Top story: PM’s plan for 30 June exit under fire from all sides
Good morning and welcome to this morning’s briefing as we enter the seriously pointy end of Brexit talks.
As negotiations go, it’s hard to see how Brexit could go more down to the wire. With just two days until Britain is due to exit the EU without a deal, the PM will host question time this afternoon before heading to Brussels for a do-or-die meeting of the European Council in a final attempt to set a new leaving date. Last night Donald Tusk, the president of the council, signalled the bloc’s lack of faith in the PM’s cross-party talks, and a European diplomat said the two dates firming as possible extensions were December this year or March 2020, torpedoing May’s proposed 30 June deadline. Tusk picked apart her proposed date in a letter to European leaders inviting them to tonight’s crucial summit where they will decide whether to extend the Brexit cliff edge. A cabinet source voiced doubts as to whether May could survive presiding over a long delay. You can read our handy guide to what may happen next here and Steve Bell’s take on the PM as a “zombie time lord” here.
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Israel’s tight election – With 97% of the vote counted Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and Benny Gantz’s Blue and White parties appear to be tied with 35 seats each. Both are well short of being able to form a majority in the Knesset, but the right-wing and religious parties appear to have won more seats than the Arab, centre and left parties, meaning Netanyahu may have a clearer path to forming a right-wing government. If Netanyahu is able to secure a victory, he will become Israel’s longest-ever serving leader by the summer. You can follow our live blog here.
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Child mental health – Children suffering anxiety, depression and other mental health conditions face a postcode lottery when seeking treatment, research shows. Despite soaring demand and increased government funding, a study by the children’s commissioner for England has found wide disparities in spending in different areas. Researchers used data from local authorities and NHS clinical commissioning groups to calculate that just over £14 a child was allocated on average to low-level mental health services in 2018-19. While in London it was £17.88, in the east of England it was just £5.32. Overall spending per child was higher in the capital and the north-east, lower in the East Midlands, east of England and south-east. Urban areas were slightly better off than rural regions.
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‘Intergenerational injustice’ – New analysis combining emissions data and population changes shows children born today will have to live their lives with drastically smaller carbon footprints than their grandparents if climate change is to be controlled. The Carbon Brief thinktank has calculated how much the average person can emit over their lifetime to keep temperature rises below 1.5C or 2C above pre-industrial levels, the goal of the world’s nations to avoid climate catastrophe. It reveals people born between 1997 and 2012 will have carbon budgets just one-sixth of those of their baby boomer grandparents. “As protests by schoolchildren increase each week around the world, our analysis starkly highlights the intergenerational injustice of climate change,” said Leo Hickman, editor of Carbon Brief.
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‘Quantifiably different’ – A study has found that violent Islamist extremists are three times more likely than far-right attackers to be described as terrorists in the media. Signal AI looked at 200,00 news articles and broadcast transcripts in the past two years, across 80 different languages, and found that Islamist attacks were linked to terrorism in 78% of news reports about them, whereas those from the far right who carried out violent attacks were only identified as terrorists 24% of the time.
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Eye of the beeholder – Doctors in Taiwan have extracted four live bees from a woman’s eye after she complained of swelling. According to a local media, the woman had been tending to a family member’s grave and was pulling out weeds when she felt something go into her eye. Presuming it was soil, she washed it out with water but by night it had begun to swell up and she felt a sharp stinging pain under her eyelid. At the hospital the next morning, the doctor suspected an infection, but when he looked in her eye through a microscope, he saw the tiny legs of the bees wriggling in her ducts, where they were feeding off the moisture and salt of her tears. They were extracted alive.
Today in Focus podcast: Can the Conservative party survive Brexit?
As Theresa May heads to Brussels to scrape together a Brexit deal, she leaves a party fracturing and shedding members. Nick Boles dramatically resigned from the party last week and now feels emboldened to speak out. Also today: Dream McClinton on the discrimination based on skin complexion that exists within the black community.
Lunchtime read: Why poo is no longer taboo
The co-creator of the Isle of Wight’s most intriguing new tourist attraction readily admits he was a little hesitant about setting up the National Poo Museum. “I thought, am I going to be socially contaminated? Are people going to point at me? Am I going to become Mr Poo?” quipped Daniel Roberts. He needn’t have fretted. The museum’s exhibits – encased in balls of resin, like something from a slightly troubling reimagining of Jurassic Park and housed at the Isle of Wight zoo – were a hit. “We were nobodies but, because we mentioned poo, the whole world came running.” Last August, according to Google Trends, poop became bigger than Beyoncé. And, as Peter Robinson writes, it could be called part of sheitgeist, where poo emojis, poo-themed erasers and rainbow-coloured “unicorn poo” slime or putty has become a children’s party favourite. Apologies if you are reading this over your Weetabix 💩.
Sport
Mauricio Pochettino’s happiness at overseeing a 1-0 Champions League victory over Manchester City was tempered by the loss of Harry Kane to yet another ankle ligament injury – the Tottenham manager fears it will rule him out for the remainder of the season. Jürgen Klopp said Liverpool still have a fight on their hands to reach the semi-finals despite a comfortable win over Porto at Anfield. Ole Gunnar Solskjær has warned Manchester United they will need to be “streetwise” to knock Barcelona out of the Champions League, with the manager hoping lessons will be learned from their first-leg defeat to Paris Saint-Germain in the last 16. A fit-again Jade Moore inspired England as goals from Beth Mead and Ellen White got them back to winning ways with a 2-1 victory at home against Spain. Last year’s Masters champion, Patrick Reed, has relished his time as a first-time major winner and admits life is simpler for him on the course, while Tiger Woods, the former world No 1 who came close to victory in the last two majors of 2018, has said he feels like he can win at Augusta. And Magic Johnson has abruptly quit as the Los Angeles Lakers’ president of basketball operations, citing his desire to return to the simpler life.
Business
The Bank of England could be set a target for house price inflation under plans being explored by the Labour party, with tougher powers to restrict mortgage lending to close the gap between property prices and average incomes. Under the proposals, the Bank could be mandated to guide house price growth within levels set by the government, in the same way that the central bank is handed a target to keep general inflation around 2%.
Asian shares slipped from eight-month highs on Wednesday as the International Monetary Fund lowered its global growth outlook and as tensions over tariffs between the United States and Europe escalated. On Tuesday Donald Trump threatened to impose US tariffs on $11bn (£8.4bn) of goods from the EU, raising the stakes in the transatlantic trade dispute between the world’s two largest economic superpowers. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan dropped 0.3%, the Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.55% and Japan’s Nikkei lost 0.7%.
The pound is buying $1.306 and €1.159.
The papers
Unsurprisingly Brexit is splashed across most of the front pages. The Times has “Don’t humiliate May, Tusk warns Macron”. The Telegraph suggests the end is nigh for May, with “May’s fate sealed with a kiss as EU plots long Brexit delay”.
The Guardian says “May’s hopes dashed as EU targets longer Brexit delay”. The i pictures an apparently frustrated looking May with Angela Merkel with the headline “EU to rebuff PM and insist on long delay”. The Mail is furious about the prospect of a delay: “Another year in limbo” is its headline, blaming “our inept MPs”, with Brussels insisting on a “humiliating” delay. The Express is also characteristically unhappy: “Will we ever escape EU clutches?”
The Mirror splashes on an expenses scandal “exclusive”, with the headline “MPs make millions selling homes you helped pay for”. It says 160 politicians have profited from a “taxpayer-funded mortgage perk”. And, ever the outlier, the Sun pictures Boris Johnson on its front page, but not about Brexit: “I dipped my Johnson in Boris’s pint” is its headline, a story about the TV host Fuzz Townshend of Car SOS claiming he tampered with the former foreign secretary’s pint before handing it to him.
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