Commentators say PM is starting to show his true colours
Good evening,
When Rishi Sunak came to power, he promised "unity" and "compassion" – the vocabulary of a Tory keen to position himself as moderate.
Yet less than six months later, the prime minister's hard line on refugees, and on social issues including gender, drugs and crime, makes his early "Red Rishi" tag nothing short of "laughable", said The Guardian's Jessica Elgot.
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| TODAY'S BIG QUESTION | | Rishi Sunak goes into the weekend one ally down after Dominic Raab's resignation but having avoided a rebellion from the right-wing of his party on the small boats crisis and having potentially shaken off the "red Rishi" tag for good.
Fresh from the departure of his deputy prime minister, Sunak has "delighted the Tory right by bowing to their demands for amendments to the Illegal Migration Bill", said Sky News's chief political correspondent Jon Craig.
According to a new government amendment, British judges will be banned from blocking deportation flights unless the risk to migrants hits a new threshold of "real, imminent and foreseeable risk of serious and irreversible harm".
It has also been widely reported that Home Secretary Suella Braverman will get new powers to ignore similar injunctions by judges at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, stopping deportation flights to Rwanda. |
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IN DEPTH | | Dominic Raab has resigned as justice secretary and deputy prime minister after a five-month inquiry into allegations of bullying reported to the prime minister.
The inquiry, conducted by senior lawyer Adam Tolley KC, was ordered by Rishi Sunak after complaints about Raab's behaviour as a minister.
It found that on one occasion Raab had "acted in a way which was intimidating, in the sense of unreasonably and persistently aggressive in the context of a workplace meeting".
Tolley's verdict is "likely to end" Raab's "abrasive political career", said The Guardian. |
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WHAT THE SCIENTISTS ARE SAYING… | | The number of people with diabetes in the UK has exceeded five million for the first time ever, according to Diabetes UK. A new report from the charity shows that 4.3 million people have been diagnosed with the condition, and estimates that a further 850,000 are living with it, but do not know it. Around 90% of those who have diabetes suffer from type 2, which is associated with individuals being overweight or inactive; about two-thirds of adults in the UK are overweight or obese. Another 2.4 million people are at high risk of developing the type 2 form in the UK, according to the report. "Alarmingly," it notes, "the condition is becoming increasingly common among those under the age of 40." Diabetes, particularly if left untreated, leads to an increased risk of complications, including heart attacks, kidney failure, stroke, amputation and blindness. "These latest figures show we're in the grip of a rapidly escalating diabetes crisis," said Chris Askew, the chief executive of Diabetes UK.
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| picture of the day | | Indonesian Muslims perform Eid Al-Fitr prayer on the "sea of sands" at Parangkusumo beach in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Muslims worldwide celebrate with feasts on the religious holiday, to mark the end of the month-long dawn-to-sunset fasting of Ramadan.
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Good week for... | Ford, which won permission for the first self-driving car on UK motorways. The new Mustang Mach-E offers "hands off, eyes on" driving, which means that in adaptive cruise control, the car does all the work – but the driver must focus on the road, and be ready to take back control. If the car detects that the driver is not paying attention, it will slow down and eventually stop.
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Bad week for... | Working from home, after JPMorgan Chase, America's largest bank, became the latest global company to insist that its staff come into the office. Managing directors have been told they must be in the office full time, to lead by example; other staff have been warned to abide by existing three-day-a-week rules. | |
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instant opinion | | Your digest of analysis from the British and international press from the past seven days
The unravelling of Dominic Raab is likely to "open another front in the Tory Party's battle with the civil service", writes John Oxley for UnHerd. Ministers "increasingly talk about 'the Blob', and the perception that politically motivated intransigence is used to frustrate their policies", Oxley says, so the fact "that a minister was ousted through civil servants' grievances will only add succour to this". There will now be "a smouldering conflict between the party and the civil service – both of which Sunak needs on board to get things done", he adds. "The loss of your first minister is a rite of passage for a PM, another sign that the honeymoon period is over," he concludes. "Sunak's was hardly sparkling to begin with, but now government will be a little more gruelling." |
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| The wish list | | Featuring apartments and grade-listed houses in some of the UK's oldest towns and cities |
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DOWN TO BUSINESS | Friday afternoon markets | The US dollar was heading towards its first weekly gain in more than a month this afternoon amid growing expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in May.
FTSE 100: 7,901.96, down 0.01%
Dax: 15,860.01, up 0.41%
Dow: 33,710.97, down 0.22%
Dollar: £1 = $1.2405, down 0.31%
Euro: £1 = €1.1305, down 0.33%
Brent crude: $81.54, up 0.54%
Gold: $1,982.90, down 1.23% | |
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WIT & WISDOM | "Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction." | Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Vineyard Gazette | |
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