Crypto News: cc Suella

Suella Braverman was the most controversial appointment of Rishi Sunak's first cabinet and, less than a week in, she's in no danger of losing that accolade.

Sunak allies defended her return as home secretary, saying it was necessary for "unity." Braverman is a tribune of the right and her decision to endorse Sunak for prime minister was a key moment in the second leadership contest (that incredibly lasted one weekend and wound up just seven days ago today).

But the controversy surrounding Braverman's first resignation shows no sign of going away. At issue is how quickly she reported a security breach — a timeline she has sent to an investigating parliamentary panel suggests not as quickly as she had implied.

On top of this, Bloomberg's Alex Wickham has no fewer than six sources (!) saying Braverman took decisions to stop booking hotels for people being processed at a migration center (to control soaring costs, goes the argument). Her decision, it is charged, resulted in thousands being detained in cramped conditions that break the law.

Photographer: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Europe

The clip of Braverman at Tory party conference saying it was her dream to see flights of asylum seekers leave the UK was one of the most crass things I've seen a politician say — you can want a more robust immigration system, without getting joy from people's disappointment.

But Sunak's remit is to steady the ship and that means he needs to tough out the furor. Losing a senior minister this early would not be good for any prime minister, let alone one who has taken over after a period of nothing less than political pandemonium.

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With the majority of British adults consistently telling pollsters they care about climate change, we start the week with two bits of good news.

First is Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's election victory in Brazil, which gives the Amazon rainforest a fighting chance, and secondly, the indication the UK's new prime minister will head to COP27 next week after all.

The result in Brazil is a much-needed boost to the pledge signed at COP26 to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. Stopping deforestation in its tracks is the single biggest thing you can do if you want to be on a path to limit temperature increase to 1.5 degrees by 2030. And the Amazon is the largest carbon sink we have.

I helped organize COP26 and Bolsonaro was, to put it diplomatically, a limiting factor. He presided over the highest deforestation rates in 15 years — it surged 72% during his time in office. He also gutted environment enforcement agencies, giving free rein to illegal land grabs by developers.

In the year since the last summit in Glasgow, the world has been understandably distracted. Lula's return to power — he pledged "zero deforestation" in his victory speech — should breathe life back into not just the Amazon, but also the international push to "halt and reverse" deforestation.

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva addresses supporters Sunday night. Photographer: Tuane Fernandes/Bloomberg

Which brings us onto COP27, starting on Sunday in Egypt's Sharm el Sheikh. The Readout will be there for the first week, but more importantly, having said the prime minister wasn't going, Downing Street is now indicating that he will go if enough progress is made on the Autumn Statement.

Hopefully, the new prime minister comes to realize that climate diplomacy is much more than world leader FOMO or summit presenteeism. It's an agenda of economic opportunity that brings the UK highly skilled tech jobs and financial gain from first mover advantage. (Full disclosure: I now run a firm, Zeroism, that advises countries and companies how to shift to low carbon tech).

It is also about the place Britain has in the world, and it's one we shouldn't vacate. The push for Just Energy Transition Partnerships launched by Boris Johnson was the thing he was most excited by in the fight against climate change.

I know because I spent much of the two-day COP26 world leaders' summit with Johnson. It was held in a prefab hangar turned into a kind of IKEA sixth form common room/game of world leader top trumps, where then-Australian leader Scott Morrison and team sat soft next to the Ghanaians. There Johnson extolled the virtues of JETPs in all of his bilats.

Conceived as a rival to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, JETPs use government seed money to crowd in private finance for new infrastructure that lower carbon emissions — South Africa is the first case (which I wrote about here), and Vietnam, Indonesia, Senegal and India all want to follow suit, looking to rich nations to help them transition to a low carbon world without hobbling their nations' development.

For me, knowing him well, JETPs — a finance-led approach to climate change — is as Sunakian a foreign policy as it is possible to imagine. And right now, it badly needs a high level champion.

So if Prime Minister Sunak is looking for an agenda that plays to Britain's strengths, then going to Sharm with an offer on JETPs would be a good way to do it. We need to move beyond vague statements about "being committed" and on to real world delivery.

Sunak's economic policy will face an early test as the Bank of England delivers what could be its biggest interest-rate hike in more than 30 years, and the government looks to fill the multi-billion hole in the nation's finances before a fiscal statement next month.

Get ahead of the curve

Colder than normal. Get your jumpers out — the Met Office says there's a 25% chance this winter will be chillier in the UK.

Cost crisis. You'll pay more at the pump this winter if you have a diesel car.

Crushing diversity. If the US Supreme Court ends affirmative action it would lead to a radical overhaul of the country's most elite institutions.

Zombie coins. In true Halloween form, while not entirely active, these virtually defunct tokens are still multiplying.

To answer NIMBY critics, this social housing project by Jean-Christophe Quinton Architecte needed to be stylish enough to fit into the affluent 6th arrondissement.

Please send thoughts, tips and feedback to readout@bloomberg.net. You can follow Allegra on Twitter.