Top story: 30 years of post-Soviet disarmament to end
Britain is lifting the cap on the number of Trident nuclear warheads it can stockpile from 180 to 260, Boris Johnson is expected to announce today, ending 30 years of gradual disarmament. A leaked copy of the defence and foreign policy review paves the way for a £10bn rearmament. Britain has far fewer warheads stockpiled than Russia, estimated to have 4,300, the US on 3,800 or China, which has about 320.
Campaigners warn the UK is at risk of starting a “new nuclear arms race”. Kate Hudson from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) said: “With the government strapped for cash, we don’t need grandiose, money-wasting spending on weapons of mass destruction.” The review states that Russia under Vladimir Putin represents an “active threat” but is nuanced about China. The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China says Beijing should be rated as more of a threat amid “repeated Chinese state-backed cyber-attacks on UK targets and attempts by Chinese government agents to intimidate and threaten UK residents on British soil”.
The review warns of the “realistic possibility” a terrorist group will “launch a successful CBRN [chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear] attack by 2030”, although there is little extra detail to back up this assessment. In the post-Brexit era it adopts low-key language about European alliances, saying “the United States will remain the UK’s most important strategic ally and partner”; and talks about an Indo-Pacific tilt, calling the region “the centre of intensifying geopolitical competition” and promising to send in the HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier. Simon Jenkins writes that the tilt “beggars belief. The one conceptually plausible threat to Britain’s interests is a reckless Russian leader, but confronting that is manifestly a joint European task. Because Johnson hates Europe he is snubbing it by sending a carrier to the South China Sea.”
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Women’s safety and policing protests roil – Police made arrests last night as hundreds of people marched through central London to oppose a policing bill and highlight violence against women. A rally addressed by MPs in Parliament Square was followed by protesters marching a winding route through Westminster and Lambeth chanting “all cops are bastards” and “whose streets? our streets” and disrupting traffic. Movements including Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, Stop HS2 and antifascists took part but it was dominated by Sisters Uncut, the group behind Saturday night’s vigil for Sarah Everard on Clapham Common that was controversially dispersed by police. Sue Fish, the former chief constable for Nottinghamshire, has said the Met’s handling of Saturday night was “institutionally misogynistic … It is just so ingrained in the decision-making. They don’t realise they are doing it and why.” Priti Patel has also told the Commons she had had “extensive discussions” with the head of the Metropolitan police before officers broke up the weekend vigil.
Patel has hinted the government will consider recording misogyny as a hate crime and setting up a national register of stalkers as MPs and peers clamoured for swift action to tackle violence against women and girls. Following a meeting of the government’s Crime and Justice Taskforce chaired by the prime minister, Downing Street said it was taking a series of “immediate steps” to improve security. A pilot project called Project Vigilant will be rolled out across England under which plainclothes police officers could patrol bars and nightclubs to protect women from “predatory” offenders.
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‘Perilous position’ of NHS – Hospitals will have to start cutting services unless NHS England gets £8bn of extra funding within days, health service leaders are warning ministers. Hospital bosses say they are facing a huge backlog of surgery and additional costs resulting from Covid. The Treasury and NHS England are involved in a standoff over the demand for cash with 16 days to go until the new financial year. A letter to Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, from Danny Mortimer, the NHS Confederation chief executive, says that if the Treasury does not agree this week to an agreed sum, services will be left in a “perilous position at the start of the ‘recovery phase’ as the NHS plots a way out of the pandemic”. In coronavirus news: WHO experts are to discuss the Oxford vaccine after several European countries suspended its use, despite the EU’s medical agency saying there is no link with reported blood clots.
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Historic home to close – It has been home to literary legends, psychoanalysts and activists, but now residents at the Mary Feilding Guild home in north London have been told they have to leave by 31 May. After the charity that had run the home since 1877 sold it to Highgate Care, residents had been assured that they were safe. But Highgate wants to pull down and replace it. It is no ordinary residential home: previous residents include the late writer Diana Athill, as well as the political activist and suffragette Hetty Bower, who died in 2013 at 108. A spokesman for the former trustees said: “We are appealing to the new owner to reconsider this wholly unnecessary decision to shut the home immediately.”
One resident, Joy Winterbottom, an 88-year-old former French teacher and former social worker, said: “During the pandemic, we kept the virus out of the home with the help of our magnificent staff … now we are expected in our old age to put ourselves at risk in order to go out and look for somewhere else to live”. Highgate Care said: “The home has been financially unsustainable for a significant period of time and we assume that this is one of the reasons the home was put on the open market. The Mary Feilding Guild trustees would have been aware that a new owner would need to make significant changes.”
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95% mortgage back for some – Yorkshire Building Society will become the first lender to relaunch 95% mortgages in the mainstream market, nearly a year after the pandemic spooked lenders into withdrawing low-deposit home loans. The deal is only for first-time buyers and the society will apply strict conditions, including ruling out flats and new-build homes. The recent budget brought news of a government guarantee scheme to encourage banks and building societies back into the low-deposit mortgage market. The society is not planning to use the scheme but said it would not have returned to the market without it, because of the anticipated demand from would-be homeowners.
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Big pole energy – Giant wobbly sticks could be the future of windfarming, a startup says. The Vortex Bladeless turbine stands at three metres high, a curve-topped cylinder fixed vertically with an elastic rod. It waggles back and forth, having been designed to oscillate in the wind and generate electricity from the vibration, without taking up the room of bladed turbines.
It has already raised eyebrows on the forum site Reddit, where the turbine was likened to a giant vibrating sex toy, or “skybrator”. David Yáñez, its Madrid-based inventor, said: “We are looking for an industrial partner to scale up our plans to a 140-metre turbine with a power capacity of 1 megawatt.”
Today in Focus podcast: The women’s safety debate
Guardian senior reporter Alexandra Topping discusses why Sarah Everard’s case has prompted so many women to speak out.
Lunchtime read: Rebel librarians of Syria
In a town under siege from the Assad regime, a small group of revolutionaries found a new mission: to build a library from books rescued from the rubble. For those stranded in the city, books offered an imaginative escape from the horrors of war.
Sport
Nuno Espírito Santo is cautiously optimistic that the Wolves goalkeeper Rui Patrício will recover fully from the head injury he suffered in a distressing collision just before the end of his team’s 1-0 defeat by Liverpool. The prospect of Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury meeting in one of the richest showdowns in boxing history became more likely when Eddie Hearn confirmed on Monday that both world heavyweight champions have now signed a two-fight contract. England head into the final round of the Six Nations with no shot at winning the title for only the second time under Eddie Jones but Ben Youngs has said there will be no letup against Ireland in Dublin on Saturday.
England opener Jason Roy believes the brief return of fans in India spurred his return to form, even if the rest of the T20 series will now go ahead behind closed doors. Tiers three to six of the 2020-21 season in English women’s football have been curtailed, the Football Association’s women’s football board has announced. Sir Bradley Wiggins has called for a fresh investigation into the Richard Freeman affair but does not believe the testosterone the doctor ordered was to dope a rider. And the Guardian’s Jonathan Liew, Andy Bull and Tom Jenkins have been honoured with top prizes at the British Sports Journalism Awards, with Liew being named sports writer of the year.
Business
Alibaba, the Chinese ecommerce conglomerate, has been asked to divest some of its media holdings amid concern in Beijing about its growing influence on public opinion, according to the Wall Street Journal. The report says officials were appalled to discover the extent of its media assets, which include ownership of the South China Morning Post and a stake in China’s Twitter-equivalent, Weibo. The FTSE100 is tipped to rise around 0.5% this morning, with the pound sitting at $1.387 and €1.162.
The papers
The Guardian leads with “EU regulator dismisses fear over Oxford vaccine’s safety”. Germany, France, Italy and Spain have suspended its use but the European Medicines Agency has said “many thousands of people develop blood clots annually in the EU for different reasons” and the number of incidents in vaccinated people “seems not to be higher than that seen in the general population”. Our front-page picture is Carrie Mulligan, who is among Britain’s leading Oscar hopes. The Financial Times says “AstraZeneca jab rollout paused in Europe over blood clot fears”. While the Scotsman offers reassurance about the picture from Scotland’s CMO: “Health risk lower after Oxford jab”.
The Express sees this an opportunity to be seized: “Shameful – what on Earth are EU playing at!”, as does the Mail: “‘Reckless’ EU snubs UK jab”. The latter also has “How low can police go over Sarah?” after an officer guarding search cordons as part of the Sarah Everard murder investigation was removed from operations after allegedly sending an offensive graphic on a WhatsApp group. The Sun leads with that too: “Sickening – cop guarding Sarah site sent ‘joke’ about killing”. The Metro focuses on “Priti Patel’s ‘heartache over Sarah’” and her five-word summary of the shared grief: “She was just walking home”.
The Telegraph’s picture lead is “Protesters converge on parliament” about the combined women’s safety and police powers demonstration in London. The Mirror questions the policing bill’s priorities: “10 years for statue attack … 5 for rape”. The Times splashes on UK backing for the Oxford jab, while across the top it runs a story on Project Vigilant, which is part of the women’s safety response announced by the government. The i appears to have this lead story to itself: “Gene editing ban set to end for UK farms”, saying a government consultation backs the change – and illustrated by three handsome cows in a verdant setting.
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