Top story: PM now takes draft agreement to parliament
Good morning – I’m Warren Murray and it all boils down to this.
The prime minister today launches a campaign to get her Brexit agreement through parliament, having won the deeply reluctant approval of her cabinet. We are straight into live-blogging what will no doubt be another extraordinary day. Up to 11 ministers are understood to have voiced objections in a five-hour cabinet meeting that got shouty and fraught at times. The environment secretary, Michael Gove, was said to have been the only leaver to speak in favour of the draft deal.
May said after the cabinet meeting that she believed “with my head and my heart” that her deal was the best one for the UK – and the only alternatives were no deal, or no Brexit. The Northern Ireland backstop had been a particularly difficult point, she said. And here’s that in a nutshell (albeit the biggest nutshell we could find). If they can’t get a permanent EU-UK trade deal by December 2020, the transition period can be extended. If that doesn’t work, the backstop comes into play: “a single customs territory between the Union and the United Kingdom”, excluding fisheries. The backstop stays in force either until a permanent solution is found, or both sides agree jointly to end it. The backstop might never be invoked, but it sticks sideways in the DUP’s craw because it would have to mean extra non-customs checks on some types of goods passing between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
EU ambassadors held their own lengthy meeting on Wednesday, and Brussels is expected to convene a special summit on 25 November seeking to have the deal signed off – we are hearing suggestions that an announcement will be made this morning. France, Spain and Denmark have all raised concerns with the European commission that the UK is being handed a customs union without sufficiently strong conditions. In comments reported overnight, Rory Stewart, the prisons minister and a remainer, said: “From their point of view, this sounds like Norway with control over borders, which is what a lot of European states would want … control over immigration and unfettered access to the single market on goods. And they believe that these four freedoms are inalienable and would say this is breaking the four freedoms.”
The “path is still long” in getting agreement on both sides of the channel, said Michel Barnier, the chief EU negotiator. In parliament, Martin Kettle writes, “the question is whether, in the meaningful vote, MPs have the muscle to do anything more than approve or reject May’s deal”.
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Diesel blight on child health – Pollution from diesel vehicles is stunting the growth of children’s lungs, leaving them damaged for life, a major study has found. Most urban areas in the UK have illegal levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution, which government has failed to tackle. Research conducted with more than 2,000 London school children and published in the Lancet reveals the capacity of children’s lungs was reduced by about 5% when NO2 pollution was above legal levels. Andrea Lee at environmental lawyers ClientEarth said: “We need ministers to implement emergency measures to tackle pollution around schools and nurseries and fund the move to cleaner forms of transport, not wash their hands of the problem and leave it for local government to sort out.” London’s low emission zone (LEZ) for vehicles will be made stricter from next April.
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Arrest over murder of girl – A man has been charged with the murder of schoolgirl Lucy McHugh, 13, whose body was found in woodland at Southampton Sports Centre on 26 July. She had been stabbed to death. Stephen-Alan Nicholson, 24, of no fixed abode, has been charged with murder; rape of a child under 13; and two counts of sexual activity with a child under 16, one of which dates back to 2012. He is to appear at Southampton magistrates’ court on Thursday. Lucy’s mother Stacey White described her as “a smiling, content little dolly who everyone adored and cherished”.
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Tardy Tardis – Doctor Who’s traditional Christmas special is to air on New Year’s Day instead for the first time in 13 years.
The episode will see Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor and her companions Ryan (Tosin Cole), Graham (Bradley Walsh) and Yaz (Mandip Gill), face a terrifying evil from across the centuries of Earth’s history.
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‘Outrageous’ – Facebook hired a PR firm that tried to discredit critics by claiming they were agents of George Soros, according to the New York Times. In a damning report, the NYT says Mark Zuckerberg’s social network hired Definers Public Affairs. It published negative stories about Facebook’s rivals and critics on NTKNetwork.com, a faux-news site run by the PR firm, which was founded by Republican operatives. Soros, who was born in Hungary in 1930 and made a fortune as an investor, is a major funder of liberal and pro-democratic causes. “This narrative has really dangerous antisemitic undertones about Jewish people controlling the world,” said Rashad Robinson from the civil rights group Color of Change, which was targeted by the campaign. Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.
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Light-fingered – Researchers have used a neural network to generate fake fingerprints that could be used as a skeleton key to break into biometric security systems. The “DeepMasterPrints” created at New York University could mimic more than one in five fingerprints in a system that should only be wrong once in a thousand. It was possible because fingerprint scanners mostly check only a partial image, and there are many common features to fingerprints. The artificial fingerprints also look normal to the human eye. The researchers compared it to a “dictionary attack” where a hacker runs a list of common passwords against a security system. They may not be able to break into a specific account, but attacking a large number of accounts produces enough successes to make it worth the effort.
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Wind in their sails – The creator of an omnidirectional windmill have won the £30,000 James Dyson award for invention. The O-Wind turbine created by Lancaster University students Nicolas Orellana and Yaseen Noorani can catch the wind from any direction – without having to change its own orientation – and turn it into electricity. The 2018 runners-up are a malaria diagnosis device and a wheelchair assistance chair for airports.
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Eyes on the pies – It’s mince pie season and the results are in from arguably the first test that really counts. Which? has compared the offerings of everyone from Harrods to Asda. Here are the results.
Today in Focus podcast: Legacy of Islamic State in Iraq
Two years on from the “liberation” of Fallujah from Isis control, the Guardian’s Peter Beaumont has returned to the Iraqi city. Plus: Polly Toynbee on the one thing everyone can agree on when it comes to Brexit.
Lunchtime read: Harry Potter and the disappearing reader
“Would JK Rowling please leave Harry Potter in peace?” pleads Pauline Bock. “I love Harry Potter and I always will … the wizarding treasure hunt thrown by my parents for my ninth birthday; the Beauxbatons parchment letter, written in green ink, sent by my older cousin during my 11th summer; the 2001 trip to the cinema to see Philosopher’s Stone, and all the ones that followed.
“Back in 2010 was a good time to move on. Harry Potter’s last adventures had hit the bookstores in 2007, and three years later the Warner Bros adaptations had just about run their course in cinemas too. For many millennials, the young wizard had worked his magic through most of their childhood. But it’s 2018 now, and a new Harry Potter extended universe film, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, is out this week. … Someone needs to call a halt to the excessive afterlife of Potter’s fictional universe.”
Sport
Fifa is investigating five Premier League clubs over possible violations of rules on the signing of foreign players under the age of 18 with the quintet risking transfer bans if found guilty. Eddie Jones has stepped up his efforts to help his squad acclimatise to playing next year’s World Cup in Japan by arranging a sushi night as part of a week designed to prepare England for their first two fixtures of the 2019 tournament. The World Anti-Doping Agency has been accused of having a “cowardly” attitude towards Russia and “betraying” clean athletes by the investigator who exposed Russian state-sponsored doping.
Formula One chiefs have admitted for the first time that they are “concerned” that an activist who protested against the Bahrain Grand Prix on Facebook was jailed for three years. Wayne Rooney will end his glittering England career wearing the No 10 shirt and the captain’s armband against the United States after the squad’s senior players determined that would be the most appropriate way for the side’s record goalscorer to bow out. And England have been urged by captain Joe Root to continue taking risks after Sam Curran top-scored on the opening day of the second Test against Sri Lanka and yet again played a key role in bolstering a total alongside the tail. Sri Lanka have started day two in Pallekele on 26-1.
Business
Asian stocks have edged up after the news about the draft Brexit deal. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI), Britain’s leading business lobby group, said on Wednesday night the move was “a step back from the cliff-edge”. Overnight, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.15%. The index had declined 0.4% the previous day as plunging oil prices heightened anxiety about the outlook for broad demand and global growth. Australian stocks rose 0.15% while Japan’s Nikkei shed 0.5%. Stock market gains in Asia were limited after Wall Street extended its recent decline.
The pound is sitting around $1.301 and €1.147 at time of writing. Ray Attrill, the head of currency strategy at National Australia Bank, said overnight: “Getting the draft approved by the parliament will be extremely challenging and that’s why we are seeing sterling gains capped at 1.3.”
The papers
A round-up of Thursday’s front pages is here – but below is the abbreviated version. If you’re sick of Brexit, look away now. The Guardian sums up the scale of division that reigns, with the headline: “May Brexit plan: a split cabinet, a split party and a split nation” and mentions the 11 dissenting cabinet voices. The Telegraph omits Boris Johnson from its front page and uses May’s own words: “There will be difficult days ahead.” It also gives plenty of space to criticisms of the deal by Nick Timothy, the prime minister’s former chief of staff.
The Times feels May has “papered over the cracks” and suggests she used the threat of no Brexit at all to force ministers to toe the line. The Mirror also homes in on the ministerial divisions with “War cabinet” and claims 40 Tory rebels are plotting to bring her down. The Mail reports on the threat of a “coup within days” but strikes a defiant tone, using an image of May and: “I stand to fight.” The Express paints the rosiest picture for May, with no mention of leadership challenges or cabinet troubles. “It’s my deal … or no Brexit” is the headline. The FT plays it straight, saying May has won a “ferocious debate” and now faces a fresh battle in parliament. The Sun has its fun with “We’re in the Brexs*it” (their asterisk, not ours) and reports that May’s “soft” deal threatens “to blow the government apart” – a far cry from its celebration of the referendum result, all that time ago. And a special mention goes to the New European with its somewhat arresting/inappropriate image of May appearing to struggle to keep her head above water.
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