking back control’ means rule by their diktat, without the deliberation of our sovereign parliament.” John Crace suggests May might rue that she didn’t accept that P45 at the party conference. May is due to meet fellow EU leaders in Brussels again today, as the government appeals to them to commit to trade talks before next March.
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‘Undermining democracy’ – David Cameron has directly criticised Donald Trump for his rants against the media. “President Trump, ‘fake news’ is not broadcasters criticising you,” said the former PM, “it’s Russian bots and trolls targeting your democracy, pumping out untrue stories day after day, night after night.” Cameron, speaking to Transparency International, accused Russia of winning the 2018 Fifa World Cup via corruption. “President Putin actually boycotted the whole thing because he said it was riddled with corruption. He was right – it was … [but] I am sure he wasn’t completely surprised when Russia actually won the bid.” Cameron defended globalisation, market economics, and the upholding of “institutions with rules and openness to the world”. But he said: “We cannot ignore those who feel left behind culturally, whether by immigration that has been too high, or by international organisations – yes, including the European Union – that have been too high handed.”
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‘Monster with a Machiavellian rage’ – The actor Salma Hayek has told of persistent sexually predatory behaviour by Harvey Weinstein during her career, including one encounter where he allegedly made a threat on her life. Hayek told how she spent years turning down the producer. “No to opening the door to him at all hours of the night, hotel after hotel, location after location,” she has written. “No to me taking a shower with him … No to letting a naked friend of his give me a massage. No to letting him give me oral sex. No to my getting naked with another woman.” One time, she claims, “in an attack of fury” he said to her: “I will kill you, don’t think I can’t.” Hayek’s allegations follow other testimonies from women in Hollywood, including Ashley Judd, Rose McGowan and Annabella Sciorra, who have claimed sexual impropriety on Weinstein’s part. He has denied any criminal behaviour.
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‘Policy has not changed’ – Rex Tillerson wants to talk with North Korea but the White House doesn’t. It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious that the Trump administration and its top diplomat can’t agree on their own foreign policy. The secretary of state this week has called for talks with no preconditions, saying Kim Jong-un can even choose whether it’s a round table or square. But yesterday, a spokesman for Trump’s National Security Council said of talks: “Clearly right now is not the time.” In turn, Tillerson’s spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, replied that “the secretary is on the same page as the White House” about North Korea. It must be the kind of page that has a bizarre plot reversal about halfway down.
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Overdoing it on the wine? – Today’s average wine glass holds nearly half a litre, in comparison with the 66ml vessels our predecessors were sipping from 300 years ago when they first became popular. Researchers at Cambridge have found that in the first part of this century alone, wine glasses have become 30ml bigger. The strength of wine sold in the UK has also increased since the 1990s, adding to the amount of pure alcohol being consumed by wine drinkers. The paper points out that alcohol is the fifth-largest risk factor for premature mortality and disability in high income countries. Adopting a festive line to hook journalists in, Professor Theresa Marteau, who led the research, said: “Wine will no doubt be a feature of some merry Christmas nights, but when it comes to how much we drink, wine glass size probably does matter.”
Lunchtime read: Extinction – mostly it’s the little things
It may be pesticides, it may be climate change, or a combination of these and other factors – but the Earth is losing insect species at an alarming rate. Some of them we may not even encounter before they are wiped out.
Scientists believe the planet’s “sixth extinction” is under way, with humans largely responsible. It’s easy to care about losing gorillas, tigers and polar bears, writes Jacob Mikanowski. But to really know what’s going on, ecologists need to start paying more attention to the invertebrates – the slugs, crabs, worms, snails, spiders, octopuses and, above all, insects that make up the bulk of the world’s animal species. “To think about the coming invertebrate extinctions is to confront a different dimension of loss. So much will vanish before we even knew it was there, before we had even begun to understand it.”
Sport
After Chris Froome’s failed drugs test that could see him stripped of his Vuelta title, is this the end for Team Sky? Sean Ingle profiles the four-times Tour de France champion who is now fighting to save his reputation.
England and Australia players woke on the morning of the third Ashes Test to allegations the match in Perth has been targeted by spot-fixers. The ICC has launched an investigation, admitting the matter is a “grave concern” but says there appears to be no evidence to suggest the current Test match has been corrupted. Meanwhile Andrew Strauss will not be returning to the Ashes tour after his wife was diagnosed with cancer.
On a busy night of Premier League football, David Silva led a masterclass against Swansea as Manchester City racked up a 15th successive win. Romelu Lukaku ended his scoring drought in Manchester United’s 1-0 win over Bournemouth, while there were also wins for Everton at Newcastle, courtesy of Wayne Rooney’s goal, Tottenham and Leicester. Arsenal were held to a goalless draw by David Moyes’s West Ham, so too Liverpool by West Brom, despite bringing back their top brass.
Business
The Bank of England is set to keep its main interest rate unchanged at 0.5% today, a month after increasing borrowing costs for the first time in a decade. And in a much-anticipated transaction, Rupert Murdoch is to sell assets in 21st century Fox, including a 39% stake in Sky and a Hollywood studio, to rival Disney.
Overnight, Asian stocks have been mixed after the Fed raised rates by a quarter point, meeting investor expectations but providing few surprises. The Nikkei 225 dipped 0.2% while South Korea’s Kospi climbed 0.8% and the Hang Seng rose 0.1%. The Shanghai Composite lost 0.2% while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 inched up 0.2%.
Sterling has been trading at $1.342 and €1.135 overnight.
The papers
The government’s defeat on an amendment to the EU withdrawal bill crowds out almost all other news this morning. The Guardian says the PM has been humiliated by the rebellion from her backbenches, while the i labels it a “bruising defeat” and the Scotsman a “galling loss”.
The Times ramps things up a bit with “Revenge of the rebels”; the Telegraph goes with “Mutiny in the Commons”; and the Express thinks the whole thing “Outrageous!”
But it’s the Daily Mail that harrumphs the loudest, lambasting what it calls “11 self-consumed malcontents” and claiming their actions (known by some as democratic dissent) “pull the rug from under our EU negotiators, betray their leader, party and 17.4m Brexit voters and – most damning of all – increase the possibility of a Marxist in No 10”. Well, it asks: “Proud of yourselves?” Away from all that, the Sun says it has disrupted a plot by bookmakers to rig the Ashes, while the Mirror leads on the cancellation of Peter Kay’s tour.
See all of today’s front pages here.
For more news: www.theguardian.com
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