Top story: PM to speak after Johnson’s Brexit attack
Welcome to Wednesday – I’m Warren Murray and I will be your news concierge this morning.
The Conservative conference has become a battleground as Theresa May prepares to hit back after Boris Johnson eviscerated her Chequers plan as a “cheat” and an “outrage”. Delegates queued for hours and Brexit-backing MPs turned out in force to hear Johnson’s speech, which has raised the pressure on May to show Conservatives she has a compelling long-term vision.
Few believe Johnson has sufficient support in parliament to unseat May when the Commons returns next week. But her performance today will be closely scrutinised. On Tuesday the PM said Johnson had made her “cross” by rejecting her Brexit strategy. “He wants to tear up our guarantee to the people of Northern Ireland,” she said, referring to her Chequers pledge to uphold the soft border in Ireland. The DUP has threatened to pull the plug on May’s government if she comes back from Brussels with a deal that includes a border in the Irish Sea.
In her keynote address on the final day in Birmingham, the PM will attack Jeremy Corbyn, arguing that “millions of people who have never supported our party” are appalled by what he “has done to Labour … They want to support a party that is decent, moderate and patriotic. One that puts the national interest first, delivers on the issues they care about and is comfortable with modern Britain in all its diversity.” The PM will announce that fuel duty will be frozen for the ninth year in a row: “Money in the pockets of hardworking people from a Conservative government that is on their side.”
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Midweek catch-up – Let’s hit the refresh button on some key stories …
> Donald Trump says Brett Kavanaugh will lose his support if the FBI finds he lied to the Senate about alleged sexual assault. The president has mocked Kavanaugh’s accuser at a rally in Mississippi overnight. Law professors have signed letters rejecting the judge’s nomination. Harvard says Kavanaugh will not teach there this winter.
> The stricken people of Palu in Sulawesi, Indonesia, are still in dire need of aid after the earthquake and tsunami of last week. Scientists have explained that buildings collapsed during the quake due to “liquefaction” of the soil beneath them.
> Royal Mail’s share price has sunk to its lowest level since going public five years ago after it shocked investors with a profit warning. The company had £800m wiped off its value and the share price fell to 360p, close to the 330p it floated at in 2013.
> After the collapse of Primera Air, here is what you can do if you had a booking with the discount carrier.
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Another week, another new planet – The times when a “very easy memory jingle” was all we needed to rattle off the solar system’s membership are becoming an ever more distant memory. We now have a far-off dwarf planet called the Goblin (or, more boringly, 2015 TG387) that might help astronomers find another much larger one called Planet Nine. Both are at the extremities of the solar system – at its closest the Goblin is about two and a half times as far from the sun as Pluto, and at its farthest almost 60 times. It takes 40,000 years to orbit the sun. Like several other dwarf planets discovered in recent times, the Goblin seems to be pulled about by the gravity of what could be the theorised but as-yet unseen Planet Nine.
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Trump tax dodge claims – New York state tax authorities are investigating after the New York Times reported that Donald Trump engaged in “dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud”, as he and his siblings took control of their late father Fred C Trump’s real estate empire. The Times says Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413m from his father’s real estate fortune – contradicting his claim to be a self-made man. The story alleges the siblings used systemic undervaluation of assets and properties to pay only $52.2m in taxes on more than $1bn in wealth transferred from their parents. The White House and the president’s lawyers issued blanket denials but did not refute the story in detail.
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Black horse has bolted – Noel Edmonds has failed to stop Lloyds Bank’s black horse striding across TV screens. The presenter is taking legal action over a fraud scandal at the bank’s subsidiary HBOS and the associated collapse of his entertainment firm. Edmonds and other victims of the fraud argued the ads, which reassure customers that the bank will “always will be by your side”, are misleading considering how it has treated them. The ad watchdog said the claim to be “by your side” was allowable “advertising puffery” and did not need to be put in the context of the HBOS case.
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Minister marches – France’s interior minister, Gérard Collomb, has quit in defiance of President Emmanuel Macron, whose administration is showing more and more signs of internal discontent. Collomb wants to recontest the mayoralty of Lyon but Macron until Tuesday had refused to accept his resignation. Collomb had been a strong ally of Macron but has reportedly spoken of his and others’ difficulty working with the president. The French PM is taking over Collomb’s duties until a replacement is found.
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Don’t expect backpay – Unpaid household work such as looking after children, laundry and cooking is worth £1.24tn per year, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). In 2016 that equated to £18,932 per person. The value of unpaid household work has increased by more than 80% since 2005. The ONS says the figures are important because gross domestic product (GDP) is not a full picture of the economy and living standards. “Activities such as organising a holiday or finding the cheapest car insurance, which may have previously been carried out through travel agents and insurance brokers, are now being produced by households themselves, using online services that are often free at the point of use,” says the ONS. “This … could lead to a reduction in GDP, while in practice people’s wellbeing may be higher because of these activities.”
Lunchtime read: Any bad dreams last night?
These are anxious times – but how does anxiety affect our sleep, and what can we learn from dreaming we have missed the train to an exam, whilst naked?
Isabelle Arnulf, neuroscientist and leading French sleep researcher, says “it is normal to have anxious dreams”. There is the “threat simulation theory”, that people rehearse frightening situations in their dreams to equip them for the waking world. Students who had the most anxious dreams before taking the Sorbonne’s medical exam got high marks. Or could our daytime preoccupations extend into our sleep because “the brain simply doesn’t shut down”? And if these dreams have a purpose, why do we remember so few of them? Paula Cocozza shares some anxiety dreams of her own as she interviews the experts on what goes on in our heads when we sleep.
Sport
Real Madrid has succumbed to a shock Champions League loss to CSKA Moscow, going down 1-0, after conceding inside two minutes to the disappointment of Julen Lopetegui. It was an only marginally better evening for under-pressure José Mourinho, whose Manchester United drew 0-0 away to Valencia, but saw the Portuguese manager heavily criticised by former great Paul Scholes.
Fed Cup tennis is returning to Great Britain for the first time in 25 years, with confirmation that Bath University will host Europe/Africa group one matches. And, Las Vegas police have reopened an investigation stemming from a 2009 complaint involving a woman who claims she was raped by Cristiano Ronaldo.
Business
Asian shares reversed early losses while the euro rebounded from six-week lows on reports Italy would cut its budget deficit at a faster pace than expected, raising hopes Rome could stave off a problematic debt blowout. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan has climbed 0.2% with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index up 0.5% and Singapore shares adding 0.9%. Japan’s Nikkei pared early losses and was last a shade weaker while Australian shares gained 0.3%. China’s and South Korea’s markets are closed for a public holiday.
The pound has been trading around $1.299 and €1.122 overnight.
The papers
The front pages are dominated by the fight for the leadership of the Conservative party. The Guardian splashes with “May appeals to ‘decent patriots’ in effort to halt Johnson leadership bid”. Also on the front is a dispatch from Palu in Indonesia after the devastating earthquake and tsunami.
Several papers lead with lines from May’s scheduled speech to the Tory conference later today. The Express has “Time to Believe in Brexit Britain” and the Times goes with “May insists best days are still to come for Britain”. The Mail’s headline is “Daggers drawn” and it is furious with Boris Johnson, calling his speech “a public audition for [May’s] job”. The i also leads with the spat: “May versus Johnson for soul of the Tories”. The Telegraph, which publishes a weekly column by Johnson, seems to be baying for May’s blood: “Cabinet demands May set a date to quit”. It also features a story by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard about her “sinister” brush with the US supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The Sun’s lead is “PM’s all pumped up on petrol”, as it hails (and claims credit for) May’s decision to freeze fuel duty. The Mirror’s lead is Conservative students photographed on a night out wearing shirts covered in “offensive slogans” – including “Fuck the NHS”. The accompanying headline is: “Tory party of the future”. The FT has news of Johnson’s speech on its front but leads with: “Amazon raises minimum wage as critics prompt Bezos to ‘listen’”.
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