Top story: ‘It matters having people who can say no’
Hello, Warren Murray happy to be with you again.
Boris Johnson has faced mounting pressure as Tory insiders added weight to claims that the PM said he would rather see “bodies pile high in their thousands” after reluctantly approving a second England-wide lockdown late last year. The prime minister has denied saying it. Johnson’s comments were supposedly made after he felt corralled into agreeing to a four-week lockdown in November. He apparently warned he would never again back another national lockdown.
Tory sources have told the Guardian that Johnson is isolated in Downing Street with no longstanding trusted aides. Several insiders who spoke to the Guardian described Johnson’s two closest advisers – the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, and the Downing Street chief of staff, Dan Rosenfield – as insufficiently politically experienced to handle the toxic briefing wars in No 10. One source said: “These are the moments when it matters – having people who can say no. He is surrounded now by people he doesn’t particularly trust or particularly know.” Here’s how the main newspaper front pages are looking at it all today.
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MPs criticise Covid fine regime – All 85,000-plus Covid fines (FPNs) issued in England during the pandemic should be reviewed, MPs and peers have said, after more than a quarter of prosecutions in the first two months of the year were shown to have been wrongly brought. The human rights committee has also said coronavirus regulations – which have changed at least 65 times since March 2020 – were muddled, discriminatory and unfair. No criminal record should result from Covid FPNs; a recipient’s income should be assessed given the maximum fine is £10,000; and there should be a mechanism to challenge future fines, they said. Meanwhile, the pandemic has driven a surge in outdoor activity, the Office for National Statistics has found. Those working from home benefited significantly more, with three-quarters leaving the house to exercise during the first lockdown, compared with half of those still travelling for their job. UK donations of ventilators and oxygen supplies have started to arrive in India today – further developments in the critical situation there, and more Covid news, at our global live blog.
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‘Does not look appropriate’ – The failed financier Lex Greensill had no contract to work for the government despite spending years inside No 10 under David Cameron, a committee of MPs has been told. Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, said he was surprised and puzzled by the lack of paperwork. “It does not look appropriate,” he said. The government has come under mounting pressure to explain why Greensill was allowed to become an unpaid adviser to government under Cameron – a role in which he was reportedly allowed to pitch his financial projects across Whitehall. Greensill Capital collapsed into administration last month leaving thousands of jobs in the balance. Cameron and Greensill are under investigation for lobbying ministers for access to government schemes as recently as last year.
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Israel ‘apartheid’ claim – Human Rights Watch has accused Israeli officials of committing the crimes of apartheid and persecution as part of an overarching policy to “maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians”. In a report released on Tuesday, HRW has become the first major international rights body to level such allegations. “This is the starkest finding Human Rights Watch has reached on Israeli conduct in the 30 years we’ve been documenting abuses on the ground there,” said Omar Shakir, the group’s Israel and Palestine director. Similar findings have been made previously by Israeli rights bodies B’Tselem and Yesh Din. Israel’s foreign ministry accused HRW of an anti-Israeli agenda and said the report was a “propaganda pamphlet” with “no connection to facts or reality on the ground”.
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Rise of the supermoon – From Sydney’s Bondi Beach to Istanbul’s Bosphorus and the mountains of Caracas in Venezuela, the first supermoon of 2021 has been seen across the globe. A supermoon is a name given to a full moon that occurs when the moon is closest to Earth.
According at Nasa, this year’s supermoon has been called a “pink” super moon, as it appears in April and is named after an American plant, pink phlox, that blooms in spring.
Today in Focus podcast: A crisis for India and the world
A catastrophe is unfolding in India as hospitals run out of oxygen, the Guardian’s south Asia correspondent, Hannah Ellis-Petersen, reports from Delhi.
Lunchtime read: Is free will an illusion?
A growing chorus of scientists and philosophers argue that free will does not exist. They argue that our choices are determined by forces beyond our ultimate control – perhaps even predetermined all the way back to the big bang – and that therefore nobody is ever wholly responsible for their actions. Could they be right?
Sport
Chelsea meet Real Madrid in the Champions League semi-finals tonight, with coach Thomas Tuchel having earned the right to face the Spanish giants, as opposed to the guarantees proposed by the Super League. Mauricio Pochettino, the Paris Saint-Germain coach, has spoken to the Guardian about his thrilling Champions League adventures ahead of Wednesday night’s semi against Manchester City. Kelechi Iheanacho’s superb solo goal kept Leicester on track for a top-four finish in the Premier League after Wilfried Zaha’s early opener for Crystal Palace. The Spotify owner Daniel Ek is preparing a bid to buy Arsenal with assistance from the club’s former players Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp and Patrick Vieira. Fara Williams, England’s most capped player, male or female, has announced she will retire from professional football at the end of the season. And Judd Trump cruised into the quarter-finals of the World Snooker Championship for the fourth straight year and said it would be a shame if he finished his career without landing a dream Crucible final against Ronnie O’Sullivan.
Business
Italy’s largest mafia trial in three decades is due to hear claims that its most powerful criminal group, the ’Ndrangheta, has laundered billions of euros through the City of London, as stated in a 2019 report from Italy’s Antimafia Investigative Directorate. Several defendants will be asked to respond to allegations of establishing companies in the UK with the purpose of simulating legitimate economic activity.
The FTSE looks like opening flat to lower after Asian stock markets fell across the board. Investors may be looking ahead to this week’s Federal Reserve meeting for assurance interest rates will be kept ultra-low – as well as earnings announcements by US companies. Quarterly profits among companies in the S&P 500 are expected to be up 24% from this time a year ago, according to a survey by FactSet. The pound is coming in at $1.388 and €1.150 at the moment.
The papers
The front pages will do little to ease the pressure on Boris Johnson over allegations that he said “let the bodies pile high” in relation to the national lockdown late last year. The Guardian splashes with “Pressure on Johnson after claim of slur on Covid dead”. It says faced with the fury of grieving relatives the PM and senior ministers denied he made the alleged comments, which were first reported by the Daily Mail on Monday. The Mail says the PM is under siege, under the headline “Boris on the ropes”. It alleges “fresh sources” have come forward to claim the PM had made “crass comments” about lockdown deaths.
The Mirror’s front page is a large picture of the Covid memorial wall at St Thomas’ hospital in London with the headline: “Not just bodies, Boris … we loved them”. The paper says three people have now claimed the PM made the alleged comments, which it says has upset grieving families. The Times leads with claims “Johnson ‘said he would let Covid rip’ in lockdown row”, saying the dispute suggests No 10 was in turmoil over the economic damage of the virus. The paper says it has been told the PM allegedly told aides he would rather “let it rip” during the period late last year than implement another lockdown because of the damage to businesses and the people who would lose their jobs. The paper also claims the PM expressed regret about the first lockdown, quoting a No 10 spokesperson saying: “These are gross distortions of his [Johnson’s] position.”
The Telegraph says the PM is fighting to “move on from leaks row”. The paper says the PM will tell his cabinet on Tuesday to be “totally focused on the public’s priorities”. While it says Johnson has categorically denied the remarks, both the BBC and ITV cited sources who contradicted him. The Daily Express’s splash is “Boris denies ‘let bodies’ pile high’ outburst’, saying he branded the allegations “total, total rubbish”, and that No 10 is fighting back over the “war of words”. The Sun mocks up a police case file for its front page with the pun headline “Lying of Duty”, saying the No 10 leaks row is a plot worthy of the police drama. The i has “PM tainted by sleaze, say voters” in what it describes as a “withering verdict” for Johnson on a dramatic day in Westminster. It reports a new poll that shows at least half of the people questioned believe there is a “culture of sleaze” in the government following the Greensill lobbying scandal. It describes Michael Gove’s refusal to deny the PM’s alleged remarks over bodies as a “wounding blow”.
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