Sunak prioritises illegal immigration at Moldova summit
“Rishi Sunak has said he made cooperation on combating illegal migration a priority at a meeting of European leaders in Moldova. The prime minister said he was “putting tackling illegal migration top of the international agenda”, and the UK was “taking the lead”. The main focus of the European Political Community (EPC) summit was the Ukraine war. But Mr Sunak was keen to show progress on one of his five domestic promises.” – BBC
- PM to press Joe Biden for UK lead on international rules for artificial intelligence – The i
- Stopping the boats requires more than international cooperation – Leader, Daily Telegraph
>Today: ToryDiary: Will Sunak keep his five pledges?
WhatsApp 1) Freeman expects the Government to lose Covid inquiry legal case
“The government is likely to lose its legal case against the Covid inquiry, a government minister has said. It comes after the government said it would seek a judicial review over the inquiry’s demand that it submit Boris Johnson’s unredacted WhatsApp messages. Speaking on BBC Question Time, science minister George Freeman said he had “very little doubt” a court would find it should hand over the documents. He added it was “worth testing” whether officials had a right to privacy.” – BBC
WhatsApp 2) Johnson’s messages from first year of pandemic not handed over to Covid inquiry
“Boris Johnson has not handed his WhatsApp from the first year of the pandemic to the Government, it has emerged, as ministers took their battle with the Covid inquiry to court…
Mr Johnson claimed to have handed over all of his unredacted WhatsApp messages to the Cabinet Office on Wednesday, with the Government’s lawyers then choosing which material to submit to the inquiry. However, after the deadline passed, the Cabinet Office said that Mr Johnson had not handed over a personal phone he used until May 2021 – more than a year after the start of the pandemic, and the same month that he announced that a Covid inquiry would take place. On Thursday night Mr Johnson’s spokesman admitted that he had the phone in question, but that security officials had told him not to switch it on. The Cabinet Office said this meant they were unable to pass on the WhatsApp messages it contained.” – Daily Telegraph
- I fear this row over private messages will set the tone for a Covid inquiry that will drag on and cost a fortune – Leo McKinstry, Daily Mail
- Osborne destroyed Britain’s safety net. The Covid inquiry should shame him into silence – Polly Toynbee, The Guardian
Labour MP suspended following “incredibly serious” allegations
“A formal complaint has been submitted to Labour about the behaviour of suspended MP Geraint Davies. Earlier, the Labour Party said he had been suspended following “incredibly serious” allegations of “completely unacceptable behaviour”. According to news website Politico, he is accused of subjecting younger colleagues to unwanted sexual attention. The MP for Swansea West told Politico he did not recognise the allegations.” – BBC
- MP ‘boasted of taking sex workers to bar in Commons’ – Daily Telegraph
- Crackdown on Westminster sex pests amid new scandal – The Times
- Something rotten – Leader, The Times
- We revealed the Pestminster scandal six years ago – Leader, The Sun
Starmer urged to put less emphasis on climate change spending
“Sir Keir Starmer is facing calls from some senior allies to rebrand the Labour party’s proposed flagship “green prosperity plan” to put more focus on its impact on the UK economy in terms of job creation opportunities and less on climate change…The policy, which would provide a £140bn stimulus over five years, is by far the main opposition party’s biggest single spending commitment. It would see a Labour government borrow £28bn each year to spend on accelerating the shift towards the UK’s 2050 net zero target by backing projects, including renewable energy schemes and home insulation initiatives But some senior Labour MPs are concerned that a Labour government is prepared to commit such a large amount of public money to the low-carbon transition and not to other political priorities.” – Financial Times
- Labour vows to cut student loan repayments without spending a penny – The Times
- Absent parents “face huge fines if they fail to control their yob kids”, warns Labour – The Sun
- As Sunak clamps down on Just Stop Oil, Starmer meets their demands – Esther McVey, Daily Express
- Labour’s economic masterplan for Britain may already be falling apart – Fraser Nelson, Daily Telegraph
>Yesterday:
AI is helping defeat benefit fraud, says Stride
“The Cabinet minister in charge of getting Britons back to work after the Covid pandemic has started to tell his friends to get jobs in pubs or restaurants. Mel Stride, the Work and Pensions Secretary, disclosed that he would often challenge some of his friends in their 50s and 60s who had stopped working about getting a job…In the interview, Mr Stride also conceded that while artificial intelligence (AI) was a “double-edged sword”, with real risks attached, for his department it offered opportunities in “choking” benefit fraud. In one instance, he said, AI had been used to spot a benefits fraud gang in Sheffield by “looking at large datasets and finding patterns” in three postcodes that helped to detect how a gang was “exploiting” the system. His department is now planning to set out a target to use AI to cut fraud in the coming weeks.” – Daily Telegraph
Truss backs scrapping Inheritance Tax
“Liz Truss has backed the Daily Telegraph’s campaign for Rishi Sunak to scrap inheritance tax. A spokesman for the former prime minister said she would support the abolition of the duty, which she believes penalises those who “work hard to earn money”. On Thursday, The Telegraph disclosed that the proportion of homes under threat from the levy has more than doubled since the Tories came to power.” – Daily Telegraph
- Don’t kill the death tax, it’s good for most of us – Emma Duncan, The Times
- Inheritance tax isn’t just immoral – it’s weighing down Britain’s economy – Sam Ashworth-Hayes, Daily Telegraph
Other political news
- Biden falls to the ground during graduation ceremony – Daily Telegraph
- US debt ceiling deal passed by Senate – The Times
- UK house prices drop as mortgage repayments soar – Financial Times
- Fury as Labour council staff including £160k-a-year chief ‘take the knee’ – then ‘lock Twitter account’ amid backlash from residents – Daily Mail
- Burnham calls for Labour to adopt proportional representation – The Guardian
- ITV chief to be hauled before committee of MPs over Schofield affair – Daily Express
- Sanctions put on Russian oligarch father of Lord Lebedev – Daily Telegraph
- More than 18,000 Scots died while waiting on NHS treatment, as more rush to private treatment – The Scotsman
Frost: The Conservatives need a more positive tone about Brexit
“Despite everything, Boris Johnson is about 10 percentage points more popular than the Prime Minister among both Leavers and 2019 Tory voters. So maybe we need at least a change in tone to match the former PM’s relentless optimism, his determination that leaving the EU could make life better for those who had entrusted the Tories with their vote and for those who yet might. Certainly, if we give the impression that we see Brexit as an awkward and embarrassing legacy – accommodating to the EU on important issues, doing little to defend the 2020 trade agreement, and indicating we are comfortable with high levels of alignment with EU rules – all we are doing is signalling we don’t seem to believe in our central policy. Why, then, should anyone else?” – David Frost, Daily Telegraph
- Young people are hostile to income redistribution. It’s not because they’re rightwing, they simply pay too much tax already – Gaby Hinsliff, The Guardian
>Today: Columnist Georgia L Gilholy: Young people cannot be blamed for turning their backs on the Conservatives
Kirkup: We need to save more for our pensions
“Hunt and Reeves, both serious public servants, are adding pensions to the list of areas where they quietly concur. They should go further and agree that whoever is in power after the next election will start raising pension contribution rates. The authors of that policy would leave office long before today’s workers reached retirement and felt the benefit. Who wants to make today’s voters worse off so they can be richer in four or five elections’ time? But one day Hunt and Reeves will themselves be retired and looking back on their time in politics and their place in history. Would you rather be remembered for cutting down today’s money tree, or planting new ones for tomorrow?” – James Kirkup, The Times
Clark: The RAF’s discrimination against white male pilots is unacceptable
“Two weeks ago, Britain marked the 70th anniversary of the Dambusters’s raid, one of thousands of daring missions by airmen during the Second World War. How depressing, then, that today’s RAF might regard Guy Gibson and his colleagues as “useless white males”. That was the phrase used by Squadron Leader Andrew Harwin in a leaked email discussing the lack of female and ethnic candidates applying for training courses. “If we don’t have enough BAME and female to board then we need to make the decision to pause boarding and seek more BAME and female from the RAF,” he wrote in 2021. “I don’t really need to see loads of useless white male pilots, let’s get as focused as possible, I am more than happy to reduce boarding if needed to have a balanced BAME/female/male board.” How in heaven’s name does a senior RAF officer think this is an acceptable attitude?” – Ross Clark, Daily Express
News in brief
- The Tories need to get serious about the Blob – Gareth Roberts, The Spectator
- Morgan McSweeney. Labour’s power broker – Rachel Wearmouth, New Statesman
- Thanks to migration, we’re running up a down escalator when it comes to housing – Karl Williams, CapX
- The face of the future: the Commonwealth – David Howell, The Article
- We cannot afford any further delay to ban live animal exports – Theresa Villiers MP, The House magazine
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