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Aquind: Government loses bid to block cross-Channel electricity cable - BBC News
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2023-01-24
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Kwasi Kwarteng's rejection of electricity link from Portsmouth to France is overturned in High Court.
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UK Politics
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The Stop Aquind campaign, pictured here in Portsmouth in 2021, is "disappointed" by the ruling
The UK government's decision to refuse permission for a £1.2bn electricity link between England and France has been overturned in the High Court.
Aquind Ltd wants to lay cables through Portsmouth, Hampshire, to Normandy.
Last year's decision to block the scheme was made by then Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng.
Aquind challenged the decision in the High Court after being granted a judicial review.
In a statement, the government said it was "disappointed by the outcome but we will be considering the judgment carefully before deciding next steps".
The project is now expected to be referred back to Mr Kwarteng's successor as Business Secretary, Grant Shapps, to make a final decision.
Aquind's proposal has faced objections from residents, campaigners and local MPs, including Commons leader and Portsmouth North MP Penny Mordaunt.
Ms Mordaunt said: "The plan will never happen. It is hard to imagine why any investor would want to be associated with it.
"I believe the government's decision was the right one and that it will stand."
The Stop Aquind campaign group argue the cable could cause damage to "onshore and shoreline wildlife", threatening the habitats of birds and insects.
The campaigners also express concern about "pollution resulting from the construction traffic".
In his January 2022 ruling, Mr Kwarteng said he was not satisfied that "more appropriate alternatives to the proposed route" for the interconnector cable had been fully considered.
But lawyers for Aquind argued in the High Court that Mr Kwarteng had "misunderstood the evidence" when making his decision.
The interconnector, allowing electricity to flow between the two countries, will make landfall at Eastney beach in Portsmouth
Aquind director Richard Glasspool said Mrs Justice Lieven's decision to rule against the business secretary and Portsmouth City Council was "wonderful news" for the interconnector project.
"We look forward to re-engaging with local residents, stakeholders, environmental experts, and energy professionals in order to pursue the commitment to meeting the UK's net zero energy target," he added.
But Portsmouth South MP Stephen Morgan said the court's decision "will be a bitter blow to Portsmouth people".
"Aquind's desperate attempt to re-run the argument through the High Court doesn't change the facts, and it shouldn't change the outcome," he said.
"I've been clear from the outset that this project would bring untold disruption to our daily lives and our city's natural environment, with no clear benefits."
The MP added he would "continue to do everything in my power to ensure this project is stopped once and for all".
Paula-Ann Savage, of the Stop Aquind campaign group, said she was "disappointed" with the court's decision.
But she added: "We will continue to raise awareness of the dangers to the environment and our national security.
"Aquind are not an appropriate company to carry out any energy infrastructure project in the UK."
Aquind Ltd is led by Ukrainian-born British businessman Alexander Temerko
In October 2021, the BBC's Panorama programme revealed that Aquind is part-owned by Russian-born former oil executive Victor Fedotov.
The company has donated more than £700,000 to 34 Conservative MPs since the Aquind project began.
Aquind's co-owner, Ukrainian-born businessman Alexander Temerko, has donated a further £700,000 to the party.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64388577
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news_uk-politics-64388577
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Germany confirms it will provide Ukraine with Leopard 2 tanks - BBC News
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2023-01-24
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Russia has downplayed the impact of the move, saying Western tanks will "burn like all the rest".
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Europe
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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced the decision after weeks of reluctance and international pressure
After weeks of reluctance, Germany has agreed to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, in what Kyiv hopes will be a game-changer on the battlefield.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced the decision to send 14 tanks - and allow other countries to send theirs too - at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
US President Joe Biden's administration is also expected to announce plans to send at least 30 M1 Abrams tanks.
A Kremlin spokesman earlier said the tanks would "burn like all the rest".
Dmitry Peskov said there was an overestimation of the potential the tanks would bring to the Ukrainian army, and called the move a "failed plan".
But Ukrainian officials insist they are urgently in need of heavier weapons, and say sufficient battle tanks could help Kyiv's forces seize back territory from the Russians.
A German government spokesperson said the decision to supply the tanks "follows our well-known line of supporting Ukraine to the best of our ability".
Germany also permitted other countries to send their Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine - which was restricted until now under export regulations.
The US and Germany had resisted internal and external pressure to send their tanks to Ukraine for some time.
Washington cited the extensive training and maintenance required for the high-tech Abrams.
Germans endured months of political debate about concerns that sending tanks would escalate the conflict and make Nato a direct party to the war with Russia.
US media is reporting that an announcement regarding Abrams shipments to Ukraine could come as soon as Wednesday, with unnamed officials cited as saying at least 30 could be sent.
However the timing remains unclear, and it could take many months for the US combat vehicles to reach the battlefront.
German officials had reportedly been insisting they would only agree to the transfer of Leopard 2s to Ukraine if the US also sent M1 Abrams.
"If the Germans continue to say we will only send or release Leopards on the conditions that Americans send Abrams, we should send Abrams," Democratic Senator Chris Coons, a Biden ally, told Politico on Tuesday.
Britain has already said it will send Challenger Two tanks to Ukraine.
Ukraine is still unlikely to get the 300 modern main battle tanks it says it needs to win the war.
But if half a dozen Western nations each provide 14 tanks, then that would bring the total to nearly 100 - which could make a difference.
Western tanks - including the UK's Challenger 2, Germany's Leopard 2 and the US-made Abrams - are all seen as superior to their Soviet-era counterparts, like the ubiquitous T-72.
They will provide Ukrainian crews with more protection, speed and accuracy.
But Western modern main battle tanks are not a wonder weapon or game-changer on their own. It's also what's being supplied alongside them.
In recent weeks, there's been a step change in heavy weapons being supplied by the West - including hundreds more armoured vehicles, artillery systems and ammunition.
Combined together, they are the kind of military hardware needed to punch through Russian lines and to retake territory.
If Ukrainian troops can be trained and the weapons delivered in time, they could form key elements of any spring offensive. A missing element for offensive operations is still air power.
Ukraine has been asking for the West to provide modern fighter jets since the war began. So far, none has been delivered.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann of the liberal FDP party, who chairs the defence committee of the German parliament had previously described reports that Germany had approved the tanks as a relief to "the battered and brave Ukrainian people."
"The decision was tough, it took far too long, but in the end it was unavoidable," she said.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Poland's PM: "Free world cannot afford not to send Leopard tanks"
Allied nations had become frustrated at what they perceived as German reluctance to send the armoured vehicles in recent days.
The Ukrainian president's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, on Tuesday called on Western countries to give Kyiv hundreds of tanks to form a "crushing fist" against Russia.
"Tanks are one of the components for Ukraine to return to its 1991 borders," he wrote on Telegram.
Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to Washington, wrote on Telegram: "If the United States decides to supply tanks, then justifying such a step with arguments about 'defensive weapons' will definitely not work.
"This would be another blatant provocation against the Russian Federation."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64391272
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US accuses Google of 'driving out' ad rivals - BBC News
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2023-01-24
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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A federal lawsuit alleges the tech giant's anti-competitive actions mean more websites need paywalls.
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Technology
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The US Department of Justice (DOJ) and eight US states have filed a case against Google alleging it has too much power over the online ad market.
Its anti-competitive actions had "weakened if not destroyed competition in the ad tech industry", US Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
Google accused the DOJ of "doubling down on a flawed argument".
The case attempted to "pick winners and losers" in a competitive industry, the firm said.
Online advertising accounts for the lion's share of Google's multibillion dollar revenue.
Google is the market leader, but its slice of total US digital ad income has fallen from 36.7% in 2016 to 28.8% in 2022, according to market research firm Insider Intelligence.
Mr Garland alleged that Google's anti-competitive conduct extended into three key areas:
As a result of Google's scheme, "website creators earn less and advertisers pay more", Mr Garland said.
It meant that fewer publishers were able to offer content without subscriptions, paywalls, or other forms of monetisation.
Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter alleged that the firm's actions over 15 years had the effect of "driving out rivals, diminishing competition, inflating advertising costs, reducing website publisher revenues, stymieing innovation and flattening our public marketplace of ideas".
But in a statement to the BBC Google said the legal action "attempts to pick winners and losers in the highly competitive advertising technology sector.
"It largely duplicates an unfounded lawsuit by the Texas Attorney General, much of which was recently dismissed by a federal court.
"DOJ is doubling down on a flawed argument that would slow innovation, raise advertising fees, and make it harder for thousands of small businesses and publishers to grow."
In a blog post Dan Taylor, vice president of global ads said the DOJ's action would "reverse years of innovation, harming the broader advertising sector".
The almost 150-page complaint accuses Google of breaches of US antitrust law and aims to "halt Google's anti-competitive scheme, unwind Google's monopolistic grip on the market, and restore competition to digital advertising".
It could lead to the break-up of the firm's advertising business if the courts side with the US government. The Justice Department complaint asks the court to compel Google to divest parts of its ad business.
The US states of Connecticut, California, Colorado, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Virginia are also joining the legal action.
This latest case follows a 2020 action launched during the Trump presidency against the tech giant over its dominance in search.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-64393868
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news_technology-64393868
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Four-day working week trial urged for Welsh public services - BBC News
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2023-01-24
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Politicians want to trial allowing people to work fewer hours on the same salary.
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Wales politics
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People in public services should trial a four-day working week, a report by politicians has urged.
The Petitions Committee said a pilot scheme could work with trials in private firms, with global evidence on new working patterns also considered.
It is argued a shorter week - with fewer hours but on the same pay - could boost productivity and wellbeing.
The committee also considered warnings that sectors such as education, health and hospitality could struggle to cope.
The report said some workers were "already over-worked and moving to a four-day week would exacerbate the stress-related challenges they face".
It also highlights concerns that it could be "too rigid an approach when greater flexibility is required in the workplace" and that some organisations suggest it "poses organisational challenges, and may be too complicated to implement".
Outlining the case for taking a day off the working week, the report said it could:
Committee chairman, Labour Member of the Senedd for Alyn and Deeside Jack Sargeant, agreed it was a "bold proposal" but "no more bold than those campaigners who fought for a five-day week, paid holiday and sick pay which we now take for granted".
"People in Wales work some of the longest hours in Europe. Despite these long hours the UK lags behind on productivity. Once we break that link of 'hours worked equalling productivity' we can start to look at a four-day week differently."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: The BBC's Emma Simpson looks at the history of the working week and how it might change
The report said that after "successful trials" in Iceland "governments in Scotland, Ireland and Spain are all devising their own four-day week pilots that are scheduled to begin next year".
Mr Sargeant said: "I hope the Welsh government will consider our call for a modest experiment in our public sector, so that future debates on this subject will be more fully informed by evidence from Welsh people on the economic, social and environmental impacts of a four-day week."
The report follows a petition to the Senedd by Mark Hooper, from Barry, Vale of Glamorgan, who brought in a four-day working week at the cooperatively-owned business Indycube, which provides a network of remote co-working spaces.
He called the report a "major step forward towards a world where we have a better relationship with work".
"Today, our lives are too often dominated by how we earn our living and that makes us more ill, sadder and ultimately less productive," he said.
Iceland has already tried out changing the traditional office hours
One member of the committee opposed the idea.
Conservative South Wales Central MS Joel James said the evidence considered "does not provide adequate justification to spend Welsh government budget, intended for the people of Wales, on a scheme that the Welsh government does not have the legislative competence to implement across the board".
"The arguments for the four-day working week are not supported by sufficient research data on improving productivity, which the whole premise of justifying a four-day working week rests upon.
"I believe it is not something that could be introduced in all sectors, and would lead to division and injustice in society."
A Welsh government spokesman said: "We are following the pilots in other countries with interest.
"A shorter working week is just one example of flexible working we want to encourage more employers to provide workers with greater choice and flexibility about where and when they work, wherever possible."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-64347365
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news_uk-wales-politics-64347365
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China: Five dead after man drives into crowd in Guangzhou - BBC News
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2023-01-12
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The incident has sparked outrage with many accusing the man of deliberately targeting people.
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China
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Chinese police have arrested a man who drove a car into pedestrians in Guangzhou, killing five people and injuring 13 others.
The incident has sparked widespread public outrage, with many accusing the man of deliberately targeting people.
Videos posted online show the driver getting out of the car and throwing banknotes into the air, shortly after the crash.
Police have detained the 22-year-old man and launched an investigation.
The crash took place on Wednesday during the evening rush hour at a busy junction in the southern city of 19 million.
"He deliberately drove into the people who were waiting for the traffic light. He rammed the car into them maliciously. After that, he made a U-turn and hit people again," an eyewitness told local outlet Hongxin News.
"He wasn't driving too quickly, but some people couldn't run away in time because they wouldn't have known he was hitting people deliberately."
The man also reportedly drove into a traffic police officer and his motorcycle, but the officer managed to escape.
One widely circulated clip shows a young girl lying on the ground at the scene of the incident, while a woman said to be her mother is seen by her side wailing.
Another eyewitness described the chaos of the aftermath on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter. The person said that an hour after the incident, the site was still filled with ambulances and traffic police "and they had not moved all the injured and the bodies from the scene".
"The scene was too tragic and I couldn't bear seeing it. I felt so sad that I wanted to throw up whenever I heard the siren of the ambulance," the person said.
The incident has sparked public anger, with many expressing sorrow that it happened in the lead-up to Chinese New Year, a time for family reunions.
"The victims could be a girl who dressed up meticulously to go on a date… It could be a food deliveryman who earned five yuan after rushing an order. It could be a father who wanted to go home and have dinner with children. It could be a child who was happily shopping," one Weibo user wrote.
Many noted that the man drove a luxury car and had thrown money into the air, and asked if he came from a rich and powerful family.
The incident quickly became a trending topic on Weibo on Wednesday, but it later disappeared from the "hot searches" list, leading users to accuse the platform of censorship.
There have been similar recent incidents. In February 2022, a driver ploughed a mini truck into people in the southern province of Fujian, killing three and injuring nine.
Earlier this week, a hotel guest in Shanghai deliberately drove his car into the lobby following an argument with staff. Nobody was injured in that incident.
• None Over 200 cars involved in fatal crash in China
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-64245246
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news_world-asia-china-64245246
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Jeff Beck: British guitar legend dies aged 78 - BBC News
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2023-01-12
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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One of rock's most influential guitarists, he was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice.
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Entertainment & Arts
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Jeff Beck performing at Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland in 2022
Jeff Beck, one of the most influential rock guitarists of all time, has died at the age of 78.
The British musician rose to fame as part of the Yardbirds, where he replaced Eric Clapton, before forming the Jeff Beck Group with Rod Stewart.
His tone, presence and, above all, volume redefined guitar music in the 1960s, and influenced movements like heavy metal, jazz-rock and even punk.
Beck's death was confirmed on his official Twitter page.
"On behalf of his family, it is with deep and profound sadness that we share the news of Jeff Beck's passing," the statement said.
"After suddenly contracting bacterial meningitis, he peacefully passed away yesterday. His family ask for privacy while they process this tremendous loss."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Jeff Beck performs on the BBC in 1974
Describing his playing style in 2009, Beck said: "I play the way I do because it allows me to come up with the sickest sounds possible."
"That's the point now, isn't it? I don't care about the rules.
"In fact, if I don't break the rules at least 10 times in every song, then I'm not doing my job properly."
Beck performing with Johnny Depp at the Helsinki Blues Festival in 2022
Born Geoffrey Arnold Beck in Wallington, south London, the musician fell in love with Rock and Roll as a child, and built his first guitar as a teenager.
"The guy next door said, 'I'll build you a solid body guitar for five pounds'," he later told Rock Cellar Magazine. "Five pounds, which to me was 500 back then [so] I went ahead and did it [myself].
"The first one I built was in 1956, because Elvis was out, and everything that you heard about pop music was guitar. And then I got fascinated. I'm sure the same goes for lots of people."
After a short stint at Wimbledon Art College, he left to play with shock-rocker Screaming Lord Sutch and the Tridents.
When Eric Clapton left the Yardbirds in 1965, Jimmy Page suggested hiring Beck - and he went on to play on hits like I'm A Man and Shapes Of Things, where his pioneering use of feedback influenced musicians like Paul McCartney and Jimi Hendrix.
The Yardbirds, backstage at Top Of The Pops, in 1965
"That [technique] came as an accident," he later told BBC Radio 2's Johnnie Walker.
"We played larger venues, around about '64-'65, and the PA was inadequate. So we cranked up the level and then found out that feedback would happen.
"I started using it because it was controllable - you could play tunes with it. I did this once at Staines Town Hall with the Yardbirds and afterwards, this guy says, 'You know that funny noise that wasn't supposed to be there? I'd keep that in if I were you.'
"So I said, 'It was deliberate mate. Go away'."
The guitarist stayed with The Yardbirds for nearly two years, before declaring he was quitting music altogether... then releasing his first solo single Hi Ho Silver Lining.
Recorded in just three hours, the song was his only top 20 hit in the UK, charting in both 1967 and 1972. But the singer was famously ambivalent about it.
He was persuaded to record the song by producer Mickie Most who, Beck said, "wasn't the slightest bit interested in recording my sort of music".
"I couldn't say to him, 'Look, you don't know what's going on,' because he had 20,000 gold disks on the wall saying 'I do know what's going on'," he told Rolling Stone magazine in 1971. "So for a couple of years I wasted my career doing junk tunes."
When he left the studio after cutting the track, the receptionist was already singing it. "That," he said, "was when I knew it was a disaster".
He went to describe the song as a "pink toilet seat around my neck", but eventually made his peace with it, even performing it on Jools Holland's TV show in 2015.
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After that brief brush with fame, he formed the Jeff Beck Group, whose first two albums Truth (1968) and Beck-Ola (1969), took a ferocious approach to the blues that laid the groundwork for heavy metal.
But the band were unhappy - with a US tour regularly descending into arguments and physical fights.
Singer Rod Stewart and bassist Ronnie Wood quit in 1970 to join the Small Faces (later The Faces), and when Beck was injured in a car accident, he had to put his career on hold.
When he recovered, Beck assembled a second line-up of his band but their albums were commercially unsuccessful and Beck went solo in 1975.
That year, he recorded an album, Blow By Blow, with Beatles producer George Martin. Entirely instrumental, Beck's lyrical, mellifluous guitar playing essentially replaced the parts of a lead vocalist, an approach he would take for most of the rest of his career.
Blow By Blow made the US top 10 and was awarded a platinum disc, and Beck quickly followed it up with 1976's Wired (also produced by George Martin) and the 1977 concert album Jeff Beck With The Jan Hammer Group Live.
After the tour documented on the album, the musician retired to his estate outside of London and remained quiet for three years.
"The pitch I play at is so intense that I just can't do it every night," he later explained.
The 1980s saw him collaborate with Nile Rodgers on an album called Flash, which contained his first US hit single - a cover of Curtis Mayfield's People Get Ready with Rod Stewart on lead vocals - and earned him a Grammy Award.
In 1987, he played on Mick Jagger's solo album Primitive Cool, and continued to work with artists like Roger Waters and Jon Bon Jovi in the 1990s, as well as contributing to Hans Zimmer's score for the Tom Cruise movie Days Of Thunder.
Beck performing in a charity concert in New York in December 1983
But his solo output slowed down, until the release of 1999's You Had It Coming, featuring Imogen Heap on vocals, followed in 2003 by an album he simply called Jeff.
Around this time, he started incorporating more electronic and hip-hop elements to his music; culminating in his fourth Grammy victory for the tempestuous, shape-shifting instrumental Plan B.
He toured extensively in the 2010s, including a joint-headline venture with Beach Boy Brian Wilson.
The duo had hoped to record together but those plans fell apart. Instead, Beck ended up befriending actor Johnny Depp, with whom he released a full-length album, 18, in 2022.
Beck was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, in 1992 as a member of the Yardbirds, then as a solo artist in 2009.
His legacy lies in the balance between the fluidity and aggression of his playing, a technical brilliance equalled only by his love of ear-crunching dissonance.
"It's like he's saying, 'I'm Jeff Beck. I'm right here. And you can't ignore me'," wrote Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers in an essay for Rolling Stone's Greatest Guitar Players of All Time, where Beck placed seventh.
"Even in the Yardbirds, he had a tone that was melodic but in-your-face - bright, urgent and edgy, but sweet at the same time. You could tell he was a serious player, and he was going for it. He was not holding back."
"He'd just keep getting better and better," Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page once recalled. "And he leaves us, mere mortals".
Follow us on Facebook or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64228780
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Spiking: No need for specific offence, government says - BBC News
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2023-01-12
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The government says a new law is unnecessary as there are already several offences which cover spiking.
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UK Politics
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The government has said it will not create a specific offence for spiking, arguing a new law is unnecessary.
Ministers said they were looking into the issue last year.
But on Wednesday, Home Office Minister Sarah Dines said there were already several offences which covered spiking incidents and the government had not found "any gap in the law".
Supporters of the idea argue it could help increase reporting of incidents and improve police data.
MPs on the Home Affairs Committee were among those calling for new legislation to target spiking - when someone puts alcohol or drugs into another person's drink or body without their knowledge of consent.
Ms Dines confirmed the government's position in a letter to the committee's chairwoman, Labour MP Diana Johnson, which was written in December but published on Wednesday.
She said the government had considered the case for legislation but had decided a new offence was not required.
"The existing offences cover all methods of spiking, including by drink, needle, vape, cigarette, food or any other known form," she said.
"Police are yet to encounter a case where they could not apply an existing offence."
She added that a specific spiking offence would not increase the powers available to judges in such cases or the likelihood of charging or prosecuting an offender.
Ms Dines said the government had concluded its focus should be on non-legislative measures to tackle spiking and it would consult on potential changes to statutory guidance to include "explicit reference to spiking being illegal and give examples of such spiking".
The committee had previously argued a specific offence would have several benefits, including increased reporting of incidents, facilitating police work by improving data and "sending a clear message to perpetrators that this is a serious crime".
Last year, then-Home Secretary Priti Patel told the committee the government was looking into "a specific criminal offence to target spiking directly".
During a Westminster Hall debate earlier, she called for existing legislation to be amended so there was a "coherent approach" in addressing spiking.
Dame Diana said she was disappointed by the government's decision as existing legislation was "clearly not working" and not being used.
"Reporting is low, and prosecution rates are very rare indeed," she added.
Labour's shadow Home Office minister Sarah Jones said: "We should call a spade a spade in this case and introduce a specific offence for spiking."
Conservative MP Richard Graham also criticised the government's response, accusing it of "various straw man arguments".
"In almost 13 years as an MP I have not read such an extraordinary letter," he said.
Almost 5,000 cases of needle and drink spiking incidents were reported to police in England and Wales in the 12 months to September 2022, according to the National Police Chiefs Council.
It said forces had increased their focus on spiking, with high visibility patrols across town and city centres, following a rapid rise in spiking reports during the autumn of 2021.
Spiking is illegal under current laws, for example the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which says it is an offence to administer a substance to another person without their consent, with the intention of "stupefying or overpowering" them so as to enable any other person to engage in sexual activity with them.
Section 23 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 also makes it an offence to maliciously administer poison so as to endanger the life of someone or inflict grievous bodily harm.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64244147
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UK government is not blocking Scotland gender reform bill lightly - minister - BBC News
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2023-01-16
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Scottish Secretary Alister Jack tells MPs trans people deserve respect - but Scotland's bill could undermine UK equalities law.
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Scotland
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Downing Street insists that using Section 35 of the Scotland Act to veto this Holyrood bill is not a political choice but a legal necessity.
That argument is complicated by the fact that when the mechanism was proposed in 1998, the Conservatives’ Constitutional Affairs Spokesman Michael Ancram was highly critical of it.
The MP for Devizes invoked the notion of colonialism by referring to it as a “governor-general clause” which appeared “to place draconian powers in the hands of the Secretary of State”.
Nicola Sturgeon is now trying to frame the decision to use Section 35 (confusingly known at the time as Clause 33) as an attack on devolution itself.
But her position is complicated by the fact that SNP MPs voted for the Scotland Act after abstaining on Ancram’s amendment
It sought to raise the bar for invoking Section 35 albeit in a way that would probably not have made a difference in this case as it simply required the minister to seek legal advice before making a decision, which the Scottish Secretary Alister Jack appears to have done.
Labour, which designed the devolutionary framework, is in more of a pickle about the gender law itself. UK leader Sir Keir Starmer expressed concerns about it on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg even though Scottish Labour MSPs had voted for it.
So we are now heading for the courts. In the meantime, you might want to ask Ancram for his lottery numbers because, in the House of Commons debate on 12 May 1998, he made this prediction:
“…the purpose of the Opposition throughout the passage of the Bill has been to try to identify the areas in it that could lead to dramatic confrontation between the Parliament and Government in Edinburgh and the Parliament and Government in London.
"I can see within this draconian power—were it used in a way that ran counter to the wishes of the Scottish Parliament—the epitome of such a confrontation.”
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-scotland-64294059
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Gina Lollobrigida: Italian screen star dies at 95 - BBC News
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2023-01-16
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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She was a big star in the 1950s and '60s, and her life story was as exotic as the roles she played.
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Entertainment & Arts
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Lollobrigida was nominated for three Golden Globe awards and a Bafta
Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida, one of the biggest stars of European cinema in the 1950s and '60s, has died at the age of 95.
Often described as "the most beautiful woman in the world", her films included Beat the Devil, the Hunchback of Notre Dame and Crossed Swords.
She co-starred alongside the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra, Rock Hudson and Errol Flynn.
Her career faded in the 1960s and she moved into photography and politics.
Italy's culture minister paid tribute, saying: "Her charm will remain eternal"
Nicknamed La Lollo, she was one of the last surviving icons of the glory days of film, who Bogart said "made Marilyn Monroe look like Shirley Temple".
Movie mogul Howard Hughes showered her with marriage proposals. Off camera, she enjoyed a feud with Sophia Loren, a fellow Italian star.
Loren was "very shocked and saddened" by the death of her one-time rival, a statement said.
Culture minister Gennaro Sangiuliano wrote on Twitter: "Farewell to a diva of the silver screen, protagonist of more than half a century of Italian cinema history. Her charm will remain eternal."
Lollobrigida died in a Rome clinic, her former lawyer Giulia Citani told the Reuters news agency.
Gina Lollobrigida - at the age of 90 - performed on Italy's version of Strictly Come Dancing in 2018
Luigina Lollobrigida was born on 4 July, 1927. The daughter of a furniture manufacturer, Gina spent her teenage years avoiding wartime bombing raids before studying sculpture at Rome's Academy of Fine Arts.
A talent scout offered her an audition at Cinecitta - then the largest film studio in Europe and Italy's thriving "Hollywood on the Tiber".
Lollobrigida wasn't keen. "I refused when they offered me my first role," she recalled. "So, they said they would pay me a thousand lire. I told them my price was one million lire, thinking that would put a stop to the whole thing. But they said yes!"
Gina Lollobrigida (3rd from left in white two-piece suit) taking part in the 1947 Miss Italia contest
In 1947, she entered the Miss Italia beauty pageant - a competition that launched many notable careers - and came third. Two years later, she married a Slovenian doctor, Milko Skofic.
Skofic took some bikini-clad publicity shots of his new - and still relatively unknown - wife. Six thousand miles away in Hollywood, the world's richest man sat up.
Hughes had just taken control of a major studio. He was more than 20 years older than Lollobrigida and famous for a string of affairs with the most glamorous women of the age - including Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner.
He tracked Lollobrigida down and offered a screen test. She accepted, expecting her husband to accompany her to America. On the day of departure, only one of the tickets Hughes had promised showed up.
Hughes had divorce lawyers waiting at the airport. She was installed in a luxury hotel, given a secretary and a chauffeur, and bombarded with proposals.
He had prepared everything. Even the screen test turned out to be a scene about the end of a marriage.
The trip lasted nearly three months. She saw him daily - fending off pass after pass. To avoid the press, they often ate at cheap restaurants or in the back of his car.
Although the behaviour was clearly abusive, Lollobrigida said she enjoyed the attention. "He was very tall, very interesting," she later recalled. "Much more interesting than my husband."
Howard Hughes lured Lollobrigida to Hollywood and inundated her with proposals of marriage
Before she departed for Rome, Hughes presented her with a seven-year contract. It made it hugely expensive for any other US studio to hire her. "I signed it because I wanted to go home," she said.
Hughes didn't give up. His lawyers pursued her as far as the Algerian desert - where she was making a film. Her husband was understanding about the decade-long infatuation. He'd even play the lawyers at tennis.
Avoiding Hollywood, Gina worked in France and Italy - making films such as The Wayward Wife and Bread, Love and Dreams.
Her first English-language picture - opposite Bogart in John Huston's Beat the Devil - was shot on the Amalfi coast, and was the beginning of a series of starring roles alongside the world's most glamorous men.
Lollobrigida played the manipulative Lola - at the centre of a love triangle with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis - in Trapeze
In Crossed Swords it was Flynn; in the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Antony Quinn. She realised her celebrity was global when 60,000 turned up to greet her in Argentina. They included the country's dashing president, Juan Peron.
She won awards for Beautiful But Dangerous - as an orphan opposite one of Italy's finest actors, Vittorio Gassman. She played a manipulative circus performer in Trapeze, with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis.
She disliked Sinatra, with whom she starred in Never So Few - a wartime romance shot in Myanmar and Thailand. He was late on set and got shirty when she complained. "Zero sense of humour," she said.
Lollobrigida had little time for Frank Sinatra, her leading man in Never So Few
And disaster struck her next project. Two-thirds of Solomon and Sheba had been filmed when her co-star, Tyrone Power, had a heart attack filming a sword fight in Madrid.
One version of the story says Power died in Lollobrigida's car on the way to hospital. Another suggests he passed away in his dressing room and was "walked" out of the studio - a scarf tied round his jaw to stop it sagging.
Whatever the truth, Power's scenes were reshot with Yul Brynner. The film shocked late-1950s Hollywood with an orgy scene, albeit one where all were fully clothed.
In 1960, she moved to Canada - for lower taxes and a promise of legal status for her Yugoslav husband. One magazine gushed that it was "the most fetching argument ever advanced for liberal immigration policies".
Her film career was slowing but there was still time to work with her favourite actor: Rock Hudson.
Rock Hudson and Lollobrigida were nominated for Golden Globes for their performances in Come September
They appeared together in romantic comedies Come September and Strange Bedfellows. After a lifetime fending off Hughes and most of Hollywood's finest, Hudson's failure to make a pass came as a shock.
"I knew right away that Rock Hudson was gay, when he did not fall in love with me," she told one reporter.
Her feud with Loren was coming on nicely. Egged on by her husband - the film producer Carlo Ponti - Loren had claimed she was "bustier" than Lollobrigida.
Gina hit back, saying Sophia could play peasants but never ladies. "We are as different as a fine racehorse and a goat," she said.
Lollobrigida (right) and Loren (left) at the Berlin Film festival in 1954 with a third actress, Yvonne de Carlo
Lollobrigida's brief affair with heart transplant pioneer Christian Barnard spelled the end of her marriage. Divorce had just been legalised in Italy and she took early advantage.
"A woman at 20 is like ice," she declared. "At 30 she is warm. At 40 she is hot. We are going up as men are going down." She was certainly not short of admirers.
Prince Rainier of Monaco was one, in spite of his marriage to Grace Kelly. "He would make passes at me in front of her, in their home," she claimed. "Obviously, I said no!"
Her last major film - alongside David Niven in King, Queen, Knave - came in 1972. There were tantrums on set and the production was halted three times for mysterious "eye problems".
Lollobrigida took a few parts in American TV series - including Falcon's Crest and Love Boat - but then reinvented herself as an artist.
This was no ageing film star vanity project. Lollobrigida was good.
She donned a disguise to take award-winning photographs of her native Italy and saw her huge marble and bronze sculptures entered at an International Expo in Seville.
Lollobrigida reinvented herself as a sculptor and photojournalist
She scooped the world with a rare photoshoot and interview with Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
"We spent 12 days together," she said. "He didn't interest me as a political leader but as a man. He realised that I hadn't gone there to attack him and he readily accepted me."
There was work for Unicef, the United Nations and an unsuccessful run for a seat in the European Parliament. She remained active in politics - as recently as last year, she stood for the Italian Senate, but was unsuccessful.
Despite all her suitors, the "most beautiful woman in the world" never quite found Mr Right.
"My experience," she said, "has been that, when I have found the right person, he has run away from me. Important men want to be the star - they don't want to be in your shadow."
Disastrously, she met Javier Rigau y Rafols, a charming Spaniard who was 34 years younger. They announced their engagement in 2006 - but soon called it off, citing frenzied press attention.
Lollobrigida took legal action against her former boyfriend, Javier Rigau y Rafols
Rigau, however, went ahead with the wedding - allegedly using an imposter to play Lollobrigida. According to her account, she only discovered her marriage by chance when she found documents on the internet.
She took legal action; Rigau produced witnesses. He insisted Lollobrigida had agreed to marry him by proxy using a power of attorney she had once granted.
She lost the ensuing court case, but the marriage was annulled in 2019 with the blessing of the Pope.
Lollobrigida fought another legal action against her son Milko, who had asked for control of his mother's business dealings. Now in her 80s, the action was thought to have been prompted by her new relationship with a handsome man in his 20s.
In later life, she became reclusive. But - from time to time - she would hold court at her huge villa, with its flock of white storks, on Rome's ancient Appian Way. She would glide down her magnificent staircase, bedecked in emeralds, to greet visiting journalists with her young lover. It was Sunset Boulevard come to life.
"I am only a film star," she had a habit of saying in a full Norma Desmond purr, "because the public wanted me to be one."
Gina Lollobrigida lived to an age at which memories of her glory days - as part of movie world royalty in the '50s and '60s - have grown dim. Few of her films are now regarded as classics.
But - in her time - she was one of the greats. Her life story was as exotic as any of the roles she played.
And the maxim by which she lived, she said, was simple: "We are all born to die. The difference is the intensity with which we choose to live."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64292026
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news_entertainment-arts-64292026
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Transgender people lose NHS waiting times High Court case - BBC News
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2023-01-16
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The High Court rules the waiting times faced by four transgender people for treatment were lawful.
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UK
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A group of transgender people have lost their legal case against NHS England over waiting times to get seen by a gender specialist.
The two trans adults and two trans children had tried to get the wait times - more than four years in one of their cases - deemed illegal.
But a High Court judge ruled on Monday the waiting times are lawful.
The Good Law Project - which helped to bring the legal action - said it would seek permission to appeal.
The four people brought the legal action against NHS England (NHSE) over the waiting time to get a first appointment with a gender dysphoria specialist.
The claimants argued that NHS England was failing to meet a duty to ensure 92% of patients referred for non-urgent care start treatment within 18 weeks.
They said the waiting times were discriminatory, arguing the delays faced by trans people were longer than for other types of NHS treatment.
But the judge dismissed the claim on several grounds.
Mr Justice Chamberlain said it was "important to acknowledge the serious effects of long waiting times on the first two claimants" - meaning the two children who were awaiting treatment ahead of puberty.
"Their distress and fear, as described by their parents, is particularly affecting because its source lies in their own changing bodies," he said.
"It is a matter of great regret that many other children and adolescents waiting for children's GID [gender identity development] services must face the same distress and fear.
"The question for me, however, is not whether the first two claimants and others in a similar position have been well served by NHSE, but whether NHSE is in breach of the legal duty imposed."
Among the claimants in the case was a girl who was born as a boy but has been living as a girl for more than two years.
After lockdown in 2020, she returned to school as a girl and with a girl's name. The court heard she was happy in her new identity but the happiness was disrupted by the early signs of male puberty, which she wants to delay.
"As her body develops into a man's body, she is becoming increasingly distressed and sad," said her father, who was concerned that she will be left with lifelong mental health issues if she does not access treatment soon.
Gender dysphoria is described by the NHS as a sense of unease that a person may have because of a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity. This sense of unease or dissatisfaction may be so intense it can lead to depression and anxiety and have a harmful impact on daily life, the NHS says.
Much of the court's decision centred around the 18-week waiting time target that NHS England had to meet - and what the relevant regulations meant.
As of August 2022, there were more than 26,200 adults waiting for a first appointment at a gender dysphoria clinic, 90% of whom had been waiting more than 18 weeks, the court judgement said.
The judge concluded that the duty on the NHS was "a duty to make arrangements with a view to ensuring that the 18-week standard is met" - but crucially it "does not regard failure to achieve that standard... as a breach".
Judge Mr Justice Chamberlain also looked at the claim of direct discrimination - the argument that waiting times were longer in gender identity services than other parts of NHS England because of discrimination.
But he listed the reasons for the long waiting times in gender identity services, saying it was down to: increased demand; recent clinical controversy surrounding the treatment; the difficulty in recruiting enough specialists despite having funding; and the need to redesign the commissioning model.
"On the contrary, as I have said, the evidence shows that the long waiting times have increased despite NHSE's willingness to increase very substantially the resources available for this service area," he said.
Charity Gendered Intelligence, which aims to increase understanding of gender diversity and improve the lives of trans people, was also named in the legal action as a sixth claimant.
Eva Echo, one of the trans adults who made the claim and waited more than four years for a first appointment, said she was "extremely disappointed" by the court's decision.
"While we recognise the strain NHS England is under, these delays predate Covid and this is about individuals getting important and in some cases, life-saving care," Ms Echo, who is from Birmingham, said.
The Good Law Project also said it and the trans community were deeply disappointed.
"Good Law Project assesses with great care whether to take on a case, and we believed it was a strong and important case to bring," said the charity's legal director, Emma Dearnaley.
"It's our first loss in this space, having previously brought two successful cases. We have decided to appeal this decision."
NHS England - which has opened four new gender dysphoria clinics for adults in the last two years - said: "The NHS notes today's judgement, which saw the claim dismissed on all grounds and acknowledges steps already being taken to reduce waiting times for gender healthcare services."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64288386
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news_uk-64288386
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Yousef Makki: Stabbed boy's family win fight for new inquest - BBC News
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2023-01-20
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The original inquest into Yousef Makki's stabbing rejected both unlawful killing and accidental death.
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Manchester
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The family of a 17-year-old boy who was fatally stabbed have won their fight to have a fresh inquest into his death.
Joshua Molnar stabbed Yousef Makki with a knife during a row in Hale Barns, Greater Manchester, in March 2019. He was cleared of manslaughter and murder.
An inquest later ruled out both unlawful killing and accidental death and recorded a narrative conclusion.
Yousef's family were last year granted a judicial review, which has now quashed the original findings.
Alison Mutch, senior coroner for Greater Manchester South, had concluded she could not be sure of the "precise sequence of events" leading to Yousef's death.
But the High Court, sitting in Manchester, has rejected that conclusion.
Lady Justice Macur and Mr Justice Fordham handed down their ruling and directed a fresh inquest be held before a different coroner.
Yousef's family, from Burnage, Manchester, were granted permission for a judicial review last year.
They challenged Ms Mutch's assertion that there was insufficient evidence on the "central issue" of whether Yousef's killing had been unlawful.
During his trial, Manchester Crown Court heard Molnar, who was 17 at time of the stabbing, had claimed self-defence and told the jury that knives were produced after an argument broke out with his friend.
The court heard Molnar, Yousef and another youth - Adam Chowdhary - had all carried knives that night.
Molnar was subsequently jailed for 16 months for possession of a knife in a public place and perverting the course of justice by lying to police at the scene.
At the original inquest, lawyers for the Makki family argued the coroner could still conclude Yousef had been unlawfully killed, even though Molnar had been cleared of murder and manslaughter.
They said this was because the burden of proof in inquests was much lower than in criminal cases.
In the former, the case only has to be proven "in the balance of probabilities" as opposed to "beyond reasonable doubt".
Alistair Webster, KC, representing Molnar at the inquest, said Yousef's death had simply been a "terrible accident".
Outside court following news that the fresh inquest had been granted, Yousef's sister Jade Akoum said she was "overwhelmed" since she had been expecting bad news.
She said: "They have given us another opportunity and hope... to shine a light on what happened.
"We have been failed by two courts now - the criminal court and the inquest.
"Finally for two senior judges to give us another chance... it's amazing."
She added: "Yousef deserves this - we will carry on."
Barrister Matt Stanbury who represents the family said: "We hope... there will be a very thorough examination of the evidence; the difficult questions will be allowed to be asked.
"We will be arguing again for an unlawful killing but first and foremost it is about a fair process."
Yousef's family have set up the Yousef Makki Foundation to help underprivileged young people in education in Greater Manchester.
"Despite being from humble beginnings, Yousef was lucky enough to attend Manchester Grammar School on a full bursary scholarship and wished to become a heart surgeon after university," the family said when they launched it in March.
They said they believed Yousef would have wanted them to do something positive in his name.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-64344896
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Afghanistan: Some Taliban open to women's rights talks - top UN official - BBC News
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2023-01-20
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Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed has met Taliban officials amid a deepening crisis.
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Asia
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A top UN official believes progress is being made towards reversing bans on women taking part in public life in Afghanistan.
Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed has been in Kabul for a four-day visit to urge the Taliban to reconsider.
Last month, the country's Islamist rulers banned all women from working for non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
The move caused several aid agencies to suspend operations.
Speaking to the BBC at the end of her trip, Ms Mohammed said most senior Taliban officials she met had been ready to engage over the rights of girls and women.
However, she described the talks as tough and cautioned that it would be a very long journey before the leadership took the fundamental steps required for international recognition of their rule.
"I think there are many voices we heard, which are progressive in the way that we would like to go," Ms Mohammed said. "But there are others that really are not."
"I think the pressure we put in the support we give to those that are thinking more progressively is a good thing. So this visit, I think, gives them more voice and pressure to help the argument internally."
Ms Mohammed also criticised the international community, including other Islamic states, for not doing enough to engage on the issue.
Since seizing back control of the country last year, the Taliban has steadily restricted women's rights - despite promising its rule would be softer than the regime seen in the 1990s.
As well as the ban on female university students - now being enforced by armed guards - secondary schools for girls remain closed in most provinces.
Women have also been prevented from entering parks and gyms, among other public places.
It justified the move to ban Afghan women from working for NGOs by claiming female staff had broken dress codes by not wearing hijabs.
Ms Mohammed's comments come as Afghanistan suffers its harshest winter in many years.
The Taliban leadership blames sanctions and the refusal of the international community to recognise their rule for the country's deepening crisis.
Ms Mohammed said her message to Afghanistan's rulers was that they must first demonstrate their commitment to internationally recognised norms and that humanitarian aid cannot be provided if Afghan women are not allowed to help.
"They're discriminating against women there. for want of a better word, they become invisible, they're waiting them out, and that can't happen," she said.
But she said the Taliban's stance was that the UN and aid organisations were "politicising humanitarian aid".
"They believe that... the law applies to anyone anywhere and their sovereign rights should be respected," she said.
The Taliban health ministry has clarified that women can work in the health sector, where female doctors and nurses are essential, but Ms Mohammed said this was not enough.
"There are many other services that we didn't get to do with access to food and other livelihood items that that will allow us to see millions of women and their families survive a harsh winter, be part of growth and prosperity, peace," she said.
This visit by the most senior woman at the UN also sends a message that women can and should play roles at all levels of society.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-64341817
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news_world-asia-64341817
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Brazil's far-right faithfuls are not giving up - BBC News
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2023-01-02
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With only days to go until Lula is sworn in as president, some of his opponents refuse to accept defeat.
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Latin America & Caribbean
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Protesters opposed to Lula's election have been camped out outside the barracks
Following the arrest in Brasilia of a supporter of outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro for allegedly trying to set off a bomb to create chaos ahead of the inauguration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as Brazil's new president, the BBC's South America correspondent Katy Watson examines the risks that hardcore Lula opponents pose for his presidency.
Outside the military barracks in the centre of São Paulo, there is a small group of about 50 people protesting.
Draped in Brazil's flag, they are chanting: "Armed forces, save Brazil." Some are waving banners with the words: "Our flag will never be red - out with communism".
Around them, dozens of tarpaulin tents have been set up, most of them green, blue and yellow, the colours of the national flag, which are now associated with the country's far-right.
One young man who introduces himself as Rodrigo is camping out in one of them, along with four other people.
Rodrigo says he is willing to stay outside the barracks long-term if need be
He pitched up just after October's presidential election in which the far-right candidate he was backing - incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro - narrowly lost to left-winger Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
"It's a greater cause," he says, explaining that he is here to stay and not considering returning home.
When asked whether Jair Bolsonaro is the driving force behind his decision to stay on and protest, he admits he is.
"He's influential on social networks - the things he posts about family, God, liberty, which are our principles, make us stay here."
But fellow protester Luca Oliveira disagrees - he says their movement is bigger than the soon-to-be former leader.
"Our voting system? It's a fraud," says Luca. He claims Brazil's electronic voting system is prone to irregularities and that the "biased" Supreme Court is doing nothing about it.
It is a familiar argument. Jair Bolsonaro made it throughout the election campaign, providing no proof to back it up. But repeat the allegations over and over again, and that is enough to keep this group of people on the streets.
"We are calling for something different," Luca says, without defining exactly what that is.
The truth is, people here want the military to get involved.
"I come here mainly because we have reason to believe that the elections were not done in a clean manner," explains 22-year-old Sofia, a law student who did not want to give her surname.
Sofia is a law student who thinks the army should intervene
"Lula da Silva is an ex-convict. Having him become president is basically saying it's OK for you to be a criminal here in Brazil," she says referring to the time the president-elect served in jail before his conviction was annulled.
Sofia argues that under Brazil's constitution, it falls to the army to intervene to take care of national security in cases when there is something wrong with the elections or the electronic voting machines.
She says that the armed forces should take "whatever measures necessary" to ensure "the election is correct".
But there is no sign that Brazil's military wants to intervene.
A report by the armed forces on the security of Brazil's electronic voting system found no evidence of fraud during the elections, although it did point out some vulnerabilities that it said could be exploited.
That sliver of doubt is enough to keep these protesters hoping for a radical U-turn from the authorities.
It is a scene replicated across Brazil since Lula won the presidential elections at the end of October.
One demonstrator is carrying a sign which reads "#Brazilianspring" in a reference to the mass protests in 2013, when more than a million people took part in anti-government protests in about 100 cities across the country.
The demonstrators believe the election was "stolen" by Lula
Political scientist Jonas Medeiros says these protests are nothing like on the scale of the unrest the country experienced back then.
But he does caution that what is happening now is worth paying attention to. "There is a tendency in the progressive camp as well as the media to minimise their [the protests'] importance," says Mr Medeiros.
"That they are just a minority of interventionist pariahs, so don't give them any attention. But these people are building networks, possible civil organisations and this is the seed for the future of the opposition that Lula will have to deal with for the next four years."
Michele Prado is also a political scientist. She knows first-hand how these protesters operate, because until recently she was one of them.
She voted for Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 and talks about having become "radicalised" before she realised that many of arguments she had read on right-wing WhatsApp groups "weren't democratic".
She says she fell for the narrative which "appeared to defend democracy and liberty".
But even though Ms Prado may have had a change of heart, she insists Mr Bolsonaro's influence remains strong.
"Just look at his behaviour until now. He's still not given a declaration [after Lula's victory]," she says referring to the fact that the outgoing president has not admitted defeat.
Jair Bolsonaro has not been seen in public much since he lost in the election
"He left the door open for extremist mobilisation to continue. He legitimises this radicalisation and the extreme right because he himself spent his entire mandate attacking democratic institutions, disrespecting minorities, the separation of power," she explains.
Law student Sofia is one of those still holding out for the armed forces to somehow prevent the handover of power from happening.
She says she believes "the armed forces will actually do something" to stop Lula from taking office.
It is an unlikely outcome that those protesting alongside her outside the army barracks may still be holding out for, but one that few Brazilians truly believe will occur.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-64094197
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news_world-latin-america-64094197
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UK in surprise boost after record tax payments in January - BBC News
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2023-02-21
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The figures come ahead of next month's Budget where the government will detail its tax and spending plans.
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Business
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The UK government saw a surprise surplus in its finances in January despite "substantial spending" to help with energy bills and EU payments.
The highest self-assessed income tax receipts since records began in 1999 boosted the UK's coffers.
It meant it spent less than it received in tax, leaving a £5.4bn surplus.
Economists said the figures showed a "mixed picture" with public finances still weaker than this time last year ahead of next month's Budget.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will set out his plans for tax and spending on 15 March.
Martin Beck, chief economic advisor to the EY ITEM Club which is a UK economic forecasting group, said the figures gave Mr Hunt "some positives to work on" in his Budget.
Mr Beck said the fall in cost of wholesale energy meant the government's spending on support for bills "will be a fraction" of what was officially forecast last year.
However, because the government's self-imposed fiscal rules around debt relate to five years in the future, he said short-term movements in UK's finances "don't have much bearing" on policies.
Public borrowing in the financial year to date is £30.6bn less than predicted by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the government's official forecaster.
Michal Stelmach, senior economist at KPMG UK, said this could "tempt the chancellor to offer a pay increase to public sector workers as part of his Budget next month" in a bid to prevent further strikes.
But Mr Hunt said debt was still at the highest level since the 1960s.
"It is vital we stick to our plan to reduce debt over the medium term," he added.
"Getting debt down will require some tough choices, but it is crucial to reduce the amount spent on debt interest so we can protect our public services."
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's spokesman later indicated the surplus did not mean it would announce tax cuts at the Budget.
"We shouldn't place too much emphasis on a single month's data. Borrowing remains at record highs and there is significant uncertainty and volatility, both clear risks to the fiscal position," the spokesman said.
Every January, the government tends to take more in tax than it spends in other months due to the amount it receives in self-assessed taxes, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
But most economists had expected borrowing to rise this time, in part due to the large amount the government is spending on supporting households with their energy bills.
It is limiting the average household energy bill to £2,500 - although it says this will increase to £3,000 from April due to the high cost of the support.
In addition, the ONS said the government had faced "large one-off payments" in January relating to historic customs duties owed to the EU.
In the end, though, these costs were largely offset by record self-assessed income tax payments of £21.9bn in January, which left the government with a surplus.
It's not just an unexpected surge in tax receipts from the self-employed that caught most economists on the hop this morning, resulting in a surplus instead of the anticipated deficit.
Separate figures published this morning by HMRC show the amount received in tax and national insurance in the financial year to date was £368.5bn - a huge increase of £44.9bn compared to the same period a year earlier.
The government points out that debt (ie all the accumulated borrowing over the years) is at its highest since the 1960s and says it will require "tough choices".
But there's no doubt that the public finances are under much less pressure - £31bn less - than the OBR anticipated in November.
Amid calls, for example, to spend £2.6bn preventing a further rise in energy bills, or more money to alleviate the recruitment crisis in the NHS, an argument that any of those measures is "unaffordable" in any objective economic sense isn't given any obvious support in the data.
But despite the surprise figures, January's overall surplus was still £7.1bn smaller compared to the same month in 2022. Interest repayments on government debt also hit their highest level for January since records on that data began in 1997.
The ONS said the rise in debt repayments, which totalled £6.7bn in January, was "largely" because of inflation.
This is because many UK government bonds, or "gilts", which the government sells to international investors to raise the money it needs, are "index linked", meaning the government's repayments rise in line with the Retail Prices Index (RPI) measure of inflation, which is currently at double-digit levels.
Of the interest payable in January 2023, some £3.3bn reflected the impact of inflation, the ONS said.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64705051
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Mexico's ex-security minister Genaro García Luna convicted of drug trafficking - BBC News
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2023-02-21
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Genaro García Luna, a key drugs war figure, is found guilty of taking bribes from a drug cartel.
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US & Canada
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The former face of Mexico's war on drugs has been convicted by a US jury of drug trafficking.
Genaro García Luna, once Mexico's security minister, was found guilty of taking millions of dollars from Mexico's biggest crime group, the Sinaloa drug cartel.
García Luna - who was arrested in the state of Texas in 2019 - had pleaded not guilty.
The 54-year-old could face life in prison.
At a minimum, García Luna will serve the mandatory minimum of 20 years, according to a statement from the Department of Justice.
The verdict came after a four-week trial and three days of jury deliberation in the US District Court in Brooklyn, New York.
Prosecutors said the former head of the Mexican equivalent of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation accepted millions of dollars stuffed in briefcases and delivered by members of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán's Sinaloa drug cartel.
García Luna, who moved to the US after leaving office, is the highest-ranking Mexican official ever to be tried in the US.
On Twitter, a spokesperson for current Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, praised the decision and took aim at former Mexican President Felipe Calderón.
García Luna served under Mr Calderón, who oversaw a crackdown on drug cartels beginning in 2006.
"Justice has arrived for the former squire of Felipe Calderón," Mr Ramirez Cuevas wrote. "The crimes against our people will never be forgotten."
In a statement to BBC News, Mr Calderón defended his administration's handling of the fight against organised crime and said that the verdict against García Luna was "already being used to politically attack me."
"I have been the president who has acted the most against organised crime," he said. "I fought to build an authentic rule of law, without which there is no freedom, justice or development."
Mr Calderón added that "with the information available at the time, I took due diligence measures in the creation and operation of the government team".
Ioan Grillo, a Mexico-based British author and expert on Mexico's criminal underworld, told BBC News the conviction has "big implications" for both the US and Mexico governments' fight against corruption and organised crime.
"This could encourage prosecutors to go after other cases," he said. "They took a certain risk by not having physical evidence and convicting him on testimony from drug traffickers."
He added García Luna's conviction could also help dissuade Mexican officials from being "openly corrupt".
"If you're a Mexican agent, you'll be thinking about how much you expose yourself to the Americans," he said.
The ex-minister - widely considered the architect of Mexico's war on drugs - was said to have shared information with the Sinaloa drug cartel about its rivals and warned the group about law enforcement operations.
The claims against García Luna's involvement with the Sinaloa cartel first came to light during a trial against Guzmán, who was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years in 2019.
A former cartel member named Jesus "Rey" Zambada testified during Guzmán's trial that he had delivered millions of dollars in payments to García Luna.
The case against the former minister was built on the testimony of nine cooperating witnesses, mostly convicted cartel members, including Zambada.
García Luna declined to testify at the trial, but his wife, Linda Cristina Pereyra, took the stand and attempted to downplay their finances and lifestyle.
In her closing argument, US prosecutor Saritha Komatireddy said the Sinaloa cartel could not have built a "global cocaine empire" without García Luna's aid.
"They paid the defendant bribes for protection," she said. "And they got what they paid for."
García Luna's lawyers argued the witnesses were testifying against him to "save themselves" after committing "horrific crimes".
Alejandro Hope, a former Mexican intelligence official, said the conviction would come as no surprise to those closely following the trial in Mexico.
"It was certainly enough to convince the jury, although many others will be unconvinced," he told BBC News.
The conviction could "complicate some parts" of US-Mexico cooperation, he said.
"There won't be any sort of rupture or open dispute," he added. "But ... it will be known that the US has its eyes on Mexican officials. For some, that will make things difficult."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64726724
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What is going on with getting a new Brexit deal for Northern Ireland? - BBC News
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2023-02-21
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There had been talk an announcement could come on Tuesday, say Chris Mason and Jessica Parker.
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UK Politics
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But there is no deal announcement coming, at least not yet.
Don't expect a deal to be announced on Tuesday.
And Wednesday is looking unlikely as well.
There had been talk that an announcement could come on Tuesday.
The basis of a deal, it's understood, had been on the prime minister's desk for over a week.
Here's a sense of what we had gleaned is in it.
Preparations were being put together, including the arguments the government would make to its backbenchers and to businesses.
It is expected the President of the European Commission, Ursula Von Der Leyen, may come to London for the big moment.
Sorting out this appendix to the Brexit deal, which has proved rather painful for many, isn't there yet.
Some officials on both sides of the Channel tell us there is a particular focus now on how EU law is applied to Northern Ireland.
What checks and balances might there be here?
Because, remember, this isn't just about a new arrangement between the government and the EU.
There is another crucial question.
What does the Conservative Party and the Democratic Unionist Party make of it?
Northern Ireland's DUP, who have long campaigned against the Protocol, pulled out of power-sharing government at Stormont over it just over a year ago.
And they are giving every indication that they are sceptical about what Westminster and Brussels might be working up.
A big part of that is that they haven't yet seen the detail.
And they know their leverage comes from taking their time.
Both the DUP and some Conservative MPs think Rishi Sunak made a mistake to hurtle over to Belfast at the end of last week, unannounced, to try, as some saw it, to "bounce" the Democratic Unionists into agreement.
"He jumped the gun," said one Tory MP, privately.
"There isn't a deal to be done. It is back to the drawing board," said another Conservative backbencher, who doesn't like the sound of what they are hearing.
And this matters because the real prize here, eventually, is to tempt the DUP to return to power-sharing government in Northern Ireland.
Few expect that to happen any time soon, even if they were to cautiously welcome, or at least not flatly reject, any new deal done between the UK and the EU.
"They're not going to say 'job's a good'un' and dash back in, we know that," acknowledged one senior government figure.
But, if it happened in time, after details had been absorbed and laws changed, it would be a significant political achievement for the prime minister.
A majority of members of the Stormont assembly are in favour of the protocol in some form remaining in place. Sinn Féin, the Alliance Party and the SDLP have said improvements to the protocol are needed to ease its implementation.
But how damaging would failure be for Mr Sunak?
Even if his deal didn't satisfy the DUP, Mr Sunak could at least say he held out for a more robust arrangement, has improved things for people in Northern Ireland and re-set the relationship between the UK and EU.
This latter point, in itself, could prove useful ahead of a summit in Paris next month with French President Emmanuel Macron, where the topic of small boat crossings is likely to feature prominently and where the UK could do with a better relationship with France.
But equally - as Paul Goodman writes here on ConservativeHome - prompting a row with the DUP, and a sizeable chunk of his own party, is a big risk to take, when the possible prize might amount to a failure to achieve the main objective - restoring devolution to Northern Ireland.
So what is the EU saying?
Diplomats in Brussels say they aren't panicking yet about whether the delay is a sign that Mr Sunak has a sudden case of the jitters.
There is sympathy that the PM has some tough politics to overcome.
There are also suspicions in Brussels that the last-minute haggling may be for show given the deal is, according to numerous sources, all but done.
"There has to be the perception that the UK's doing something to assuage the DUP's doubts," said one EU diplomat.
Some still hope it can be sorted this week.
With Tuesday and Wednesday looking unlikely and Friday being the first anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, that leaves Thursday.
That also happens to be a day when the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, has a big speech which may make that day tempting for ministers.
But others repeat they think this week is far too soon.
There is a reason Rishi Sunak is the fourth prime minister to wrestle with Brexit, Northern Ireland and the border.
No-one ever said sorting this out would be easy.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64713765
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Omagh bomb inquiry 'a significant decision', says NI secretary - BBC News
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2023-02-03
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The choice to establish a independent statutory inquiry into the Omagh bombing is a "significant decision", the Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris has said.
He made the statement in the House of Commons on Thursday afternoon.
Twenty-nine people died in the biggest single atrocity in the Northern Ireland Troubles on 15 August 1998.
Mr Heaton-Harris said the inquiry will examine four issues identified by a 2021 High Court ruling, including plausible arguments that the bombing could have been prevented.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-64501634
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news_uk-northern-ireland-64501634
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Nicola Sturgeon: Rapist Isla Bryson 'almost certainly' faking trans status - BBC News
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2023-02-03
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Nicola Sturgeon was responding to a claim by a victim of Isla Bryson that she was not "truly transgender".
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Scotland politics
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Isla Bryson start identifying as a woman after being accused of two rapes
A double rapist who was sent to a women's prison last week is "almost certainly" faking being trans, Nicola Sturgeon has suggested.
Isla Bryson was convicted of attacking two women while known as a man called Adam Graham.
One of the victims later said she was sure Bryson was pretending to be trans to "make life easier".
Bryson was moved from Cornton Vale to the male prison estate after a public outcry.
A "pause" was subsequently placed on the transfer to women's jails of trans inmates with convictions for violence after it was reported that another transgender woman, Tiffany Scott - who was convicted of stalking a 13-year-old girl before her transition and has a history of violence - was due to be moved to a female prison.
The Bryson case was raised at First Minister's Questions by Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross on Thursday.
Mr Ross said: "I believe a double rapist, anyone who rapes a woman, is a man. They cannot be considered anything else.
"When a man rapes two women, we don't think that he should be considered a woman just because he says so. We should call out criminals like this who are abusing the system.
"Adam Graham, who wants to be know as Isla Bryson, raped two women. He is an abusive man seeking to exploit loopholes in the government's current policy."
Mr Ross asked the first minister: "Is this double rapist a woman?"
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. The first minister is challenged to say whether she believes a double rapist is a woman
Ms Sturgeon initially said she did not have enough information to say whether Bryson's claim to be a woman was valid or not.
She added: "I don't think Douglas Ross and I are disagreeing here, because what I think is relevant in this case is not whether the individual is a man or claims to be a woman or is trans.
"What is relevant is that the individual is a rapist. That is how the individual should be described, and it is that that should be the main consideration in deciding how the individual is dealt with.
"That is why, of course, the individual is in a male prison, not in the female prison, these are the issues that matter."
Mr Ross went on to read a quote from one of Bryson's victims, who said: "I don't believe he is truly transgender. I feel as if he has made a mockery out of them using it. As far as I'm concerned, that was to make things easier for himself. I'm sure he is faking it."
Bryson was convicted of rapes while known as Adam Graham
The first minister responded: "My feeling is that is almost certainly the case, which is why the key factor in this case is not the individual's claim to be a woman.
"The key and in fact only important factor in this is that the individual is convicted of rape - the individual is a rapist - and that is the factor that should be the deciding one in decisions about how that prisoner is now treated."
Ms Sturgeon went on to say it was "really important" to "look seriously" at the issues thrown up by the Bryson case, adding: "But that in doing so, we bear in mind two things.
"Firstly, as I've said, that we do not further stigmatise trans people generally - I think that is important - but secondly that we don't cause undue concern amongst the public."
Ms Sturgeon added that there were exemptions under the current UK equality law that "even if it wanted to this parliament couldn't change" that enabled trans women to be excluded from some single sex spaces.
The Scottish Prison Service has operated a form of gender self-identification since 2014.
As Justice Secretary Keith Brown put it on BBC Radio Scotland on Monday: "If somebody presents as a trans person then we accept that on face value."
It is that "face value" approach that appears to have caused such difficulty in the cases of Tiffany Scott and especially Isla Bryson, the double rapist who was initially remanded at Cornton Vale women's prison.
While identifying as trans does not give any prisoner the right to decide where they are jailed, the system does take their acquired gender into account.
Critics say that's open to abuse by predatory men but ministers say robust risk assessment should prevent that and may ultimately have excluded Bryson and Scott from the female prison estate.
When asked about the Bryson case on Monday, Justice Secretary Keith Brown told BBC Scotland's The Nine: "We have to accept people identify - in this case - as women. I think that is commonly accepted and that's the starting approach we take."
But Mr Brown stressed that this did not mean they would automatically have the right to go to a female prison, with a "rigorous" risk assessment being carried out first.
However, when asked earlier in the week why the gender claims of prisoners were accepted at face value, Ms Sturgeon said: "That is the case for trans people but if you take the two cases that have been in the media, for my point of view it's not so important what gender they are, it's the crimes that they have committed."
Bryson was found guilty last month of raping two women in 2016 and 2019 before she changed gender after being arrested.
While awaiting trail, she enrolled on a beauty course Ayrshire College, where she was known as Annie, and remained there for three months before being asked to leave.
Her classmates were almost exclusively female and much younger than Bryson, and were not aware of the rape allegations.
One former classmate told BBC Scotland last week that she felt "violated" after learning of the crimes Bryson had committed.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Justice Secretary Keith Brown told The Nine it had been accepted that trans prisoners Isla Bryson and Tiffany Scott were women
Scottish government legislation aimed at allowing people to self-identify their legal sex has been blocked by the UK government over its potential impact on equalities laws.
The UK government said during a Westminster debate on Thursday that it was up to the Scottish government to bring forward a new Gender Recognition Reform bill that addresses the legal issues which caused the bill to be blocked.
Cabinet Office minister Alex Burghart said the decision to block the legislation using what is known as a Section 35 order was used very carefully and reluctantly in order to preserve the balance of powers between Scotland and England.
SNP MP Patrick Grady said the UK government should publish its own amendments to the Bill to make it acceptable and claimed the Conservatives were undermining the Scottish Parliament.
And backbench Conservative MP said he believed the legal arguments used by the government for halting the legislation were "shaky".
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-64501436
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news_uk-scotland-scotland-politics-64501436
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Elon Musk found not guilty of fraud over Tesla tweet - BBC News
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2023-02-03
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The Tesla boss is cleared of fraud charges over a tweet about taking the carmaker back into private ownership.
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US & Canada
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Tesla's Elon Musk has been cleared of wrongdoing for a tweet in which he said he had "funding secured" to take the electric carmaker back into private ownership.
Shareholders argued he misled them with his posts in August 2018, and they had lost billions of dollars because of them.
If found liable, Musk could have been ordered to pay out billions in damages.
It took the nine jurors less than two hours to reach their verdict on the class-action lawsuit on Friday afternoon.
Mr Musk - who had wanted the trial moved to Texas, where Tesla is based, arguing he could not get a fair trial in San Francisco - welcomed the outcome.
Taking to Twitter, the social media platform he bought for $44bn last October, he posted: "Thank goodness, the wisdom of the people has prevailed!
"I am deeply appreciative of the jury's unanimous finding of innocence in the Tesla 420 take-private case."
Central to the lawsuit was Mr Musk's tweet on 7 August 2018: "Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured."
The plaintiffs also argued Mr Musk had lied when he tweeted later in the day that "investor support is confirmed".
The stock price surged after the tweets, but fell back again within days as it became clear the deal would not go through.
According to an economist hired by the shareholders, investor losses were calculated as high as $12bn, after many made decisions about buying and selling their shares based on the tweet.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Mr Musk over his tweets, accusing him of lying to investors. Mr Musk agreed to step aside as Tesla board chairman and settled for $20m.
During the three-week trial, Mr Musk - who also leads SpaceX and Twitter - had argued he thought he had a verbal commitment from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund for the deal.
During his nearly nine hours on the witness stand, the world's second-richest man said: "Just because I tweet something does not mean people believe it or will act accordingly."
Shareholders had argued that "funding secured" suggested more than a verbal agreement.
Although Tesla's share price shot up after the tweet was posted, Mr Musk also questioned whether his tweets had any effect on Tesla's share price.
"At one point I tweeted that I thought that, in my opinion, the stock price was too high... and it went higher, which is counterintuitive," he said - arguing the effect his tweets have on the stock price can be unpredictable.
Mr Musk said he eventually scrapped the plan to take Tesla private after his discussions with smaller investors led him to believe they would prefer that the firm remain publicly traded.
He was not in court when the verdict was read, but he was present during closing arguments earlier on Friday as duelling portraits were drawn of him by the rival legal teams.
Nicholas Porritt, a lawyer for the Tesla shareholders, said: "Our society is based on rules. We need rules to save us from anarchy. Rules should apply to Elon Musk like everyone else."
Mr Musk's attorney, Alex Spiro, said: "Just because it's a bad tweet doesn't make it a fraud."
After the verdict, Mr Porritt said: "We are disappointed with the verdict and are considering next steps."
Mr Musk was generally calm during his testimony - though at times he appeared annoyed at the line of questioning.
There were also times of levity. After a lawyer representing shareholders accidentally called Elon Musk "Mr Tweet", Elon Musk promptly changed his name on Twitter to the same moniker.
Several Tesla directors also testified, including James Murdoch, son of Rupert Murdoch. They testified that Mr Musk did not need the Tesla board to review buyout tweets.
Securities fraud lawyer Reed Kathrein called the tweet about taking Tesla private "as concrete a statement of taking a company private as there can be", and said the not guilty verdict was "a travesty to investors and the securities laws".
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64520157
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news_world-us-canada-64520157
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Widow wins right to share of husband's £1m-plus estate - BBC News
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2023-02-17
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The High Court heard Karnail Singh left nothing to Harbans Kaur, his wife of 66 years.
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Birmingham & Black Country
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The High Court heard that Mr Singh "wished to leave his estate solely down the male line"
An 83-year-old widow who was left out of her late husband's will has won the right to get a share of his estate, which is worth more than £1m.
The High Court heard Karnail Singh left everything to his two sons and nothing to widow Harbans Kaur, his wife of 66 years, or his four daughters.
The court ruled she should get 50% of the net value of Mr Singh's estate.
The West Midlands woman's lawyer, Jessika Bhatti, said it could open the door for others in a similar position.
High Court judge Mr Justice Peel was told Mr Singh, who died in 2021, "wished to leave his estate solely down the male line".
But Ms Bhatti argued it was clear "reasonable provision" had not been made for Mrs Kaur, whose income consisted of state benefits of about £12,000.
She said there was "no conceivable argument" that financial provision should not have been made for her client.
She told the PA News agency: "I feel privileged to be a part of an injustice made right.
"My client's age, ill health and acute financial needs were the driving force behind this case, and it is with great honour that our legal system was able to overturn an injustice."
Ms Bhatti said she believed the case would set a precedent that would allow the "most vulnerable individuals" to seek justice without having to endure "the unpleasantries of a trial".
The court heard that Mrs Kaur estimated the estate, built on her late husband's clothing business, to be worth £1.9m gross, but that one of her sons put the value at £1.2m.
Mr Justice Peel outlined detail of his decision in a written ruling and said it was clear that "reasonable provision" had not been made for Mrs Kaur.
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news_uk-england-birmingham-64676109
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Northern Ireland Protocol is lawful, Supreme Court rules - BBC News
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2023-02-17
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The protocol has been challenged by unionists, who say it breaches the Acts of Union and NI Act.
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Northern Ireland
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All unionist parties in Northern Ireland oppose the protocol and the DUP is refusing to re-enter power sharing until it is replaced
The Northern Ireland Protocol is lawful, the UK Supreme Court has ruled.
Part of the Brexit deal, the protocol creates a trade border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
It has been challenged by unionist politicians who say it breaches the Acts of Union and the Northern Ireland Act.
The court unanimously rejected their appeal on all grounds. It had previously been rejected by the High Court and Court of Appeal.
The protocol was agreed by the UK and EU in 2019 to ensure free movement of trade across the Irish land border after Brexit.
However, it means there are new checks and controls on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain.
The unionist case had three aspects:
The court agreed that the protocol does conflict with the Acts of Union.
However, it added that it was Parliament's will that any part of the Acts of Union which conflict with the protocol are suspended.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Sir Jeffrey Donaldson says the UK government must ensure Northern Ireland's position in the UK is maintained
The judges said: "Parliament, by enacting the 2018 Act and the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020, authorised the making of the protocol.
"The clear intention of Parliament in enacting these Acts was to permit the Crown to make the protocol."
On the second ground the court said the relevant part of the Northern Ireland Act only concerns a referendum about whether Northern Ireland remains part of the UK or joins a united Ireland.
On the third ground the court found that Parliament had empowered the secretary of state to lawfully make changes to voting rules.
DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson (left), Baroness Kate Hoey (second right), and former first minister Dame Arlene Foster (right) outside the UK Supreme Court in London
Responding to the ruling, a government spokesperson said: "We welcome that the Supreme Court has reaffirmed the sovereignty of Parliament in approving and legislating for the agreement negotiated in 2019.
"However, this does not change our determination to address the real problems the protocol is causing in Northern Ireland. Intensive talks with the EU continue to that end, looking across the full range of issues we have raised."
A UK government source told the BBC there was "lots still to work through" on protocol talks.
They were speaking before a meeting between Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris and the EU's Maros Sefcovic, which took place on Wednesday afternoon.
The pair held talks in Brussels, as Mr Heaton-Harris also attended a separate event tied to the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.
After the meeting, he said he and Mr Sefcovic "agreed solutions to the protocol must work for benefit of all communities and businesses in Northern Ireland".
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Ministers overseeing the negotiations are said to be focused on making sure solutions reflect the "realities" on the ground.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) withdrew from the power sharing executive in Northern Ireland in February 2022 in protest at the protocol.
DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said the legal challenge "had highlighted why unionists are opposed to the trading arrangements".
"A solution to the protocol was never going to be found in the courts, but the cases have served to highlight some of the reasons why unionists have uniformly rejected the protocol," he added.
"The government must consider this judgment, their own arguments to the court and take the steps necessary to replace the protocol with arrangements that unionists can support."
Jim Allister of TUV said the court's ruling greatly strengthens his party's stance and it "must embolden the political campaign against the protocol".
"The fact the Supreme Court is satisfied it was lawfully made does not in the least affect its political unacceptability, nor its dire constitutional consequences," he added.
The protocol introduced checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain
Sinn Féin Brexit spokesperson Declan Kearney welcomed the judgement, adding the protocol was "imperfect" but "clearly necessary".
"Now that legal clarity has been confirmed, it is time to move forward politically and ensure that a deal between the British Government and EU to deliver pragmatic and durable solutions is secured without delay that makes the protocol work better for everyone."
The Social Democratic and Labour Party said the ruling provided "important clarity" on the legality of the protocol.
"Following this judgment, it is now critical that the EU and UK negotiating teams reach a comprehensive resolution that protects our unique access to the Single Market for goods while addressing the concerns around protocol implementation that have given rise to sincere objections related to trade barriers and identity issues in the unionist community," assembly member Matthew O'Toole said.
Alliance deputy leader Stephen Farry said political parties in Northern Ireland needed to "focus on pragmatic solutions going forward" after the Supreme Court's ruling, which he added "was not surprising in the slightest".
"Northern Ireland was always going to require some special arrangements in the context of a hard Brexit. This protocol or something similar is therefore the inevitable outcome of choices made, and the consequent need to address this region's particular circumstances and to protect the Good Friday Agreement."
The Supreme Court is the final court of appeal in the UK for civil cases.
It hears cases considered to be of the greatest public or constitutional importance affecting the whole population.
A five-judge panel, including Lord Reed, the president of the court, heard the case over two days in November.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-64558530
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Neath: Daniel Pickering jailed for life after nightclub murder - BBC News
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2023-02-13
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Matthew Thomas was described by his family as "happy" and "kind".
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Wales
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Daniel Pickering was jailed for life with a minimum of 18 years
A man has been jailed for life after murdering a man outside a nightclub in an act of "mindless violence".
Matthew Thomas, 47, was found outside The Arch Bar in Neath on 15 July, 2022 and died the following day.
Daniel Pickering, 34, punched Mr Thomas twice in the face, knocking him unconscious, before continuing the attack.
He was found guilty of murder by a jury at Swansea Crown Court in December.
The trial heard an "aggressive" Pickering had started an argument with Mr Thomas inside The Arch before being thrown out.
Pickering, who had consumed alcohol and cocaine, then waited outside for Mr Thomas before launching the attack.
Matthew Thomas died after being punched repeatedly by Daniel Pickering
In a statement issued after sentencing on Monday, Mr Thomas' family described him as a "happy, positive, kind person".
"He was only 47, a father, son, brother and friend to so many", they added.
"We are all struggling to come to terms with the way he died and make sense of how it could be that a man he didn't know made the decision that night to take from him his life and his future, and by doing so has left such devastation and trauma behind."
Mr Thomas' family said that they were "distressed to know that whilst Matthew lay on the floor dying," Daniel Pickering continued to "punch and stamp on his head."
"We are hopeful that following today we will be able to move forward and start grieving and remembering Matthew", they continued.
Mr Thomas was described as a "happy go lucky" character, in a victim statement read out by Matthew's sister, Kath Thomas.
"He was a character, always happy and joking. Matthew loved life and would talk to anyone. There wasn't a bad bone in his body. He was harmless," she said.
"Tragically he met a stranger that night, a stranger who was angry."
Describing life since the attack, Ms Thomas said the incident had left the family with a "permanent feeling of loss and despair".
"The panic, fear and disbelief from that moment is always with us.
"We live with heightened anxiety, we over-worry for each other, we're worried that this horror can happen again."
She added: "It's the first thing we think about in the morning, and the last thing on our minds at night."
Sentencing Pickering to life in prison with a minimum term of 18 years, Judge Geraint Walters described the attack as a "senseless episode of gratuitous and mindless violence".
He told Pickering his actions showed his life was "largely without direction".
"The attack was wholly unprovoked and involved gratuitous violence directed at a man who never used any violence and offered no resistance," he said.
"At that time you did intend to kill Mr Thomas."
The fatal attack happened near The Arch nightclub in July last year
Senior investigating officer DCI Mark Lewis said the unprovoked attack on Mr Thomas was an example of how "the over consumption of alcohol and Class A drugs stimulates aggressive behaviour".
DCI Lewis urged people to consider their actions on a night out, adding that murders of this nature "are preventable if people take the time to reflect on their own behaviour".
"Our thoughts today remain with Matthew's family and friends and I sincerely hope today's sentence bring them some closure," he said.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-64625799
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news_uk-wales-64625799
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Chris Mason: Sunak's backseat-driving former prime ministers - BBC News
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2023-02-07
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Rishi Sunak has a minibus full of predecessors who could end up as backseat drivers - with Liz Truss the latest to lurch towards the wheel.
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UK Politics
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Liz Truss beat Rishi Sunak in the first of last year's Conservative leadership contests, but now serves on the backbenches
There is always a risk for any prime minister that your predecessor ends up as a backseat driver.
The problem for Rishi Sunak is he has a minibus full of them behind him.
The final three are still in the House of Commons.
The latest to lurch their hands towards the minibus wheel - Liz Truss.
We have heard nothing from her in person since she left office.
Ms Truss spoke out for the first time this weekend since she was forced to resign as prime minister
Via a treatise in the Sunday Telegraph and the best part of an hour's conversation with the Spectator - two organs broadly sympathetic to her instincts - a defiant argument that amounts to "why I was right but I got the implementation wrong, and everyone else was against me".
And so, by implication, a critique of Mr Sunak, even though he wasn't mentioned at all in her article, and only fleetingly in her interview.
And all this, incidentally, after Boris Johnson was interviewed on TalkTV by Sunak sceptic and fellow Conservative MP Nadine Dorries on Friday night.
And before Sir John Major appears in front of MPs on Tuesday to talk about the Northern Ireland Protocol, one of the thorniest issues the prime minister faces.
What should we take from Ms Truss's argument?
The key thing is she holds to the view that her diagnosis of the UK's problems, as she sees them, is a lack of growth, and the underlying reason for this is an insufficiently Conservative approach to managing the economy - not least cutting tax.
Whatever you might think of that argument, it matters, because it illustrates in technicolour a discussion that burns away within the Conservative Party.
So, to Ms Truss in her own words in her Spectator interview.
Interesting, for we've heard nothing from her since she left office, until now.
There are moments of considerable understatement.
Things "didn't work out", she says.
There was "system resistance" she argues - the civil service and others, she claims, were sceptical about her approach.
She had, she acknowledges, "insufficient political support".
Again, an observation with a sprinkling of understatement.
There is at least some candour, too, about what she sees as her failings - "the communication wasn't good enough", and "I didn't have good enough infrastructure", a reference to the team assembled around her.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Liz Truss on whether or not she wants to be PM again
She wasn't questioned directly and bluntly on her tendency in both the Telegraph and the Spectator to blame plenty of other people while appearing to accept a limit to her personal responsibility.
Nor to apologise for causing a period of unprecedented political turmoil.
She accepts now that "I simply did not know about" what are called Liability Driven Investments - something at the core of the market turbulence that came along after her disastrous mini budget.
There is both an acknowledgement of ignorance but a delivery of blame - suggesting the Treasury or Bank of England should have warned her.
But her rival in the leadership race in the summer, the man who is now prime minister, had said over and over again her economic plans would be a disaster.
In an interview that was more intellectual than theatrical or particularly challenging, Liz Truss did, though, sketch out a fascinating argument about what she sees as the country's - and even the Conservative Party's - political instincts right now.
They are, she concludes, at odds with her own, and that helps explain why she failed.
She argues that, in the UK and elsewhere, there has been what she calls a "drift" towards "more socially democratic policies: higher taxes, higher spending, bigger government, relatively low interest rates and cheap money. There's no doubt that those of us on the side of politics who believe in smaller government and free markets have not been winning the argument."
Including, that is, to those in her own party.
Why might this be? The cuts since 2010? The massive government interventions during the pandemic? The state of public services?
Taxes and government spending are at generationally high levels, with neither the Conservatives or Labour promising to radically reduce this any time soon.
So perhaps, in that observation of political reality right now, Ms Truss is right.
But - fairly or otherwise - has her stint as prime minister, as short as it was calamitous, buried her political philosophy in a box marked "toxic, never reopen"?
Plenty of Conservatives think the blunt truth to that is yes, at least any time soon.
Others, who are more sympathetic, wonder if there are elements of her prospectus, around housebuilding and childcare for instance, where there may be hope of them being dug up and reincarnated.
Labour, privately, are delighted various former occupiers of No 10 are now occupying the airwaves too.
Meanwhile, the prime minister's official spokesman has said that Mr Sunak "will always listen to views of former prime ministers" and that it's "healthy to have a diverse debate".
Can you hear the gritted teeth from where you are too?
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64547349
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news_uk-politics-64547349
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Sunak deal with EU is all about leadership now - Kuenssberg - BBC News
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2023-02-25
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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A deal on NI post-Brexit rules is close - but can Rishi Sunak push it through?
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UK Politics
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A deal between London and Brussels is close - but can Rishi Sunak push it through?
"It's all about leadership now" - it is not, any longer, according to that particular diplomatic source, about the finer details of customs posts; the never-ending tangle of whether it's UK or EU law that's supreme; or whether a sausage that's been made in Bolton needs to be inspected if it is going to be sold in Belfast.
A deal on the Northern Ireland Protocol is so close that the negotiating teams have been consulting the thesaurus to help pick a name, in scenes reminiscent of the '80s political comedy, "Yes Minister".
Sorting out the protocol - those post-Brexit trading arrangements - matters practically if you live in or do business with Northern Ireland.
And it matters symbolically a great deal for Rishi Sunak and the government, eager for this bitter hangover from the Brexit negotiations to fade.
The agreement, whatever it ends up being named, is broadly done, and likely to be unveiled on Monday.
One Whitehall source says there's been a "very disciplined approach to solving the problems"; now an arrangement has been struck that "unambiguously works" after weeks of working through the issues.
But that painstaking practical negotiation could come to naught if it's not matched with political force.
It's in the constitution of some ranks of the Conservative backbenches and some parts of the Northern Irish Unionist DUP to be suspicious of what emanates from any group in charge in Number 10.
Add in the fact that many on the Eurosceptic wing of the Tory party are, politely put, not natural supporters of Mr Sunak.
Some, like the former leader Iain Duncan Smith and the DUP's Sammy Wilson, have been setting tests for the deal before they know for sure what's in the final version - easier perhaps then to cry foul later on.
It is rarely possible to please all of the people all of the time. But on the issue of Brexit and Northern Ireland, it is near impossible.
A diplomat says, "the government simply needs to push it forward, knowing that part of the DUP will not be pleased" - so the question is whether Mr Sunak's push to get a deal through is stronger than the resistance it will inevitably find along the way.
Number 10's handling of the matter so far could make that harder. Mr Sunak is not the first prime minister to preside over a "will they, won't they?" phase during talks with the EU.
But while a deal's been in the offing, there's been something of a vacuum, giving space for critics to opine.
Notably it's given time for Boris Johnson to pile in too, making clear in the last few days that his support won't come easy. He's still a totem for Brexit, and is becoming a rallying point for Mr Sunak's critics.
As the Whitehall source says, "the key dynamic which is emerging is that Boris is throwing himself to the forefront of the opposition" - that won't make the prime minister's life any easier.
Irony alert - remember that Boris Johnson was the prime minister who signed up to the Northern Ireland Protocol in the first place.
Former PM Boris Johnson has been weighing in on the NI Protocol
And it's worth noting that the deal thought to be on offer concedes far more ground to the UK than was thought possible then.
In fact, one member of Theresa May's team told me they would have "bitten your arm off" for the kind of arrangements that are now in play.
There is a likely acceptance of different customs routes, "green lanes" and "red lanes" for goods heading from Great Britain to Northern Ireland; it's likely too the EU has given ground on state aid.
But like it or not, for Rishi Sunak's Number 10, when his old boss speaks, many Conservatives and Brexiteers listen.
Don't be surprised to see, in the coming days, heated political arguments contrasting the agreements that Mr Sunak has reached, and the Northern Ireland Protocol bill that Boris Johnson's government introduced.
That bill is making its way through Parliament now and would, controversially, give the UK government the power to ignore the treaty that's already signed into law.
And don't underestimate the strength of feeling.
One former cabinet minister told me the expected deal would "let down the die-hard leavers", leaving the party vulnerable to attacks from the right, and would "split the Conservatives".
Unless there is a "miracle surprise", the same source cautioned that they and many of their colleagues won't back the deal.
The options for Mr Sunak then are that the deal passes (if there is a vote) "grudgingly", or if it falls, "it leaves his authority in tatters".
It is even, they suggest, a "conceivable option" that the government ends up falling apart if the prime minister tries to ram it through. All this, of course, is happening in the context of a PM stuck way behind in the polls.
There was also disbelief in some quarters at the suggestion that the EU president would appear alongside the King to help boost the chances of a deal.
Buckingham Palace, as a rule, tries to appear beyond politics, well above the fray.
Yet there was the suggestion that Ursula von der Leyen would meet publicly with the King this weekend at Windsor Castle, and even that the deal itself might be given the title the Windsor Agreement - to "throw a bit of glamour" around the closing stages, a source suggested.
But I'm told the European Commission disapproved. Downing Street says officially that the reason the visit was called off was "operational".
Whatever the whole truth, it's made for a messy 24 hours since our colleagues at Sky News broke the story. And it met with disapproval in the very DUP circles that the prime minister needs to get on board.
The Unionists are deeply committed to, and proud of, the monarchy. Arlene Foster, the former DUP leader, was rarely seen without her glittering brooch in the shape of the crown. But the impression that Downing Street was trying to play the Palace into the process has rankled.
The DUP former deputy leader, Lord Dodds, said, "to plan for politicising the monarchy in this way is very serious and reinforces the questions about No 10's political judgement over the protocol".
That doesn't sound like a political leader in the mood to play nice.
We know that Rishi Sunak has been able to find a way to strike an agreement with the EU to help ease the problems that stemmed from the special arrangements for Northern Ireland.
We know Number 10 has been willing to spend political energy and effort getting this far.
But once the black and white of the deal emerges into the light of day, political guile, presentation and force may be required to drive it through.
So far in Downing Street, Rishi Sunak has tried to avoid fights with his party. This time, on this most fraught of issues, an almighty argument awaits.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64763937
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news_uk-politics-64763937
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Shamima Begum bid to regain UK citizenship rejected - BBC News
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2023-02-22
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The 23-year-old loses her appeal on national security grounds, which means she cannot return to the UK.
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UK
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Ms Begum was 15 when she joined the self-styled Islamic State group in 2015
Shamima Begum has lost her challenge over the decision to deprive her of British citizenship despite a "credible" case she was trafficked.
Mr Justice Jay told the semi-secret court dealing with her case that her appeal had been fully dismissed.
The ruling means the 23-year-old remains barred from returning to the UK and stuck in a camp in northern Syria.
Her legal team said the case was "nowhere near over" and the decision will be challenged.
Ms Begum was 15 years old when she travelled to join the self-styled Islamic State group in 2015.
She went on to have three children, all of whom have died, after marrying a fighter with the group.
In 2019, the then home secretary Sajid Javid stripped her of her British citizenship, preventing her coming home, and leaving her detained as an IS supporter in a camp.
The Special Immigration Appeals Commission has ruled that decision, taken after ministers received national security advice about Ms Begum's threat to the UK, had been lawful - even though her lawyers had presented strong arguments she was a victim.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: "I'm ashamed of myself" - Shamima Begum (speaking in June 2022)
Listen to The Shamima Begum Story investigative podcast on BBC Sounds and watch the film on BBC iPlayer.
During the appeal hearing last November, Ms Begum's lawyers argued the decision had been unlawful because the home secretary had failed to consider whether she had been a victim of child trafficking - in effect arguing she had been groomed and tricked into joining the fighters, along with school friends Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase in February 2015.
Ms Sultana was reportedly killed in a bombing raid in 2016, but the fate of Amira Abase is unknown.
As all UK consular services are suspended in Syria, it is extremely difficult for the government to confirm the whereabouts of the British nationals.
That was the first time judges had to consider whether the state's obligations to combat trafficking and abuse of children should have any influence over national security decisions.
Mr Justice Jay revealed the complexity of the case had caused the panel of three "great concern and difficulty".
"The commission concluded that there was a credible suspicion that Ms Begum had been trafficked to Syria," he said in his summary.
"The motive for bringing her to Syria was sexual exploitation to which, as a child, she could not give a valid consent.
"The commission also concluded that there were arguable breaches of duty on the part of various state bodies in permitting Ms Begum to leave the country as she did and eventually cross the border from Turkey into Syria."
But despite those concerns, the judge said even if Ms Begum had been trafficked, that did not trump the home secretary's legal duty to make a national security decision to strip her of her British nationality.
"There is some merit in the argument that those advising the secretary of state see this as a black and white issue, when many would say that there are shades of grey," said the judge in his summary.
But despite those questions over how the case had been handled, the commission concluded the home secretary had still acted within his powers - even if there could have been a different outcome.
"If asked to evaluate all the circumstances of Ms Begum's case, reasonable people with knowledge of all the relevant evidence will differ, in particular in relation to the issue of the extent to which her travel to Syria was voluntary and the weight to be given to that factor in the context of all others," said the judge.
"Likewise, reasonable people will differ as to the threat she posed in February 2019 to the national security of the United Kingdom, and as to how that threat should be balanced against all countervailing considerations.
"However, under our constitutional settlement these sensitive issues are for the secretary of state to evaluate and not for the commission."
This isn't the first time a legal challenge by Ms Begum's lawyers has failed. In February 2020 the same commission rejected her team's argument that she had been made "de facto stateless" when her citizenship was removed.
It agreed with the Home Office's position that since she was technically entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship, it wasn't legally obliged to allow her to keep her UK rights.
In February 2021, the Supreme Court said she could not return to the UK to fight her case on security grounds.
Unlike the UK, other western countries like France, Germany and Australia have allowed an increasing number of former IS supporters back.
All US citizens who travelled to Syria to join the self-styled Islamic State group have been allowed to return to the country, barrister Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, told the BBC.
He said the pace of repatriations "seems to be increasing", with Germany allowing 100 citizens back, France allowing more than 100, and Sweden also allowing citizens to return in double figures.
He told BBC News: "Little by little, countries are beginning to change their posture from [a] strategic distance to try and manage their return.
"There is a bit of a risk that the UK could become a bit of an outlier."
In a statement, Ms Begum's lawyers Gareth Pierce and Daniel Furner called on Suella Braverman, the current home secretary, to look at the case again "in light of the commission's troubling findings".
They said the decision removes protections for British child trafficking victims in cases where national security is involved and leaves their client "in unlawful, arbitrary and indefinite detention without trial in a Syrian camp".
Her legal team said "every possible avenue to challenge this decision will be urgently pursued" without providing further details of any potential appeal.
A spokesman for the Home Office said it was "pleased" with the outcome, adding: "The government's priority remains maintaining the safety and security of the UK and we will robustly defend any decision made in doing so."
Mr Javid also welcomed the ruling. Ministers must have the "power to prevent anyone entering our country who is assessed to pose a threat to it", he said.
Human rights groups and campaigners have criticised the ruling and the government's position, maintaining that Ms Begum was a child exploitation victim.
Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK's refugee and migrant rights director, said: "The home secretary shouldn't be in the business of exiling British citizens."
Conservative MP David Davis, who has repeatedly challenged the government on civil liberties issues, described the situation as a "shameful abdication of responsibility and must be remedied".
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64731007
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news_uk-64731007
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Mexico's ex-security minister Genaro García Luna convicted of drug trafficking - BBC News
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2023-02-22
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Genaro García Luna, a key drugs war figure, is found guilty of taking bribes from a drug cartel.
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US & Canada
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The former face of Mexico's war on drugs has been convicted by a US jury of drug trafficking.
Genaro García Luna, once Mexico's security minister, was found guilty of taking millions of dollars from Mexico's biggest crime group, the Sinaloa drug cartel.
García Luna - who was arrested in the state of Texas in 2019 - had pleaded not guilty.
The 54-year-old could face life in prison.
At a minimum, García Luna will serve the mandatory minimum of 20 years, according to a statement from the Department of Justice.
The verdict came after a four-week trial and three days of jury deliberation in the US District Court in Brooklyn, New York.
Prosecutors said the former head of the Mexican equivalent of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation accepted millions of dollars stuffed in briefcases and delivered by members of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán's Sinaloa drug cartel.
García Luna, who moved to the US after leaving office, is the highest-ranking Mexican official ever to be tried in the US.
On Twitter, a spokesperson for current Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, praised the decision and took aim at former Mexican President Felipe Calderón.
García Luna served under Mr Calderón, who oversaw a crackdown on drug cartels beginning in 2006.
"Justice has arrived for the former squire of Felipe Calderón," Mr Ramirez Cuevas wrote. "The crimes against our people will never be forgotten."
In a statement to BBC News, Mr Calderón defended his administration's handling of the fight against organised crime and said that the verdict against García Luna was "already being used to politically attack me."
"I have been the president who has acted the most against organised crime," he said. "I fought to build an authentic rule of law, without which there is no freedom, justice or development."
Mr Calderón added that "with the information available at the time, I took due diligence measures in the creation and operation of the government team".
Ioan Grillo, a Mexico-based British author and expert on Mexico's criminal underworld, told BBC News the conviction has "big implications" for both the US and Mexico governments' fight against corruption and organised crime.
"This could encourage prosecutors to go after other cases," he said. "They took a certain risk by not having physical evidence and convicting him on testimony from drug traffickers."
He added García Luna's conviction could also help dissuade Mexican officials from being "openly corrupt".
"If you're a Mexican agent, you'll be thinking about how much you expose yourself to the Americans," he said.
The ex-minister - widely considered the architect of Mexico's war on drugs - was said to have shared information with the Sinaloa drug cartel about its rivals and warned the group about law enforcement operations.
The claims against García Luna's involvement with the Sinaloa cartel first came to light during a trial against Guzmán, who was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years in 2019.
A former cartel member named Jesus "Rey" Zambada testified during Guzmán's trial that he had delivered millions of dollars in payments to García Luna.
The case against the former minister was built on the testimony of nine cooperating witnesses, mostly convicted cartel members, including Zambada.
García Luna declined to testify at the trial, but his wife, Linda Cristina Pereyra, took the stand and attempted to downplay their finances and lifestyle.
In her closing argument, US prosecutor Saritha Komatireddy said the Sinaloa cartel could not have built a "global cocaine empire" without García Luna's aid.
"They paid the defendant bribes for protection," she said. "And they got what they paid for."
García Luna's lawyers argued the witnesses were testifying against him to "save themselves" after committing "horrific crimes".
Alejandro Hope, a former Mexican intelligence official, said the conviction would come as no surprise to those closely following the trial in Mexico.
"It was certainly enough to convince the jury, although many others will be unconvinced," he told BBC News.
The conviction could "complicate some parts" of US-Mexico cooperation, he said.
"There won't be any sort of rupture or open dispute," he added. "But ... it will be known that the US has its eyes on Mexican officials. For some, that will make things difficult."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64726724
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news_world-us-canada-64726724
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British embassy spy snared by Berlin sting, court hears - BBC News
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2023-02-14
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Fake Russian spies helped expose David Ballantyne Smith for sharing data with Russia, a court hears.
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UK
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David Ballantyne Smith claims he was not paid and was motivated by an employment grievance
A Russian spy at the British embassy in Berlin was caught by a sting operation, the OId Bailey has heard.
Briton David Ballantyne Smith, 58, was working as a security guard when he passed secret information to Russian authorities.
The court heard how two fake Russian operatives working undercover helped lead to his arrest in August 2021.
Prosecutors claim Smith held strong anti-UK views and was paid for information.
Smith pleaded guilty to eight charges last year and has returned to court for legal argument about his motivation.
He claims he was not paid and was motivated by an employment grievance while suffering mental health issues.
The Old Bailey heard how one undercover operative posed as a "walk-in" Russian informant called "Dmitry" when he was escorted into the British embassy by Smith on 5 August 2021.
Afterwards, Smith was seen on CCTV recording the earlier footage of Dmitry.
"The prosecution allege he... knows the potential significance of the Dmitry incident because he has taken the recordings with a view to passing that material on," Alison Morgan KC told the court.
A second undercover operative met him in the street and claimed to be a Russian intelligence officer called "Irina".
"Irina was deployed to play the role of the GRU [Russian spy agency] officer and to see whether someone - Dmitry - was providing information to the UK that could be damaging to Russia," said Ms Morgan.
Smith was recorded covertly and appeared cautious, telling Irina he needed to speak to "someone" first.
The undercover sting was prompted by a letter Smith sent in November 2020 to a military staff member at the Russian Embassy in Berlin.
Prosecutors say Smith received money in exchange for information and favoured Russia and its leadership.
Smith said he only intended to "inconvenience and embarrass" the embassy
They say there were unaccounted-for funds, including 800 euro (£700) in cash found at his home in Potsdam.
Smith has denied leaking secrets to Russia for money and claimed he only intended to "inconvenience and embarrass" the embassy, where he had worked since 2016.
Prosecutors say his deliberate engagement with Russian authorities by providing them with confidential and sensitive information showed intent to harm British interests.
Items seized from his flat included travel documents and sheets of blank embassy headed paper.
Photographs taken at that address showed a Russian Federation flag, a Soviet military hat, a Communist toy Lada car and a Russian cuddly toy Rottweiler dog wearing a military hat.
A cartoon seized from his work locker showed Russian President Vladimir Putin in military attire holding the head of former German chancellor Angela Merkel.
Smith, who is originally from Scotland, was extradited on 6 April last year and then arrested at Heathrow for offences under the Official Secrets Act.
Last November, Smith pleaded guilty to eight charges under the Official Secrets Act by committing an act prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state.
Smith is due to be sentenced at the Old Bailey on Friday.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64639138
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news_uk-64639138
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Ban on Edinburgh lap dancing clubs overturned - BBC News
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2023-02-10
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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A judge has ruled that an effective ban on lap dancing clubs in the city would be unlawful.
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Edinburgh, Fife & East Scotland
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A union said 100 women would lose their jobs if the city's three remaining lap dancing venues were forced to close
A ban on lap dancing clubs in Edinburgh that was due to come into force later this year has been overturned.
Councillors voted to limit the number of sexual entertainment venues (SEVs) in the city from the current four to zero from April.
A group of club owners and performers launched a legal challenge to the move.
The Court of Session agreed with them that the city council had acted illegally by effectively banning lap-dancing clubs.
Lord Richardson ruled that the council's plan to stop awarding licences to adult entertainment venues - the so called nil cap - was unlawful.
He also concluded that councillors had been given incorrect legal advice about the impact of the decision they had made in March of last year.
The legal representatives believed that the council could still award licences to adult entertainment venues on a discretionary basis.
But lawyers for four Edinburgh based venues - including the Burke and Hare, the Western Bar and Diamond Dolls - believed this was incorrect and that the decision meant that their venues would not be allowed to operate.
They argued that the council's plan would put the jobs of 100 women at risk.
In a lengthy written ruling, Lord Richardson agreed that the council's decision amounted to an unlawful ban on adult venues in Edinburgh.
He added: "I do not consider that the respondent (the council) has put forward a good reason why the erroneous decision should not be quashed".
A crowd-funded judicial review was heard at the court in early December.
Members of the United Sex Workers (USW) union highlighted concerns about its members potentially having to work in unsafe, unregulated environments if the three remaining adult venues in the city were forced to close.
The union said workers were "incredibly pleased" at the court's ruling as the closure of all lap dancing clubs in the city would have "meant many of our members losing their livelihoods or having to move away from their homes and families to find work elsewhere".
It added: "Not only is this a huge win for strippers in Edinburgh, who are no longer facing the prospect of forced mass-unemployment in the middle of a recession, but for the working rights of strippers across Britain.
"Nil-caps are a violent, anti-worker policy that removes strippers' access to safe workplaces, workers rights and their ability to improve their own working conditions.
"Now they have been found unlawful, we hope this puts an end to local councils imposing strip club bans and closing down our places of work, for good."
Erin, a stripper for 15 years, says "I take my clothes off for a living and I am proud of it"
Erin, an Edinburgh-based stripper, told BBC Scotland the last year had been "very distressing" not knowing if her employment venues would be shut down.
"I was looking to have to move in April to somewhere else where strip clubs are allowed, because I have no intention of stopping being a dancer," she said.
"But there are other women who are mothers and have families here who don't have that option. They would just be forced out of work and into the benefits system.
"It has been stressful. I have been part of the union and fighting this from day one. We raised the money for the legal fees in four weeks - the public support has been amazing - but even then, the council tried to block us being part of the judicial review. They didn't want to hear our voices.
"We didn't know which way it as going to go so it's absolutely amazing. It is good for Edinburgh but also good for sex workers around the UK.
"If it is unlawful in Edinburgh, it should be unlawful in any city. So it is a massive step forward for us as strippers and sex workers as a union.
"I have done this job for 15 years and I continue to want to do it. I know it is not for everybody but it creates options for women who wouldn't have opportunities elsewhere. To take that away from women would just be wrong.
"The violence against women argument has been debunked. The cities where strip clubs have been closed, violence against women has gone up.
"If this ban had gone through, we would have been pushed into working in underground, dangerous places with no CCTV and no bouncers. Here we have safety and the other girls are looking out for you.
"I feel safer in a strip club than I do a normal bar. If somebody tries to grab you here, I can tell the bouncers and they get thrown out. We actually have the power in strip clubs."
Steve MacDonald from the Club Operators Action Group, which brought the legal action, said it would work with the regulatory committee and licensing board to continue providing "a proven safe working environment for all our staff members, customers and particularly our performers".
The council's regulatory committee originally voted by a majority of five to four to effectively ban the clubs, but its membership has changed since May's local elections.
Three of Edinburgh's lap dancing clubs - Burke & Hare, Western Bar and Baby Dolls - are in the West Port area of the city
Earlier this week the new committee backed a 12-week consultation - once the outcome of the judicial review was known - to allow the council to review the policy.
A City of Edinburgh Council spokesman said: "We have received the ruling of the judicial review which we are considering in detail before deciding on our next steps."
The Scottish government brought in laws in 2019 allowing councils to limit the number of lap dancing venues.
In March last year, Glasgow City Council agreed to allow the city's three lap dancing clubs to continue trading, and awarded licences for the first time in September.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-64596835
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news_uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-64596835
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Liz Truss returns - and it could be trouble for Rishi Sunak - BBC News
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2023-02-04
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Truss returns to the political fray via a newspaper comment piece - and the PM can't afford to ignore her.
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UK Politics
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Pilloried around the country, and the world, Liz Truss wants to tell her side of the story
"Liz was mad but right. Rishi is wrong but competent."
Those blunt sentences come from a serving government minister - and they sum up the problem the PM may be about to face. Liz Truss is set to return to the political fray, via a Sunday morning newspaper comment piece, just four months after her rapid exit from No 10.
Her time in charge was a disaster. The financial markets melted. The shelf life of her premiership was compared, in real-time, with that of a wilting lettuce (it outlasted her).
Why on earth would she want to crawl out from under the duvet - and why would anyone listen?
Here is the official explanation from her camp: "Liz remains an active politician, keen to draw on more than a decade of experience in government as she contributes to national and international debates on a variety of issues."
So far, so vanilla. Why shouldn't a former prime minister have her say?
But here's the less official explanation from one of her political pals: ''It's human nature to want to justify what you did."
Pilloried around the country, and the world, Ms Truss wants to tell her side of the story - to explain what really happened, "not the fairytales", as one ally puts it.
It's worth noting that she's doing so in her own words in the Sunday Telegraph - a newspaper that's broadly sympathetic to her cause - and then in a pre-recorded chat for a podcast later in the week. She is not yet, despite our own invitation and no doubt many others, sitting down for live interviews with no holds barred.
Like many in her tribe, Ms Truss has never been short of that priceless political quality: a brass neck. Despite presiding over what many in the party see as one of the most disastrous political reigns in history, she is expected to argue that, essentially, she was right.
One ally says "she doesn't shirk responsibility" - but she's expected to restate her argument for low taxes and an economic shake-up.
And by arguing that she was fundamentally right, the implication is that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is fundamentally wrong.
Another former cabinet minister and colleague of hers says that "she reckons the government is not a Conservative [government], it's a social democratic government". In certain Tory circles, that is the same as saying something very rude indeed.
Will her attempted comeback matter? You might agree with a different government minister, who says "it won't be troublesome at all, because she was a false prophet". It might even remind people, they suggest (or hope), of what they see as the madness during her short time in office, and make the public appreciate the relative calm under Mr Sunak.
Another member of the cabinet is less subtle, telling me: "She caused economic catastrophe four months ago, to say, 'let's have another go' is nuts." They add that "there are plenty of people in the party who will NEVER forgive her - she never turns up, and nobody cares".
Political parties tend to dislike even a whiff of disloyalty - another minister says that it might be an "old fashioned view, but former leaders tend to get respect and credit if they are seen to be helping the current one".
In other words - Liz, not now!
There are two reasons why the Conservatives and No 10 can't just shrug off what Ms Truss has to say.
First, Rishi Sunak's pitch to the country was to end the chaos and start anew. Whether it's Ms Truss popping up, or Boris Johnson cantering around the world, ghosts of the chaotic Conservative past are never far away. Politics is, at root, a contest to get heard - and clamour from former leaders makes it harder for the man or woman in charge to win.
And second, while nobody in the party would argue that Ms Truss went about her mission the right way, there are plenty of Conservatives who feel in their bones that her principles were entirely right. There's already an itchiness on the back benches about Mr Sunak's handling of the economy, and a rising demand for tax cuts that Ms Truss will help fuel.
The party is not in open revolt, but it's not in a happy place - as I discussed last week when the prime minister marked 100 days in office. Conservative MPs and some business groups reckon that, even with a microscope, it'd be pretty hard to find a convincing government plan to get the economy growing.
Liz Truss didn't have a mandate from the country for the rapid tax cuts she wanted - I well remember the tumbleweed in our studio when we asked her, after days of chaos, how many people had actually voted for her plans.
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But remember, Conservative members did vote for her - and her ideas. That's why one former minister believes her re-appearance this weekend will cause trouble "because it will remind members they backed her, not him" - and that "the reason he is in power is because his team destroyed the fundamental principle of being a Tory - low tax - our members are still angry".
It is of course the public - all of you - not political parties who make the ultimate judgement on our leaders. The verdict on Ms Truss was fast and fierce, her premiership was over in a flash. But what she stood for remains, and can't be dismissed as a terrible political accident.
P.S. While we wait for Ms Truss' words in full, we are waiting too for Downing Street to appoint its next Conservative party chair after the sacking of Nadhim Zahawi. Several different sources whisper that no one wants to do the job - one source tells me it's been suggested to three different MPs who have all said no, another MP says "no one wants to do it", not wanting to take the blame for an anticipated battering at the polls in the May local elections.
The suggestion that the job has been dangled and declined has been emphatically denied by a source involved in the discussions, who suggests the Prime Minister is in no rush and that there hasn't been any formal considerations yet. And with the potential exit of Dominic Raab from government after an inquiry into his behaviour, which could report around the end of the month, No 10 might have to fill not one, but two jobs at the cabinet table - so best to wait.
The man who was party chair during Truss's eventful time in charge is Jake Berry, who joins us on the show tomorrow.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64523277
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Elon Musk found not guilty of fraud over Tesla tweet - BBC News
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2023-02-04
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The Tesla boss is cleared of fraud charges over a tweet about taking the carmaker back into private ownership.
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US & Canada
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Tesla's Elon Musk has been cleared of wrongdoing for a tweet in which he said he had "funding secured" to take the electric carmaker back into private ownership.
Shareholders argued he misled them with his posts in August 2018, and they had lost billions of dollars because of them.
If found liable, Musk could have been ordered to pay out billions in damages.
It took the nine jurors less than two hours to reach their verdict on the class-action lawsuit on Friday afternoon.
Mr Musk - who had wanted the trial moved to Texas, where Tesla is based, arguing he could not get a fair trial in San Francisco - welcomed the outcome.
Taking to Twitter, the social media platform he bought for $44bn last October, he posted: "Thank goodness, the wisdom of the people has prevailed!
"I am deeply appreciative of the jury's unanimous finding of innocence in the Tesla 420 take-private case."
Central to the lawsuit was Mr Musk's tweet on 7 August 2018: "Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured."
The plaintiffs also argued Mr Musk had lied when he tweeted later in the day that "investor support is confirmed".
The stock price surged after the tweets, but fell back again within days as it became clear the deal would not go through.
According to an economist hired by the shareholders, investor losses were calculated as high as $12bn, after many made decisions about buying and selling their shares based on the tweet.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Mr Musk over his tweets, accusing him of lying to investors. Mr Musk agreed to step aside as Tesla board chairman and settled for $20m.
During the three-week trial, Mr Musk - who also leads SpaceX and Twitter - had argued he thought he had a verbal commitment from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund for the deal.
During his nearly nine hours on the witness stand, the world's second-richest man said: "Just because I tweet something does not mean people believe it or will act accordingly."
Shareholders had argued that "funding secured" suggested more than a verbal agreement.
Although Tesla's share price shot up after the tweet was posted, Mr Musk also questioned whether his tweets had any effect on Tesla's share price.
"At one point I tweeted that I thought that, in my opinion, the stock price was too high... and it went higher, which is counterintuitive," he said - arguing the effect his tweets have on the stock price can be unpredictable.
Mr Musk said he eventually scrapped the plan to take Tesla private after his discussions with smaller investors led him to believe they would prefer that the firm remain publicly traded.
He was not in court when the verdict was read, but he was present during closing arguments earlier on Friday as duelling portraits were drawn of him by the rival legal teams.
Nicholas Porritt, a lawyer for the Tesla shareholders, said: "Our society is based on rules. We need rules to save us from anarchy. Rules should apply to Elon Musk like everyone else."
Mr Musk's attorney, Alex Spiro, said: "Just because it's a bad tweet doesn't make it a fraud."
After the verdict, Mr Porritt said: "We are disappointed with the verdict and are considering next steps."
Mr Musk was generally calm during his testimony - though at times he appeared annoyed at the line of questioning.
There were also times of levity. After a lawyer representing shareholders accidentally called Elon Musk "Mr Tweet", Elon Musk promptly changed his name on Twitter to the same moniker.
Several Tesla directors also testified, including James Murdoch, son of Rupert Murdoch. They testified that Mr Musk did not need the Tesla board to review buyout tweets.
Securities fraud lawyer Reed Kathrein called the tweet about taking Tesla private "as concrete a statement of taking a company private as there can be", and said the not guilty verdict was "a travesty to investors and the securities laws".
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Allan Little: The story of Scottish independence - what next? - BBC News
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2023-02-26
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The BBC's Allan Little considers whether the forward march of an independent Scotland has been turned back.
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UK
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On 15 February, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced she was standing down after eight years
On the face of it, the tide of Scottish independence has turned. With Nicola Sturgeon's resignation, a formidable champion of Scottish statehood leaves the stage.
The movement - famous for the discipline with which it enforced party unity - is visibly divided, caught up in a series of rancorous culture wars. The broad coalition that Sturgeon built up over years - from working class ex-Labour voters to an energetic community of LGBTQ activists - may be in danger of fragmenting.
The pro-Union parties are poised. Labour has most to gain. As the prospect of independence recedes into the distant future, will former Labour supporters drift back, pinning their hopes on a Keir Starmer victory in the UK?
Nicola Sturgeon's departure seems like a defeat for a movement that has been on the rise for a quarter of a century.
So the urgent question now is this: Has the forward march of an independent Scotland been turned back? Does the independence ambition end with her leadership?
I've been reporting on the independence question, on and off, for more than 30 years. In 1992, I spent the night of the general election at SNP headquarters in Edinburgh. The party was expecting an electoral breakthrough - perhaps 10 or 12 seats in the House of Commons - after more than a decade of increasingly unpopular Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher and John Major.
But as the night wore on and Major edged his way to an overall majority, the SNP's confident anticipation turned to despair. The party won just two seats. I became uncomfortably aware that I was the only person in the room who wasn't a party supporter. I felt as though I was intruding on private grief.
Twenty-three years later, on election night 2015, I was a guest at the home of a prominent Labour-supporting family. When the BBC flashed the exit poll at 22:00, predicting (accurately as it turned out) a virtual Labour wipe out in Scotland, and an SNP landslide, the shock in the room was intense. I was intruding again, I thought, on private grief.
What happened, in the years between those two moments, that allowed the independence movement to breach the walls of Labour's Fortress Scotland and sweep through all but three of the country's parliamentary constituencies?
I have been watching, over the course of my adult lifetime, a long, slow generational pivot away from the robust, secure unionism of the Scotland I grew up in.
I have a clear sense of what we have been pivoting away from - just not what kind of Scotland we are pivoting towards.
For me, there is something more telling than the rise of nationalist sentiment, and that is the story of what has happened to the Union itself, to pro-Union sentiment, and to the way Scots have thought about their place within the Union.
It is the story of the falling away, over decades, of much of what it has meant to be British in Scotland.
I grew up in Galloway in the rural south west of Scotland. In the 70s, when I was a child, a sense of British identity seemed unassailable. Even when our constituency returned a Scottish Nationalist MP to Parliament in 1974, one of 11 elected that year, few people saw their victory as a serious threat to the long-term viability of the Union.
For back then, Scotland was a very British country. The economic landscape was still dominated by the great Victorian heavy industries of coal, steel and shipbuilding. The working-class communities they sustained were huge and had proud civic identities.
Those industries were also pan-British enterprises, shared across the four nations. If you were a miner in Fife you were connected, in a community of shared interests and aspirations, with miners in Yorkshire and South Wales. You were in the same trade union, with its pantheon of working-class heroes who'd led the struggle for better wages and safer workplaces. The sense of belonging was powerful.
Scottish Nationalists campaigning in Motherwell, which was dominated by the steel industry, would be told on the doorstep: "But I work for something called British Steel. It pays a decent wage, gives me job security, five weeks holiday and a pension at the end. Are you going to unpick all of that?"
Those communities were bedrocks of British identity in Scotland, as well as of Labour solidarity.
A miner at Baads Colliery to the west of Edinburgh, 1962
In the 1980s and 1990s those industries were swept away. One of the great socio-economic pillars on which British identity had sat crumbled to dust as those communities, over time, fragmented and dispersed, and their old industries slipped, with each decade that passed, further into the middle-distance of collective memory.
After Sturgeon's resignation, I went back to Glenluce, the village I grew up in. I walked past my childhood home. My grandparents had lived in the same street - not far from where my great-great-grandparents had raised their children in the 19th Century.
When they thought of the world, they didn't think of Paris or Berlin or Rome; they thought of Cape Town and Bombay, of Singapore and Melbourne. They had relatives who had settled in the parts of the world that were coloured British Empire pink on the map. When letters arrived from some distant sun-dappled place, the stamps carried the familiar, unifying face of the British monarch.
To those generations, the British Empire was what bound Scotland into the Union. It was a huge, shared British enterprise, built upon a set of values that people across the nations of the United Kingdom broadly shared. We might be radically rethinking the legacy of Empire in our own day, but to them, the experience of Empire was a powerful sustaining force of British identity in Scotland.
Allan Little in the village of Glenluce where he grew up
My parents were born in the 1930s. They lived as children through World War Two and grew into adulthood in a world in which the UK enjoyed immense moral standing.
At the age of 17, my father joined the RAF. He watched the 1953 Coronation on an air base in West Germany, alongside other young men from Bangor and Belfast and Birmingham. The shared Britishness of their young lives was as natural as the air they breathed.
The British Empire would come to an end when they were in their 20s and 30s, but their generation were heirs to a new kind of Britain - the cradle-to-grave welfare state, the new NHS, full employment, social housing (I was born in a council house). But there was something else new for families like ours - a chance that their children would one day make it to university or college. And, in my family, we did.
That post-war Britain was also built on a set of values that were shared across the nations of the United Kingdom; values that achieved cross-party consensus and which prevailed for 40 years.
My generation entered adulthood in the 1980s, at a time when the post-war settlement appeared irrevocably broken down and when the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, offered a bold and radical new vision of Britain's future.
It was, by her own definition, a plan to roll back the frontiers of a state that was outdated, and collapsing under its own weight.
For nearly two decades, the United Kingdom as a whole returned Conservative governments under Thatcher and then Major. But Scotland never embraced Thatcherism - and Conservative electoral fortunes declined until, in 1997, there wasn't a single Tory MP left in Scotland.
In these decades, a long slow divergence in political aspirations took place, with England (particularly the south of England) and Scotland voting for different kinds of Britain. This divergence would resume in 2010. When Gordon Brown's Labour government lost the election of that year, due to a swing to the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in England, none of Scotland's Labour MPs lost their seat, and many were elected with strengthened majorities.
If the Union had always been at its strongest when it was built on shared values, those values now started coming under strain.
When I was a child, public representations of Scottish identity seemed bizarre. On TV, we had the White Heather Club - women in white frocks and tartan sashes dancing impossibly complicated reels and strathspeys; men in kilts playing accordions and singing kitsch songs about exile and nostalgia. It was caricature and had no connection to lived experience.
Andy Stewart, host of the long-running BBC variety show The White Heather Club, with musician Alistair McHarg in 1959
But in the 70s and 80s, slowly, that representation of Scottishness began to be eclipsed. Scottish culture was speaking increasingly in its own voice. Much of it was coming from a cohort of young working-class people who'd been (like me) the first in their families to get a college or university education. And a lot of it was explicitly left-wing.
In the 1980s, Labour responded to this shifting social, political and cultural climate, by embracing an idea that had traditionally divided the Labour movement - a Scottish Parliament.
That experience of being governed, through the Scottish Office, by a party that had repeatedly lost elections in Scotland, changed public opinion. Opposition leaders began to argue not just against specific government policies in Scotland, but about the very right of Westminster to impose them. The policies lacked democratic legitimacy because they had, the argument ran, been repeatedly rejected by Scots at the ballot box.
In 1997 when Tony Blair's New Labour came to power, Scotland voted by a majority of three to one to establish a Scottish Parliament. Devolution was the biggest transfer of legislative power from Westminster since the Act of Union in 1707.
And in that tumult, the SNP - long seen as a relatively marginal force - began to reinvent itself, and more crucially, reinvent the independence prospectus. Under Alex Salmond's leadership, the party moved away from its traditional appeal to the politics of national identity - the flag, the literature, the culture and symbols of national sentiment - and towards the politics of social justice. It presented itself to the Scottish electorate as a modern, mainstream European social democratic party.
The independence cause began to converge with the cause of social justice and greater equality. This made the SNP a threat to Labour's dominant position in Scotland. And, though it took a long time, the SNP began to win elections by appealing to traditional Labour voters and by enthusing the young.
This realignment of political allegiances happened under Salmond's leadership. But no-one embodied it more fully than Nicola Sturgeon, from a working class Ayrshire background, who had also been the first in her family to go to university.
Nicola Sturgeon at the launch of the SNP's 1999 Holyrood election manifesto
When I was reporting on the referendum campaign of 2014, few of the young people who energised the Yes movement wanted to talk about nationality. They wanted to talk about fairness, about the injustices of the growing levels of economic inequality that seemed to them to characterise the UK.
In 2014, Brown was among the first in Labour to see that many of the party's traditional voters were planning to vote Yes. It was the start of a landslip. Many Labour voters jumped ship to vote Yes, and then, the following year, to help the SNP to its astonishing landslide.
Though the Yes movement lost the referendum decisively, the experience changed the political map. The old left-right divide that had defined Scottish politics for a century was replaced: the new fault line was independence.
The Yes movement brought support for independence to 45% - with nearly 85% of the electorate voting, the highest turnout in Scottish electoral history.
Better Together "No" campaign banners spray painted with "Yes" graffiti near Dundee, in August 2014 before the referendum
It is striking that, for all her popularity and the admiration she commands, eight years after Sturgeon assumed the leadership of that movement, the dial has hardly moved. Support for independence still hovers just below 50%.
Why has the unpopularity of Brexit not led to a decisive surge in support for independence? Why did the deeply unpopular premiership of Boris Johnson not change the numbers? And if Sturgeon - probably the most gifted champion of Scottish statehood the movement has ever produced - hasn't been able to build a sustained majority for independence, what chance will her successor have?
The movement she hands over is a cultural as well as a political phenomenon. The idea that an independent Scotland will be a fairer society than the United Kingdom is its core belief.
LGBTQ rights are also at the heart of the movement. But Sturgeon's Gender Recognition Reform Bill opened up a bitter divide in her own party and threatens to split wide open the broad coalition that has been key to the SNP's success.
Women's rights protesters outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, February 2023
The Bill had cross-party support in the Scottish Parliament: Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens and even some Conservatives all backed it. But powerful voices in Sturgeon's own party bitterly denounced it, including the MP Joanna Cherry; the leadership contender Ash Regan, who resigned from the Scottish government to oppose it; and Kate Forbes, the finance secretary, who said she would have voted against it had she not been on maternity leave at the time.
But most concerning for the independence cause, opinion polls suggested Scots were not in favour of many of the measures in the Bill. For once, Sturgeon's radical instincts and convictions, which have so often in her career walked hand-in-hand with public opinion, have collided with it.
So this may be a turning point for the independence movement. The era of Salmond and Sturgeon, which transformed the fortunes of the SNP and redrew the map of Scottish and UK politics, is over.
Its signature project - to secure an independence referendum by winning elections - appears to have run into a dead end. Nicola Sturgeon proposed turning the next UK general election into a de facto referendum. An SNP victory would be taken as a mandate to open independence negotiations with Westminster. Few, even in her own party, thought this a viable proposition. The next leader will have to offer independence supporters a credible alternative route to Scottish statehood.
Is there an alternative route? Many commentators think that if support for independence rises to, say, 60% or more and stays there for a sustained period, then a UK government will, in the end, be unable to deny a second referendum indefinitely.
Drill into those opinion polls that show support for independence hovering somewhere around 50%, and look at the age demographics. The young remain overwhelmingly in favour of independence - by more than 70% in some age groups. There is even strong support among the middle-aged.
It is only in my own age group, the over 60s, the cohort that still has personal memories a Britain built on a set of shared values and a sense of purpose held in common, where the Union retains commandingly solid majority support.
This leads many nationalists to believe time is on their side - that the fruit of independence is ripening on the tree of age demographics and will one day fall into their lap.
Nothing is inevitable - the young grow older - but those polls suggest that the long, slow generational pivot away from British identity in Scotland has not been reversed. And that is a long-term challenge the Union will have to meet if it is to survive, whatever direction the SNP takes under its new leader.
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Sunak deal with EU is all about leadership now - Kuenssberg - BBC News
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2023-02-26
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A deal on NI post-Brexit rules is close - but can Rishi Sunak push it through?
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UK Politics
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A deal between London and Brussels is close - but can Rishi Sunak push it through?
"It's all about leadership now" - it is not, any longer, according to that particular diplomatic source, about the finer details of customs posts; the never-ending tangle of whether it's UK or EU law that's supreme; or whether a sausage that's been made in Bolton needs to be inspected if it is going to be sold in Belfast.
A deal on the Northern Ireland Protocol is so close that the negotiating teams have been consulting the thesaurus to help pick a name, in scenes reminiscent of the '80s political comedy, "Yes Minister".
Sorting out the protocol - those post-Brexit trading arrangements - matters practically if you live in or do business with Northern Ireland.
And it matters symbolically a great deal for Rishi Sunak and the government, eager for this bitter hangover from the Brexit negotiations to fade.
The agreement, whatever it ends up being named, is broadly done, and likely to be unveiled on Monday.
One Whitehall source says there's been a "very disciplined approach to solving the problems"; now an arrangement has been struck that "unambiguously works" after weeks of working through the issues.
But that painstaking practical negotiation could come to naught if it's not matched with political force.
It's in the constitution of some ranks of the Conservative backbenches and some parts of the Northern Irish Unionist DUP to be suspicious of what emanates from any group in charge in Number 10.
Add in the fact that many on the Eurosceptic wing of the Tory party are, politely put, not natural supporters of Mr Sunak.
Some, like the former leader Iain Duncan Smith and the DUP's Sammy Wilson, have been setting tests for the deal before they know for sure what's in the final version - easier perhaps then to cry foul later on.
It is rarely possible to please all of the people all of the time. But on the issue of Brexit and Northern Ireland, it is near impossible.
A diplomat says, "the government simply needs to push it forward, knowing that part of the DUP will not be pleased" - so the question is whether Mr Sunak's push to get a deal through is stronger than the resistance it will inevitably find along the way.
Number 10's handling of the matter so far could make that harder. Mr Sunak is not the first prime minister to preside over a "will they, won't they?" phase during talks with the EU.
But while a deal's been in the offing, there's been something of a vacuum, giving space for critics to opine.
Notably it's given time for Boris Johnson to pile in too, making clear in the last few days that his support won't come easy. He's still a totem for Brexit, and is becoming a rallying point for Mr Sunak's critics.
As the Whitehall source says, "the key dynamic which is emerging is that Boris is throwing himself to the forefront of the opposition" - that won't make the prime minister's life any easier.
Irony alert - remember that Boris Johnson was the prime minister who signed up to the Northern Ireland Protocol in the first place.
Former PM Boris Johnson has been weighing in on the NI Protocol
And it's worth noting that the deal thought to be on offer concedes far more ground to the UK than was thought possible then.
In fact, one member of Theresa May's team told me they would have "bitten your arm off" for the kind of arrangements that are now in play.
There is a likely acceptance of different customs routes, "green lanes" and "red lanes" for goods heading from Great Britain to Northern Ireland; it's likely too the EU has given ground on state aid.
But like it or not, for Rishi Sunak's Number 10, when his old boss speaks, many Conservatives and Brexiteers listen.
Don't be surprised to see, in the coming days, heated political arguments contrasting the agreements that Mr Sunak has reached, and the Northern Ireland Protocol bill that Boris Johnson's government introduced.
That bill is making its way through Parliament now and would, controversially, give the UK government the power to ignore the treaty that's already signed into law.
And don't underestimate the strength of feeling.
One former cabinet minister told me the expected deal would "let down the die-hard leavers", leaving the party vulnerable to attacks from the right, and would "split the Conservatives".
Unless there is a "miracle surprise", the same source cautioned that they and many of their colleagues won't back the deal.
The options for Mr Sunak then are that the deal passes (if there is a vote) "grudgingly", or if it falls, "it leaves his authority in tatters".
It is even, they suggest, a "conceivable option" that the government ends up falling apart if the prime minister tries to ram it through. All this, of course, is happening in the context of a PM stuck way behind in the polls.
There was also disbelief in some quarters at the suggestion that the EU president would appear alongside the King to help boost the chances of a deal.
Buckingham Palace, as a rule, tries to appear beyond politics, well above the fray.
Yet there was the suggestion that Ursula von der Leyen would meet publicly with the King this weekend at Windsor Castle, and even that the deal itself might be given the title the Windsor Agreement - to "throw a bit of glamour" around the closing stages, a source suggested.
But I'm told the European Commission disapproved. Downing Street says officially that the reason the visit was called off was "operational".
Whatever the whole truth, it's made for a messy 24 hours since our colleagues at Sky News broke the story. And it met with disapproval in the very DUP circles that the prime minister needs to get on board.
The Unionists are deeply committed to, and proud of, the monarchy. Arlene Foster, the former DUP leader, was rarely seen without her glittering brooch in the shape of the crown. But the impression that Downing Street was trying to play the Palace into the process has rankled.
The DUP former deputy leader, Lord Dodds, said, "to plan for politicising the monarchy in this way is very serious and reinforces the questions about No 10's political judgement over the protocol".
That doesn't sound like a political leader in the mood to play nice.
We know that Rishi Sunak has been able to find a way to strike an agreement with the EU to help ease the problems that stemmed from the special arrangements for Northern Ireland.
We know Number 10 has been willing to spend political energy and effort getting this far.
But once the black and white of the deal emerges into the light of day, political guile, presentation and force may be required to drive it through.
So far in Downing Street, Rishi Sunak has tried to avoid fights with his party. This time, on this most fraught of issues, an almighty argument awaits.
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Nicola Sturgeon, Jeremy Corbyn, NI Protocol: A week that changed UK politics? - BBC News
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2023-02-18
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In three crucial ways, the landscape shifted - and the result could shape the next general election.
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UK Politics
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Half term in February. Kids bored at home. MPs away from Westminster. Not much is meant to happen, right?
Blink and you would have missed it, but these quiet winter days, according to one government minister, witnessed a "draw-the-line moment where a new chapter opens".
One veteran political campaigner reckons we have just lived through the week "that changes the next election".
Why? Well, in the same few days, Nicola Sturgeon quit. Keir Starmer told Jeremy Corbyn in plain terms that he couldn't run again as a Labour MP. And a Conservative Prime Minister edged close to resolving the tangle over the Northern Ireland Protocol, the last vestige of the long-running arguments over Brexit.
The first minister's presence in UK politics, Jeremy Corbyn's shadow over Keir Starmer's leadership and the Conservatives' fraught conversations over Northern Ireland have been fixtures of our politics for years.
The combined effect of removing those three factors could be immense. But, as ever in politics, beware pundits making grand assertions - so let's take each issue in turn.
Just a few weeks ago, Nicola Sturgeon told us she had "plenty in the tank". But after a huge controversy over gender rights that left the consummate professional struggling to get her words straight, that fuel ran dry.
The specific timing of her exit was a shock, but it has been clear for some time that the first minister felt she was edging towards the exit. That is why it was worth asking her how long she intended to serve when we sat down with her.
Her departure matters hugely. Many in the SNP felt "gutted", as one of her colleagues wrote.
But there was glee at the news elsewhere. One minister told me they "punched the air" when they heard.
For all her unrivalled success in elections, Nicola Sturgeon had become someone who divided the public, too. Just as there was a group of well-wishers outside her official residence in Edinburgh as she left, there was a different group who held a celebratory conga in Glasgow's George Square.
Now the political impact is being pored over. Labour sources are pointing already to polls that show them edging closer to the SNP. One insider calls it a "massive game-changer", which puts Labour closer to gaining a majority at the next general election.
It is not unreasonable to assume that without their formidable and seasoned leader, without a settled strategy on independence, the SNP will be an easier opponent.
It's also not daft for Conservatives to imagine that the SNP's push towards independence could be a lot easier to resist when its most formidable voice has left the stage. An independent Scotland without Nicola Sturgeon? Imagine Brexit without Boris Johnson - a very, very different campaign.
And when it comes to managing relationships between Holyrood and Westminster, with a highly experienced and wily politician out of the way there is perhaps less chance of the UK government ending up in knots.
But wise heads on the unionist and SNP sides caution at jumping to dramatic conclusions. The SNP's dominance in Scottish politics is profound.
The Scottish public is more or less evenly split on the question of becoming an independent country one day and that has been the case for years. Labour right now has a measly one Scottish MP in Westminster.
And while the SNP does not have an immediately obvious compelling successor with a massive presence, that is not to say that a real talent could not emerge. And don't forget, the Conservatives have for years played up Nicola Sturgeon as a political bogeywoman. That campaign trick could lose its power.
One minister told me: "The threat of Sturgeon is what kept us unionists together." With her exit, how will they respond?
There's no question overall that her departure has shifted the dial. But a shadow cabinet minister carefully says "it's an opportunity" rather than an assumption that the seats will automatically turn red again - Scotland was once Labour's heartland, but that was a very, very long time ago.
What has mattered, too, for the party's leadership this week was Keir Starmer making clear that Jeremy Corbyn will not stand again as a Labour MP. In a way, like Nicola Sturgeon's departure, this has been coming for a while, but the choosing of a moment is significant.
For Keir Starmer's team, it is another step on the road to show, with every sinew, that the party has changed since its calamitous defeat in 2019.
It has been a slow and painful process. There are very public tensions with the left wing of the party, not just because of Jeremy Corbyn's exclusion, but also because Keir Starmer has ditched some of the promises he made when he ran to be leader.
But as ever in politics, private fights inside political parties can be put to public use. Cynics might even suggest (surely not) sometimes they are picked on purpose.
Keir Starmer obviously feels strongly and genuinely that ridding the Labour Party of antisemitism was vital, that it was a shameful episode in the party's history, and the public verdict that the party had changed was essential. (You can read more about the latest report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission here.) He also obviously feels that it is impossible for Jeremy Corbyn to represent Labour again.
Mr Starmer's decision closes down the possibility that Jeremy Corbyn could be back on the party's benches again. (That doesn't mean, however, that he and his supporters still won't try to make it happen).
Crossing the former leader's name off the list can't make the issue completely disappear. One Labour insider said: "Starmer is working hard on this because it is still a problem - the fact that he is talking about Corbyn and making it a priority shows it is still an issue."
Nonetheless, the decision this week is an important symbol, as Keir Starmer moves his party on.
What about the prime minister's effort, then, to end a saga of many years and thousands of column inches? Is Rishi Sunak really on the verge of changing the landscape, too?
This weekend he is in what Number 10 believes could be the closing stages of tortuous negotiations with Brussels to make the Northern Ireland Protocol work - that's the special deal that was worked out as we left the EU to avoid having a hard border on the island of Ireland. To the horror of some unionists, it meant that Northern Ireland is treated differently to the rest of the UK. You can read more about this weekend's talks here.
There are the classic advance grumblings and warnings from the Brexiteer ranks of the Conservative Party, and the Northern Irish DUP, that if the deal isn't good enough, they won't back it, and ultimately the stalemate could just drag on.
But a deal seems much closer than it has at any previous point. With an agreement possible in the next couple of days, a vote has been pencilled in for Tuesday to approve the package. If it gets that far, Rishi Sunak just might be about to end an argument that plagued his party for years.
It's not that Tory backbenchers were ever particularly concerned about sending British sausages to Northern Ireland - it's that the row over the protocol became the totem for the bitter hangover of the Brexit years.
Downing Street is unlikely to be able to push a deal through without a political rumpus, alongside janglings of nerves that Boris Johnson could pile in too.
But if the deal gets done, and the prime minister gets it through Parliament, a Tory source says it would "show he's a serious guy who can get stuff done and he'll get credit for that".
One loyal minister suggests it would be a major win if Mr Sunak can "take on" the right of his party - the "difficult wing", they call them.
With legislation on small boats expected in the next couple of weeks too, the hope in loyal Conservative quarters is that slowly, carefully, the party will re-earn the right to be heard.
This is politics, though. It's also entirely possible that Rishi Sunak is about to provoke an almighty row - with the DUP furious, some of his backbenches cross too and his authority under pressure.
But this is not 2019 anymore - the potency of attacks from the most ardent Brexiteers has faded, not least because some of them are in Rishi Sunak's government, and some of the others are spending a lot of time in TV studios.
There are then, three really important ways in which our politics has been shifting.
The ideas that Scotland will suddenly stop arguing about the constitution, Labour's factions will cease fighting or the Tories won't wind each other up about Europe any more are crackers.
The notion, too, that somehow the outcome of the next election has just been decided is daft.
But this is a moment of transition - the fixings of much of the last few years of politics have come loose.
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Northern Ireland Protocol is lawful, Supreme Court rules - BBC News
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2023-02-08
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The protocol has been challenged by unionists, who say it breaches the Acts of Union and NI Act.
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Northern Ireland
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All unionist parties in Northern Ireland oppose the protocol and the DUP is refusing to re-enter power sharing until it is replaced
The Northern Ireland Protocol is lawful, the UK Supreme Court has ruled.
Part of the Brexit deal, the protocol creates a trade border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
It has been challenged by unionist politicians who say it breaches the Acts of Union and the Northern Ireland Act.
The court unanimously rejected their appeal on all grounds. It had previously been rejected by the High Court and Court of Appeal.
The protocol was agreed by the UK and EU in 2019 to ensure free movement of trade across the Irish land border after Brexit.
However, it means there are new checks and controls on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain.
The unionist case had three aspects:
The court agreed that the protocol does conflict with the Acts of Union.
However, it added that it was Parliament's will that any part of the Acts of Union which conflict with the protocol are suspended.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Sir Jeffrey Donaldson says the UK government must ensure Northern Ireland's position in the UK is maintained
The judges said: "Parliament, by enacting the 2018 Act and the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020, authorised the making of the protocol.
"The clear intention of Parliament in enacting these Acts was to permit the Crown to make the protocol."
On the second ground the court said the relevant part of the Northern Ireland Act only concerns a referendum about whether Northern Ireland remains part of the UK or joins a united Ireland.
On the third ground the court found that Parliament had empowered the secretary of state to lawfully make changes to voting rules.
DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson (left), Baroness Kate Hoey (second right), and former first minister Dame Arlene Foster (right) outside the UK Supreme Court in London
Responding to the ruling, a government spokesperson said: "We welcome that the Supreme Court has reaffirmed the sovereignty of Parliament in approving and legislating for the agreement negotiated in 2019.
"However, this does not change our determination to address the real problems the protocol is causing in Northern Ireland. Intensive talks with the EU continue to that end, looking across the full range of issues we have raised."
A UK government source told the BBC there was "lots still to work through" on protocol talks.
They were speaking before a meeting between Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris and the EU's Maros Sefcovic, which took place on Wednesday afternoon.
The pair held talks in Brussels, as Mr Heaton-Harris also attended a separate event tied to the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.
After the meeting, he said he and Mr Sefcovic "agreed solutions to the protocol must work for benefit of all communities and businesses in Northern Ireland".
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Ministers overseeing the negotiations are said to be focused on making sure solutions reflect the "realities" on the ground.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) withdrew from the power sharing executive in Northern Ireland in February 2022 in protest at the protocol.
DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said the legal challenge "had highlighted why unionists are opposed to the trading arrangements".
"A solution to the protocol was never going to be found in the courts, but the cases have served to highlight some of the reasons why unionists have uniformly rejected the protocol," he added.
"The government must consider this judgment, their own arguments to the court and take the steps necessary to replace the protocol with arrangements that unionists can support."
Jim Allister of TUV said the court's ruling greatly strengthens his party's stance and it "must embolden the political campaign against the protocol".
"The fact the Supreme Court is satisfied it was lawfully made does not in the least affect its political unacceptability, nor its dire constitutional consequences," he added.
The protocol introduced checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain
Sinn Féin Brexit spokesperson Declan Kearney welcomed the judgement, adding the protocol was "imperfect" but "clearly necessary".
"Now that legal clarity has been confirmed, it is time to move forward politically and ensure that a deal between the British Government and EU to deliver pragmatic and durable solutions is secured without delay that makes the protocol work better for everyone."
The Social Democratic and Labour Party said the ruling provided "important clarity" on the legality of the protocol.
"Following this judgment, it is now critical that the EU and UK negotiating teams reach a comprehensive resolution that protects our unique access to the Single Market for goods while addressing the concerns around protocol implementation that have given rise to sincere objections related to trade barriers and identity issues in the unionist community," assembly member Matthew O'Toole said.
Alliance deputy leader Stephen Farry said political parties in Northern Ireland needed to "focus on pragmatic solutions going forward" after the Supreme Court's ruling, which he added "was not surprising in the slightest".
"Northern Ireland was always going to require some special arrangements in the context of a hard Brexit. This protocol or something similar is therefore the inevitable outcome of choices made, and the consequent need to address this region's particular circumstances and to protect the Good Friday Agreement."
The Supreme Court is the final court of appeal in the UK for civil cases.
It hears cases considered to be of the greatest public or constitutional importance affecting the whole population.
A five-judge panel, including Lord Reed, the president of the court, heard the case over two days in November.
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Liz Truss: I was never given realistic chance to enact tax cuts - BBC News
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2023-02-05
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The ex-PM's comments are the first detailed remarks she has made since she was forced out of No 10.
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UK
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Liz Truss has made her first comments about her short-lived premiership
Liz Truss has said she was never given a "realistic chance" to implement her radical tax-cutting agenda by her party.
In a 4,000-word essay in the Sunday Telegraph, Ms Truss stood by her plans to boost economic growth, arguing they were brought down by "the left-wing economic establishment".
They are the first public comments the ex-PM has made on her resignation.
But she said she was not "blameless" for the unravelling of the mini-budget.
Business Secretary Grant Shapps, who was appointed by Ms Truss as her home secretary during her final week in office, said she "clearly" had not had the right approach to taxation.
Speaking on BBC One's Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg show, he said her desire for lower taxes in the long term was correct, but inflation should have have been lowered first.
Ms Truss was forced to quit after she and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng's £45bn package of tax cuts panicked the markets and tanked the pound to a record low.
Her brief time in power - 49 days - made her the shortest-serving prime minister in UK history.
Ms Truss said that while her experience last autumn was "bruising for me personally", she believed that over the medium term her policies would have increased growth and therefore brought down debt.
She argued that the government was made a "scapegoat" for developments that had been brewing for some time.
"Frankly, we were also pushing water uphill. Large parts of the media and the wider public sphere had become unfamiliar with key arguments about tax and economic policy and over time sentiment had shifted leftward," she wrote.
"Regrettably, the government became a useful scapegoat for problems that had been brewing over a number of months."
She also said she had not appreciated the strength of the resistance she would face to her plans - including plans to abolish the 45p top rate of income tax.
"I assumed upon entering Downing Street that my mandate would be respected and accepted. How wrong I was. While I anticipated resistance to my programme from the system, I underestimated the extent of it," she writes.
Mr Kwarteng dropped the 45p income tax proposals 10 days after they were announced, telling the BBC it was "a massive distraction on what was a strong package".
Less than a fortnight later, Ms Truss sacked Mr Kwarteng, something she said she was "deeply disturbed by".
"Kwasi Kwarteng had put together a brave package that was genuinely transformative - he is an original thinker and a great advocate for Conservative ideas. But at this point, it was clear that the policy agenda could not survive and my priority had to be avoiding a serious meltdown for the UK," she wrote.
With the benefit of hindsight, she writes that she would have acted differently during her premiership - but she still backs her plans for growth.
"I have lost track of how many people have written to me or approached me since leaving Downing Street to say that they believe my diagnosis of the problems causing our country's economic lethargy was correct and that they shared my enthusiasm for the solutions I was proposing," she said.
After 100 days of "soul searching" we have a version of events from the shortest serving UK Prime Minister in history.
This is Liz Truss's catastrophic time in office, described and defended in her own words.
At some length, she attempts to argue her case and answer for her actions. There is reflection and regret but not the apology which many might expect.
What burns through this 4000 word essay is a sense from Liz Truss that almost everything was against her as she makes a case for what might have been.
The system, officials, Conservative MPs all played a part, she argues, in stopping her from achieving her aim of economic growth through tax cuts and de-regulation.
There are breathtaking reminders of how high the stakes were as her policies sent shockwaves through the economy - Kwasi Kwarteng had to go to avoid "a serious meltdown for the UK" and "the starkest of warnings" came from officials that the country may have to default on its debt.
Despite her downfall, Liz Truss argues many still share her enthusiasm for what she was trying to achieve.
Sir Jake Berry, who was Conservative party chairman under Ms Truss, said he agreed with her "diagnosis" of the problems facing the UK economy, but "not necessarily the cure".
Speaking to Laura Kuenssberg, he added that Ms Truss had been "wrong" to say the Conservatives had failed to make the argument for lower taxes.
Meanwhile, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said Ms Truss's policies "made working people pay the price".
"The Conservatives crashed the economy, sank the pound, put pensions in peril and made working people pay the price through higher mortgages for years to come.
"After 13 years of low growth, squeezed wages and higher taxes under the Tories, only Labour offers the leadership and ideas to fix our economy and to get it growing."
While Liz Truss resigned as prime minister, she is still serving in parliament as the MP for South West Norfolk.
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Liz Truss returns - and it could be trouble for Rishi Sunak - BBC News
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2023-02-05
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Truss returns to the political fray via a newspaper comment piece - and the PM can't afford to ignore her.
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UK Politics
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Pilloried around the country, and the world, Liz Truss wants to tell her side of the story
"Liz was mad but right. Rishi is wrong but competent."
Those blunt sentences come from a serving government minister - and they sum up the problem the PM may be about to face. Liz Truss is set to return to the political fray, via a Sunday morning newspaper comment piece, just four months after her rapid exit from No 10.
Her time in charge was a disaster. The financial markets melted. The shelf life of her premiership was compared, in real-time, with that of a wilting lettuce (it outlasted her).
Why on earth would she want to crawl out from under the duvet - and why would anyone listen?
Here is the official explanation from her camp: "Liz remains an active politician, keen to draw on more than a decade of experience in government as she contributes to national and international debates on a variety of issues."
So far, so vanilla. Why shouldn't a former prime minister have her say?
But here's the less official explanation from one of her political pals: ''It's human nature to want to justify what you did."
Pilloried around the country, and the world, Ms Truss wants to tell her side of the story - to explain what really happened, "not the fairytales", as one ally puts it.
It's worth noting that she's doing so in her own words in the Sunday Telegraph - a newspaper that's broadly sympathetic to her cause - and then in a pre-recorded chat for a podcast later in the week. She is not yet, despite our own invitation and no doubt many others, sitting down for live interviews with no holds barred.
Like many in her tribe, Ms Truss has never been short of that priceless political quality: a brass neck. Despite presiding over what many in the party see as one of the most disastrous political reigns in history, she is expected to argue that, essentially, she was right.
One ally says "she doesn't shirk responsibility" - but she's expected to restate her argument for low taxes and an economic shake-up.
And by arguing that she was fundamentally right, the implication is that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is fundamentally wrong.
Another former cabinet minister and colleague of hers says that "she reckons the government is not a Conservative [government], it's a social democratic government". In certain Tory circles, that is the same as saying something very rude indeed.
Will her attempted comeback matter? You might agree with a different government minister, who says "it won't be troublesome at all, because she was a false prophet". It might even remind people, they suggest (or hope), of what they see as the madness during her short time in office, and make the public appreciate the relative calm under Mr Sunak.
Another member of the cabinet is less subtle, telling me: "She caused economic catastrophe four months ago, to say, 'let's have another go' is nuts." They add that "there are plenty of people in the party who will NEVER forgive her - she never turns up, and nobody cares".
Political parties tend to dislike even a whiff of disloyalty - another minister says that it might be an "old fashioned view, but former leaders tend to get respect and credit if they are seen to be helping the current one".
In other words - Liz, not now!
There are two reasons why the Conservatives and No 10 can't just shrug off what Ms Truss has to say.
First, Rishi Sunak's pitch to the country was to end the chaos and start anew. Whether it's Ms Truss popping up, or Boris Johnson cantering around the world, ghosts of the chaotic Conservative past are never far away. Politics is, at root, a contest to get heard - and clamour from former leaders makes it harder for the man or woman in charge to win.
And second, while nobody in the party would argue that Ms Truss went about her mission the right way, there are plenty of Conservatives who feel in their bones that her principles were entirely right. There's already an itchiness on the back benches about Mr Sunak's handling of the economy, and a rising demand for tax cuts that Ms Truss will help fuel.
The party is not in open revolt, but it's not in a happy place - as I discussed last week when the prime minister marked 100 days in office. Conservative MPs and some business groups reckon that, even with a microscope, it'd be pretty hard to find a convincing government plan to get the economy growing.
Liz Truss didn't have a mandate from the country for the rapid tax cuts she wanted - I well remember the tumbleweed in our studio when we asked her, after days of chaos, how many people had actually voted for her plans.
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But remember, Conservative members did vote for her - and her ideas. That's why one former minister believes her re-appearance this weekend will cause trouble "because it will remind members they backed her, not him" - and that "the reason he is in power is because his team destroyed the fundamental principle of being a Tory - low tax - our members are still angry".
It is of course the public - all of you - not political parties who make the ultimate judgement on our leaders. The verdict on Ms Truss was fast and fierce, her premiership was over in a flash. But what she stood for remains, and can't be dismissed as a terrible political accident.
P.S. While we wait for Ms Truss' words in full, we are waiting too for Downing Street to appoint its next Conservative party chair after the sacking of Nadhim Zahawi. Several different sources whisper that no one wants to do the job - one source tells me it's been suggested to three different MPs who have all said no, another MP says "no one wants to do it", not wanting to take the blame for an anticipated battering at the polls in the May local elections.
The suggestion that the job has been dangled and declined has been emphatically denied by a source involved in the discussions, who suggests the Prime Minister is in no rush and that there hasn't been any formal considerations yet. And with the potential exit of Dominic Raab from government after an inquiry into his behaviour, which could report around the end of the month, No 10 might have to fill not one, but two jobs at the cabinet table - so best to wait.
The man who was party chair during Truss's eventful time in charge is Jake Berry, who joins us on the show tomorrow.
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Rishi Sunak missing from NHS strike talks, says union boss - BBC News
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2023-02-05
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Unite's leader says the PM should intervene, ahead of the biggest week of walkouts in NHS history.
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UK Politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. We are not in talks with government over pay - Unite boss
The leader of a union representing striking ambulance workers has called on Rishi Sunak to intervene in the NHS pay dispute.
On the eve of the biggest week of strikes in NHS history, Unite's Sharon Graham said: "Where is Rishi Sunak, why is he not at the negotiating table?"
It came after the head of a nurses' union urged the PM to offer a new deal to avert nursing strikes in England.
The government insists its £1,400 rise for NHS workers this year is fair.
But Unite and other health unions say the increase - an average rise of 4.8% - fails to reflect rising living costs, and needs to be increased.
Health Secretary Stephen Barclay says he has held "constructive" talks with unions over pay for the next financial year, starting in April.
But speaking on BBC One's Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg, Ms Graham said Unite "are in no talks at any level whatsoever" with the government about NHS pay, accusing ministers of an "abdication of responsibility".
Calling on the prime minister to get personally involved in finding a solution, she said: "Instead of doing sort of press conferences about other things, come to the table and negotiate - roll your sleeves up and negotiate on the pay in the NHS."
Her call for Mr Sunak to intervene in the dispute over NHS pay in England follows a similar appeal from Pat Cullen, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing.
In a letter to the prime minister on Saturday, Ms Cullen wrote: "I am appealing directly to you for the first time: address this current impasse."
• University staff who are members of the University and College Union and Unison are on strike
• Union members at 150 universities have been taking part in industrial action Read more: Will my lecture be cancelled? There are currently no national strikes planned for this date There are currently no national strikes planned for this date There are currently no national strikes planned for this date There are currently no national strikes planned for this date There are currently no national strikes planned for this date There are currently no national strikes planned for this date There are currently no national strikes planned for this date There are currently no national strikes planned for this date There are currently no national strikes planned for this date There are currently no national strikes planned for this date There are currently no national strikes planned for this date
• More than 1,000 Passport Office workers are on strike in a dispute about jobs, pay and conditions
• Members of the Public and Commercial Services union have warned of delays to applications and the delivery of passports in the run-up to summer
• More than 1,000 Passport Office workers are on strike in a dispute about jobs, pay and conditions
• Members of the Public and Commercial Services union have warned of delays to applications and the delivery of passports in the run-up to summer
• More than 1,000 Passport Office workers are on strike in a dispute about jobs, pay and conditions
• Members of the Public and Commercial Services union have warned of delays to applications and the delivery of passports in the run-up to summer
• More than 1,000 Passport Office workers are on strike in a dispute about jobs, pay and conditions
• Members of the Public and Commercial Services union have warned of delays to applications and the delivery of passports in the run-up to summer
• More than 1,000 Passport Office workers are on strike in a dispute about jobs, pay and conditions
• Members of the Public and Commercial Services union have warned of delays to applications and the delivery of passports in the run-up to summer
• More than 1,000 Passport Office workers are on strike in a dispute about jobs, pay and conditions
• Members of the Public and Commercial Services union have warned of delays to applications and the delivery of passports in the run-up to summer There are currently no national strikes planned for this date
The RCN and several other health unions in Wales have suspended planned action next week after the Labour-run Welsh government offered NHS workers an extra 3% on top of the £1,400 for this year.
The RCN, along with the GMB union and the Royal College of Midwives (RCM), has also put strike action on hold in Scotland to allow further talks on the 2023 pay offer.
In her letter, Ms Cullen said the UK government was looking "increasingly isolated" by "refusing to reopen" talks over this year's pay deal in England.
Ambulance workers represented by Unite are still set to strike in Wales next week, after the union decided against joining others in suspending action.
But Ms Graham told Laura Kuenssberg she would be meeting with the Welsh health minister later, in a bid to find a deal.
She added that the Welsh government needed to "come back to the table" with an improved offer - but added the situation in Wales and Scotland was in "stark contrast" to the impasse in England.
Speaking on the same programme, Business Secretary Grant Shapps defended the government's approach to pay in England, adding that the £1,400 rise had been suggested by the NHS pay review body.
The government says it wants the body, made up of eight advisers, to recommend a pay award for next year in April.
However, the health department is yet to present its submission to the body - a key step in the process of drawing up a recommendation. The review body says it has evidence from the Treasury.
Health unions have said they won't formally submit evidence until the dispute over this year's pay is resolved, instead publishing a document setting out their argument for higher pay.
Monday will see combined industrial action in England, as members from the Royal College of Nursing will walk out alongside call handlers, paramedics and other ambulance staff - who are members of either the GMB and Unite unions.
The strike will affect non-life threatening calls only and people are advised to use the 999 service in an emergency.
Tuesday will see members of the RCN union go on strike again. The union represents roughly two-thirds of NHS nurses.
They are taking industrial action over pay, but life-preserving treatment must be provided, and all nurses in intensive and emergency care are expected to work.
NHS physiotherapists across England will go on strike on Thursday over pay and staffing, and the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) says 4,200 members are involved.
And on Friday, thousands of ambulance staff across five services in England - London, Yorkshire, South West, North East, and North West - are striking.
Have you had a medical appointment or operation cancelled due to the strikes? Share your experiences by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also get in touch in the following ways:
If you are reading this page and can't see the form you will need to visit the mobile version of the BBC website to submit your question or comment or you can email us at HaveYourSay@bbc.co.uk. Please include your name, age and location with any submission.
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Grant Shapps: Liz Truss's tax cuts were clearly the wrong approach - BBC News
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2023-02-05
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Grant Shapps, who briefly served in Liz Truss's cabinet, said inflation must fall before taxes are cut.
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Liz Truss' approach 'clearly' not right - Shapps
Liz Truss's radical tax-cutting plan was "clearly" not the right approach, according to Grant Shapps, who briefly served in her short-lived government.
In a return to the political fray, Ms Truss wrote in the Sunday Telegraph that her economic agenda was never given a "realistic chance".
Business Secretary Mr Shapps said he agreed with Ms Truss on wanting lower taxes - but inflation must fall first.
"You can't just go straight to those tax cuts," he said.
In her 4,000-word essay, Ms Truss stood by her plans to boost economic growth, arguing they were brought down by "the left-wing economic establishment".
But she acknowledged she was not "blameless" for the unravelling of the mini-budget.
They are the first public comments the former PM has made on her resignation in October of last year.
Ms Truss resigned after she and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng introduced a £45bn package of tax cuts - including a cut to the top rate of income tax - which panicked the markets and alienated Tory MPs.
Mr Shapps was asked on BBC One's Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg show whether Ms Truss's approach had been the right one.
"Clearly it wasn't," he said.
He admitted that the UK's tax burden was currently "very high", and said he agreed with Ms Truss that Conservatives must be "making the good arguments" that a lower-tax economy can be successful in the long term.
But before the government cuts tax, it must first halve inflation, get "growth into the economy" and get debt "under control", he said.
Grant Shapps was home secretary under Liz Truss for her final six days in office
He tried to avoid addressing Truss's criticism that the Conservative Party had failed, for years, to make the case for free-market economics with low taxes and low regulation.
Mr Shapps said he took the role of home secretary in the final days of Ms Truss's government out of a sense of "national duty", and that by that point "we'd seen the impact on the markets".
He replaced Suella Braverman, who resigned over two data breaches. Six weeks earlier, as Ms Truss entered Downing Street, she had fired Mr Shapps as transport secretary, a role he held under the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Ms Truss's brief time in power - 49 days - made her the shortest-serving prime minister in UK history.
In her essay, Ms Truss said that while her experience last autumn was "bruising for me personally", she believed that over the medium term her policies would have increased growth and therefore brought down debt.
She argued that the government was made a "scapegoat" for developments that had been brewing for some time.
"Frankly, we were also pushing water uphill. Large parts of the media and the wider public sphere had become unfamiliar with key arguments about tax and economic policy and over time sentiment had shifted leftward," she wrote.
She also said she had not appreciated the strength of the resistance she would face to her plans - including plans to abolish the 45p top rate of income tax.
"I assumed upon entering Downing Street that my mandate would be respected and accepted. How wrong I was."
Liz Truss resigned as prime minister in October 2022 and officially stepped down after a week-long contest to find her successor
Mr Kwarteng dropped the 45p income tax proposals 10 days after they were announced, telling the BBC it was "a massive distraction on what was a strong package".
Less than a fortnight later, Ms Truss sacked Mr Kwarteng, something she said she was "deeply disturbed by". She described Mr Kwarteng in her essay as "an original thinker and a great advocate for Conservative ideas" - but that it was clear the tax proposals could not survive.
With the benefit of hindsight, she would have acted differently during her premiership, she wrote - but she still backs her plans for growth.
Sir Jake Berry, who was Conservative party chairman under Ms Truss, said he agreed with her assessment of the problems facing the UK economy, but "not necessarily the cure".
Speaking on the Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg show, he added that Ms Truss had been wrong to say the Conservatives had failed to make the argument for lower taxes.
Meanwhile, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said Ms Truss's policies "made working people pay the price".
"The Conservatives crashed the economy, sank the pound, put pensions in peril and made working people pay the price through higher mortgages for years to come.
"After 13 years of low growth, squeezed wages and higher taxes under the Tories, only Labour offers the leadership and ideas to fix our economy and to get it growing."
While Ms Truss resigned as prime minister, she is still serving in parliament as the MP for South West Norfolk.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64530150
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news_uk-64530150
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Truss's approach 'clearly' not right, says Shapps - BBC News
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2023-02-05
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Stepping in as home secretary was "a moment of national duty", the minister says.
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UK Politics
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Well, now Liz Truss’ version of events is out there, and it’s clear that her former cabinet colleagues don’t want to talk about it much.
Grant Shapps's argument this morning was essentially - we’d all love to cut tax but we can’t do it now. He also tried very hard to avoid addressing his old boss’s criticisms of the Conservative party’s failures over the years, as he sees it, to make the case for free market economics with low taxes and low regulation.
The problem that he and Rishi Sunak have is that some Conservatives, like Jake Berry in our studio this morning, are only too happy to make that case.
To say that they have, as he said, "constituents who feel like the government doesn’t understand their problems", who feel the burdens on them are too great, and the party they voted for in 2019 isn’t listening.
There’s a striking spat too between the unions and the government this morning, over whether industrial action in the health service is putting lives at risk.
The leader of the Unite union, Sharon Graham, said that there were "categorically" no talks going on at any level between the government and unions to try to call things off, and accused ministers of misleading the public over standby ambulance provisions that have been put in place.
For the public, who’ll be affected by the strikes there seems no sign of resolution while the two sides throw stones. Sharon Graham said that in 30 years she had never seen anything like this standstill, calling on the PM himself to come to the table.
But if you’re hoping that there might be any resolution of the dispute, that feels in vain.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-64515601
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news_live_uk-politics-64515601
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Allan Little: The story of Scottish independence - what next? - BBC News
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2023-02-27
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The BBC's Allan Little considers whether the forward march of an independent Scotland has been turned back.
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UK
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On 15 February, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced she was standing down after eight years
On the face of it, the tide of Scottish independence has turned. With Nicola Sturgeon's resignation, a formidable champion of Scottish statehood leaves the stage.
The movement - famous for the discipline with which it enforced party unity - is visibly divided, caught up in a series of rancorous culture wars. The broad coalition that Sturgeon built up over years - from working class ex-Labour voters to an energetic community of LGBTQ activists - may be in danger of fragmenting.
The pro-Union parties are poised. Labour has most to gain. As the prospect of independence recedes into the distant future, will former Labour supporters drift back, pinning their hopes on a Keir Starmer victory in the UK?
Nicola Sturgeon's departure seems like a defeat for a movement that has been on the rise for a quarter of a century.
So the urgent question now is this: Has the forward march of an independent Scotland been turned back? Does the independence ambition end with her leadership?
I've been reporting on the independence question, on and off, for more than 30 years. In 1992, I spent the night of the general election at SNP headquarters in Edinburgh. The party was expecting an electoral breakthrough - perhaps 10 or 12 seats in the House of Commons - after more than a decade of increasingly unpopular Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher and John Major.
But as the night wore on and Major edged his way to an overall majority, the SNP's confident anticipation turned to despair. The party won just two seats. I became uncomfortably aware that I was the only person in the room who wasn't a party supporter. I felt as though I was intruding on private grief.
Twenty-three years later, on election night 2015, I was a guest at the home of a prominent Labour-supporting family. When the BBC flashed the exit poll at 22:00, predicting (accurately as it turned out) a virtual Labour wipe out in Scotland, and an SNP landslide, the shock in the room was intense. I was intruding again, I thought, on private grief.
What happened, in the years between those two moments, that allowed the independence movement to breach the walls of Labour's Fortress Scotland and sweep through all but three of the country's parliamentary constituencies?
I have been watching, over the course of my adult lifetime, a long, slow generational pivot away from the robust, secure unionism of the Scotland I grew up in.
I have a clear sense of what we have been pivoting away from - just not what kind of Scotland we are pivoting towards.
For me, there is something more telling than the rise of nationalist sentiment, and that is the story of what has happened to the Union itself, to pro-Union sentiment, and to the way Scots have thought about their place within the Union.
It is the story of the falling away, over decades, of much of what it has meant to be British in Scotland.
I grew up in Galloway in the rural south west of Scotland. In the 70s, when I was a child, a sense of British identity seemed unassailable. Even when our constituency returned a Scottish Nationalist MP to Parliament in 1974, one of 11 elected that year, few people saw their victory as a serious threat to the long-term viability of the Union.
For back then, Scotland was a very British country. The economic landscape was still dominated by the great Victorian heavy industries of coal, steel and shipbuilding. The working-class communities they sustained were huge and had proud civic identities.
Those industries were also pan-British enterprises, shared across the four nations. If you were a miner in Fife you were connected, in a community of shared interests and aspirations, with miners in Yorkshire and South Wales. You were in the same trade union, with its pantheon of working-class heroes who'd led the struggle for better wages and safer workplaces. The sense of belonging was powerful.
Scottish Nationalists campaigning in Motherwell, which was dominated by the steel industry, would be told on the doorstep: "But I work for something called British Steel. It pays a decent wage, gives me job security, five weeks holiday and a pension at the end. Are you going to unpick all of that?"
Those communities were bedrocks of British identity in Scotland, as well as of Labour solidarity.
A miner at Baads Colliery to the west of Edinburgh, 1962
In the 1980s and 1990s those industries were swept away. One of the great socio-economic pillars on which British identity had sat crumbled to dust as those communities, over time, fragmented and dispersed, and their old industries slipped, with each decade that passed, further into the middle-distance of collective memory.
After Sturgeon's resignation, I went back to Glenluce, the village I grew up in. I walked past my childhood home. My grandparents had lived in the same street - not far from where my great-great-grandparents had raised their children in the 19th Century.
When they thought of the world, they didn't think of Paris or Berlin or Rome; they thought of Cape Town and Bombay, of Singapore and Melbourne. They had relatives who had settled in the parts of the world that were coloured British Empire pink on the map. When letters arrived from some distant sun-dappled place, the stamps carried the familiar, unifying face of the British monarch.
To those generations, the British Empire was what bound Scotland into the Union. It was a huge, shared British enterprise, built upon a set of values that people across the nations of the United Kingdom broadly shared. We might be radically rethinking the legacy of Empire in our own day, but to them, the experience of Empire was a powerful sustaining force of British identity in Scotland.
Allan Little in the village of Glenluce where he grew up
My parents were born in the 1930s. They lived as children through World War Two and grew into adulthood in a world in which the UK enjoyed immense moral standing.
At the age of 17, my father joined the RAF. He watched the 1953 Coronation on an air base in West Germany, alongside other young men from Bangor and Belfast and Birmingham. The shared Britishness of their young lives was as natural as the air they breathed.
The British Empire would come to an end when they were in their 20s and 30s, but their generation were heirs to a new kind of Britain - the cradle-to-grave welfare state, the new NHS, full employment, social housing (I was born in a council house). But there was something else new for families like ours - a chance that their children would one day make it to university or college. And, in my family, we did.
That post-war Britain was also built on a set of values that were shared across the nations of the United Kingdom; values that achieved cross-party consensus and which prevailed for 40 years.
My generation entered adulthood in the 1980s, at a time when the post-war settlement appeared irrevocably broken down and when the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, offered a bold and radical new vision of Britain's future.
It was, by her own definition, a plan to roll back the frontiers of a state that was outdated, and collapsing under its own weight.
For nearly two decades, the United Kingdom as a whole returned Conservative governments under Thatcher and then Major. But Scotland never embraced Thatcherism - and Conservative electoral fortunes declined until, in 1997, there wasn't a single Tory MP left in Scotland.
In these decades, a long slow divergence in political aspirations took place, with England (particularly the south of England) and Scotland voting for different kinds of Britain. This divergence would resume in 2010. When Gordon Brown's Labour government lost the election of that year, due to a swing to the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in England, none of Scotland's Labour MPs lost their seat, and many were elected with strengthened majorities.
If the Union had always been at its strongest when it was built on shared values, those values now started coming under strain.
When I was a child, public representations of Scottish identity seemed bizarre. On TV, we had the White Heather Club - women in white frocks and tartan sashes dancing impossibly complicated reels and strathspeys; men in kilts playing accordions and singing kitsch songs about exile and nostalgia. It was caricature and had no connection to lived experience.
Andy Stewart, host of the long-running BBC variety show The White Heather Club, with musician Alistair McHarg in 1959
But in the 70s and 80s, slowly, that representation of Scottishness began to be eclipsed. Scottish culture was speaking increasingly in its own voice. Much of it was coming from a cohort of young working-class people who'd been (like me) the first in their families to get a college or university education. And a lot of it was explicitly left-wing.
In the 1980s, Labour responded to this shifting social, political and cultural climate, by embracing an idea that had traditionally divided the Labour movement - a Scottish Parliament.
That experience of being governed, through the Scottish Office, by a party that had repeatedly lost elections in Scotland, changed public opinion. Opposition leaders began to argue not just against specific government policies in Scotland, but about the very right of Westminster to impose them. The policies lacked democratic legitimacy because they had, the argument ran, been repeatedly rejected by Scots at the ballot box.
In 1997 when Tony Blair's New Labour came to power, Scotland voted by a majority of three to one to establish a Scottish Parliament. Devolution was the biggest transfer of legislative power from Westminster since the Act of Union in 1707.
And in that tumult, the SNP - long seen as a relatively marginal force - began to reinvent itself, and more crucially, reinvent the independence prospectus. Under Alex Salmond's leadership, the party moved away from its traditional appeal to the politics of national identity - the flag, the literature, the culture and symbols of national sentiment - and towards the politics of social justice. It presented itself to the Scottish electorate as a modern, mainstream European social democratic party.
The independence cause began to converge with the cause of social justice and greater equality. This made the SNP a threat to Labour's dominant position in Scotland. And, though it took a long time, the SNP began to win elections by appealing to traditional Labour voters and by enthusing the young.
This realignment of political allegiances happened under Salmond's leadership. But no-one embodied it more fully than Nicola Sturgeon, from a working class Ayrshire background, who had also been the first in her family to go to university.
Nicola Sturgeon at the launch of the SNP's 1999 Holyrood election manifesto
When I was reporting on the referendum campaign of 2014, few of the young people who energised the Yes movement wanted to talk about nationality. They wanted to talk about fairness, about the injustices of the growing levels of economic inequality that seemed to them to characterise the UK.
In 2014, Brown was among the first in Labour to see that many of the party's traditional voters were planning to vote Yes. It was the start of a landslip. Many Labour voters jumped ship to vote Yes, and then, the following year, to help the SNP to its astonishing landslide.
Though the Yes movement lost the referendum decisively, the experience changed the political map. The old left-right divide that had defined Scottish politics for a century was replaced: the new fault line was independence.
The Yes movement brought support for independence to 45% - with nearly 85% of the electorate voting, the highest turnout in Scottish electoral history.
Better Together "No" campaign banners spray painted with "Yes" graffiti near Dundee, in August 2014 before the referendum
It is striking that, for all her popularity and the admiration she commands, eight years after Sturgeon assumed the leadership of that movement, the dial has hardly moved. Support for independence still hovers just below 50%.
Why has the unpopularity of Brexit not led to a decisive surge in support for independence? Why did the deeply unpopular premiership of Boris Johnson not change the numbers? And if Sturgeon - probably the most gifted champion of Scottish statehood the movement has ever produced - hasn't been able to build a sustained majority for independence, what chance will her successor have?
The movement she hands over is a cultural as well as a political phenomenon. The idea that an independent Scotland will be a fairer society than the United Kingdom is its core belief.
LGBTQ rights are also at the heart of the movement. But Sturgeon's Gender Recognition Reform Bill opened up a bitter divide in her own party and threatens to split wide open the broad coalition that has been key to the SNP's success.
Women's rights protesters outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, February 2023
The Bill had cross-party support in the Scottish Parliament: Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens and even some Conservatives all backed it. But powerful voices in Sturgeon's own party bitterly denounced it, including the MP Joanna Cherry; the leadership contender Ash Regan, who resigned from the Scottish government to oppose it; and Kate Forbes, the finance secretary, who said she would have voted against it had she not been on maternity leave at the time.
But most concerning for the independence cause, opinion polls suggested Scots were not in favour of many of the measures in the Bill. For once, Sturgeon's radical instincts and convictions, which have so often in her career walked hand-in-hand with public opinion, have collided with it.
So this may be a turning point for the independence movement. The era of Salmond and Sturgeon, which transformed the fortunes of the SNP and redrew the map of Scottish and UK politics, is over.
Its signature project - to secure an independence referendum by winning elections - appears to have run into a dead end. Nicola Sturgeon proposed turning the next UK general election into a de facto referendum. An SNP victory would be taken as a mandate to open independence negotiations with Westminster. Few, even in her own party, thought this a viable proposition. The next leader will have to offer independence supporters a credible alternative route to Scottish statehood.
Is there an alternative route? Many commentators think that if support for independence rises to, say, 60% or more and stays there for a sustained period, then a UK government will, in the end, be unable to deny a second referendum indefinitely.
Drill into those opinion polls that show support for independence hovering somewhere around 50%, and look at the age demographics. The young remain overwhelmingly in favour of independence - by more than 70% in some age groups. There is even strong support among the middle-aged.
It is only in my own age group, the over 60s, the cohort that still has personal memories a Britain built on a set of shared values and a sense of purpose held in common, where the Union retains commandingly solid majority support.
This leads many nationalists to believe time is on their side - that the fruit of independence is ripening on the tree of age demographics and will one day fall into their lap.
Nothing is inevitable - the young grow older - but those polls suggest that the long, slow generational pivot away from British identity in Scotland has not been reversed. And that is a long-term challenge the Union will have to meet if it is to survive, whatever direction the SNP takes under its new leader.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64761495
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news_uk-64761495
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British embassy spy snared by Berlin sting, court hears - BBC News
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2023-02-15
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Fake Russian spies helped expose David Ballantyne Smith for sharing data with Russia, a court hears.
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UK
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David Ballantyne Smith claims he was not paid and was motivated by an employment grievance
A Russian spy at the British embassy in Berlin was caught by a sting operation, the OId Bailey has heard.
Briton David Ballantyne Smith, 58, was working as a security guard when he passed secret information to Russian authorities.
The court heard how two fake Russian operatives working undercover helped lead to his arrest in August 2021.
Prosecutors claim Smith held strong anti-UK views and was paid for information.
Smith pleaded guilty to eight charges last year and has returned to court for legal argument about his motivation.
He claims he was not paid and was motivated by an employment grievance while suffering mental health issues.
The Old Bailey heard how one undercover operative posed as a "walk-in" Russian informant called "Dmitry" when he was escorted into the British embassy by Smith on 5 August 2021.
Afterwards, Smith was seen on CCTV recording the earlier footage of Dmitry.
"The prosecution allege he... knows the potential significance of the Dmitry incident because he has taken the recordings with a view to passing that material on," Alison Morgan KC told the court.
A second undercover operative met him in the street and claimed to be a Russian intelligence officer called "Irina".
"Irina was deployed to play the role of the GRU [Russian spy agency] officer and to see whether someone - Dmitry - was providing information to the UK that could be damaging to Russia," said Ms Morgan.
Smith was recorded covertly and appeared cautious, telling Irina he needed to speak to "someone" first.
The undercover sting was prompted by a letter Smith sent in November 2020 to a military staff member at the Russian Embassy in Berlin.
Prosecutors say Smith received money in exchange for information and favoured Russia and its leadership.
Smith said he only intended to "inconvenience and embarrass" the embassy
They say there were unaccounted-for funds, including 800 euro (£700) in cash found at his home in Potsdam.
Smith has denied leaking secrets to Russia for money and claimed he only intended to "inconvenience and embarrass" the embassy, where he had worked since 2016.
Prosecutors say his deliberate engagement with Russian authorities by providing them with confidential and sensitive information showed intent to harm British interests.
Items seized from his flat included travel documents and sheets of blank embassy headed paper.
Photographs taken at that address showed a Russian Federation flag, a Soviet military hat, a Communist toy Lada car and a Russian cuddly toy Rottweiler dog wearing a military hat.
A cartoon seized from his work locker showed Russian President Vladimir Putin in military attire holding the head of former German chancellor Angela Merkel.
Smith, who is originally from Scotland, was extradited on 6 April last year and then arrested at Heathrow for offences under the Official Secrets Act.
Last November, Smith pleaded guilty to eight charges under the Official Secrets Act by committing an act prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state.
Smith is due to be sentenced at the Old Bailey on Friday.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64639138
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news_uk-64639138
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Who is Nicola Sturgeon? From teenage campaigner to Scotland's first minister - BBC News
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2023-02-15
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Scotland's first minister has been an SNP stalwart since she was a teenager.
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Scotland politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. A look back at Nicola Sturgeon's life in politics
Nicola Sturgeon has announced that she will step down as Scotland's first minister after more than eight years.
She has resigned without achieving the one overriding ambition which first sparked her interest in politics as a teenager - Scottish independence.
Ms Sturgeon was born in Irvine in 1970, a "working class girl from Ayrshire".
She was already an SNP stalwart in her teens, campaigning for the party in the 1987 general election.
It was Margaret Thatcher who inspired her to enter politics, she said, claiming to hate everything the Tory politician stood for.
She insisted the argument for independence was purely political and economic - and had never really been about identity.
Her own grandmother was from the north of England.
By 1992, at the age of 21, she was selected as a candidate herself, standing in the Glasgow Shettleston constituency where she was beaten by Labour by 15,000 votes.
Her ambition was undiminished and she went on to stand in a series of council and Westminster contests.
At the same time, she graduated in law from the University of Glasgow, and worked for two years as a solicitor in the city.
Her political career fully took off with the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, where Ms Sturgeon won a Glasgow seat on the regional list ballot.
The SNP became the main opposition to the Labour-Lib Dem coalition running the new parliament, and Ms Sturgeon took up a series of shadow briefs - first on education, and later on health.
When John Swinney resigned as SNP leader in 2004, she pitched herself into a leadership contest against Roseanna Cunningham. But the race changed when Alex Salmond decided to return and throw his hat into the ring.
The two politicians sealed a pact which saw Ms Sturgeon run as Mr Salmond's deputy - and effectively his representative in the Scottish Parliament, given he was an MP and not an MSP at the time.
It also meant she became deputy first minister when the SNP took power in 2007, as well as the important post of health secretary.
She won the constituency of Glasgow Govan at that election, a seat she has comfortably held ever since.
In 2010, she was married to Peter Murrell - the SNP's chief executive.
The couple never had children but Ms Sturgeon later revealed the painful experience of suffering a miscarriage when she was 40, shortly before the 2011 Scottish parliamentary election campaign.
"Sometimes... having a baby just doesn't happen - no matter how much we might want it to," she said.
Ms Sturgeon said she talked about it because she hoped it might challenge some of the assumptions and judgements that are still made about women - especially in politics - who don't have children.
Ms Sturgeon became the deputy first minister when Alex Salmond was elected in 2007
Ms Sturgeon also played a crucial role during the 2014 independence referendum campaign, when she often took the lead as the "Yes minister".
It was the failure of that campaign which led to her ascending to the very top of Scottish politics, with Mr Salmond stepping down in the wake of Scots voting No to independence by 55% to 45%.
This time, Ms Sturgeon was the only candidate in the leadership race - and she swept to power in rock star style, embarking on a stadium tour to announce herself as Scotland's first female first minister.
Momentum was behind the SNP, and the party delivered a historic landslide in the 2015 general election, winning 56 of the 59 seats in Scotland.
Ms Sturgeon followed that with another Holyrood win in 2016 - albeit short of the unprecedented majority the party had won under Mr Salmond in 2011. She won again in 2021.
In between those wins, she guided Scotland through the Covid pandemic, hosting daily briefings from the government's St Andrew's House headquarters.
During her years in power, Ms Sturgeon has driven through a host of policies, from a doubling of Scotland's free childcare allowance to the introduction of the baby box.
However others fell short - notably her promise to close the attainment gap between school pupils from better off and more deprived backgrounds, something she once famously made her number one priority.
In recent weeks she had been locked in a damaging row about gender reforms, with a dispute over transgender rapist Isla Bryson being initially housed in a women's prison.
The Scottish government had passed a bill to make it easier for people to change gender, and Ms Sturgeon had voiced an intention to go to court to defend that legislation from the UK government's move to block it.
The toddler Nicola Sturgeon would in her teenage years enter the political arena
However, her biggest disappointment as first minister was her failure to progress the issue which brought her into politics in the first place.
Ms Sturgeon pushed for a referendum on Scottish independence on several occasions - most notably in the wake of the Brexit vote in 2016 - but each time she ran into a wall of opposition from the UK government.
While she had to deal with five prime ministers - in David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak - none of them were willing to sign up to a second constitutional contest. Something she considered to be a democratic outrage.
An attempt to force the issue through the Supreme Court also foundered late last year, and Ms Sturgeon was planning a special SNP conference in March to decide what the next move would be.
That is part of the reason why her sudden resignation is such a surprise - without Ms Sturgeon, who will set the direction of the independence movement at such a pivotal movement?
The departure of a figure who has been at the very top of Scottish politics for so long leaves a lot of unanswered questions hanging.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-64648986
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news_uk-scotland-scotland-politics-64648986
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UK inflation: Price rises slow but remain close to 40-year high - BBC News
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2023-02-15
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UK inflation, a measure of the cost of living, fell to 10.1% in the year to January.
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Business
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Prices for olive oil, sugar and low-fat milk have surged with food costs continuing to fuel inflation in the UK.
Food inflation is at a 45-year high, with a supermarket boss warning that grocery prices will remain elevated this year.
Overall UK price inflation fell for the third month in a row to 10.1% in the year to January from 10.5% in December.
The biggest factors in the rate slowing were decreases in fuel prices and the cost of dining out.
To calculate inflation, which measures the increase in the price of something over time, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) keeps track of the prices of hundreds of everyday items.
If it falls, it does not mean the prices of goods are going down, it just means prices are rising more slowly.
Many analysts believe inflation will continue to fall, although it is still currently five times the Bank of England's target of 2%.
Grocery prices are one of the main drivers fuelling overall inflation, and were up 16.7% on the year to January.
Olive oil, sugar and low-fat milk prices have all increased by more than 40% in that time.
Matt Hood, managing director of Co-op Food, which has more than 2,500 UK stores, said prices continued to rise in January as costs for grocers did, making it "incredibly tough".
"Inflation is the thing that keeps us up at night," he told the BBC's Today programme.
"Believe it or not we as retailers are trying our hardest not to flow it all through to our customers."
Both food and energy bills have been rising following Russia's invasion of Ukraine almost a year ago, with supplies of both commodities being disrupted.
But in the case of olive oil, prices have been higher in recent months largely due to summer heatwaves hitting crops in Spain, a huge exporter of the product.
Kyle Holland, oils analyst at data firm Mintec, said production in Spain was down to 720,000 metric tonnes, from the usual 1.5 million.
"When there is not enough rain, [olive trees] cannot produce any olives. A lot of trees have not produced enough. It's a very steep decline," he said.
Inflation rose steeply last year. Before that, the last time it was over 10% was in February 1982.
And wages are not keeping up.
Pay, excluding bonuses, increased at an annual pace of 6.7% between October and December 2022. And when adjusted for inflation, regular pay fell by 2.5%.
Kelly Hill, a hairdressing apprentice in Stafford, moved back in with her parents to save money to buy her own home.
The 31-year-old said bills and the price of everything had gone up, and her mum and dad were feeling the pinch too.
"When they've gone food shopping they've noticed how much prices have just absolutely gone right through the roof."
She said her mum used to shop at Tesco but has been getting some things from Aldi.
"So as a family we're looking at what we can cut back on food wise."
Grant Fitzner, chief economist for the ONS, said there were signs costs facing businesses were "rising more slowly", but warned "business prices remain high overall".
He said air and coach travel prices had dropped back after December's "steep rise".
"Petrol prices continue to fall and there was a dip in restaurant, cafe and takeaway prices," he added.
But the falls in those prices were offset by rising prices of alcohol and tobacco.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt also warned the "fight is far from over" on rising prices and said it was why the government "must stick to the plan to halve inflation this year, reduce debt and grow the economy".
Although the government has pledged to halve inflation, many economists have predicted it will happen naturally, as the cost of energy falls.
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said families would feel no better off following 13 years of Conservative government and repeated Labour's call for higher taxes on oil and gas companies to ease bills when energy prices go up in April.
The biggest factor driving down inflation is petrol - now only 2p a litre more than it cost before Russia invaded Ukraine.
It's because inflation compares prices last month with a year before that the rate of inflation is almost certain to slow further in the coming months.
Fuel prices were already rising this time last year, but it was the war that blasted the price of petrol and wholesale gas into the stratosphere.
Two months from now we'll be comparing prices in March 2023 with March 2022, after the fuel price had jumped, and therefore the difference - the rate of inflation - will be smaller. That will happen regardless of what the government or the Bank of England does.
Crucially, the Bank of England's big anxiety, that global inflationary pressure is becoming embedded domestically, will have been soothed. That undermines the argument for raising interest rates faster.
Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said the fall in inflation gave the Bank of England the flexibility to keep its interest rate at 4%, rather than increase it again.
The Bank raised rates for the tenth time in a row at the start of the month in a bid to curb rising prices.
Raising interest rates is seen as a way to control inflation by making it more expensive to borrow money and thus encouraging people to borrow less and spend less, and save more.
But it is a balancing act as the Bank does not want to slow the economy too much with predictions that the UK could enter a recession - a period of economic decline - this year.
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Shamima Begum bid to regain UK citizenship rejected - BBC News
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2023-02-23
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The 23-year-old loses her appeal on national security grounds, which means she cannot return to the UK.
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UK
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Ms Begum was 15 when she joined the self-styled Islamic State group in 2015
Shamima Begum has lost her challenge over the decision to deprive her of British citizenship despite a "credible" case she was trafficked.
Mr Justice Jay told the semi-secret court dealing with her case that her appeal had been fully dismissed.
The ruling means the 23-year-old remains barred from returning to the UK and stuck in a camp in northern Syria.
Her legal team said the case was "nowhere near over" and the decision will be challenged.
Ms Begum was 15 years old when she travelled to join the self-styled Islamic State group in 2015.
She went on to have three children, all of whom have died, after marrying a fighter with the group.
In 2019, the then home secretary Sajid Javid stripped her of her British citizenship, preventing her coming home, and leaving her detained as an IS supporter in a camp.
The Special Immigration Appeals Commission has ruled that decision, taken after ministers received national security advice about Ms Begum's threat to the UK, had been lawful - even though her lawyers had presented strong arguments she was a victim.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: "I'm ashamed of myself" - Shamima Begum (speaking in June 2022)
Listen to The Shamima Begum Story investigative podcast on BBC Sounds and watch the film on BBC iPlayer.
During the appeal hearing last November, Ms Begum's lawyers argued the decision had been unlawful because the home secretary had failed to consider whether she had been a victim of child trafficking - in effect arguing she had been groomed and tricked into joining the fighters, along with school friends Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase in February 2015.
Ms Sultana was reportedly killed in a bombing raid in 2016, but the fate of Amira Abase is unknown.
As all UK consular services are suspended in Syria, it is extremely difficult for the government to confirm the whereabouts of the British nationals.
That was the first time judges had to consider whether the state's obligations to combat trafficking and abuse of children should have any influence over national security decisions.
Mr Justice Jay revealed the complexity of the case had caused the panel of three "great concern and difficulty".
"The commission concluded that there was a credible suspicion that Ms Begum had been trafficked to Syria," he said in his summary.
"The motive for bringing her to Syria was sexual exploitation to which, as a child, she could not give a valid consent.
"The commission also concluded that there were arguable breaches of duty on the part of various state bodies in permitting Ms Begum to leave the country as she did and eventually cross the border from Turkey into Syria."
But despite those concerns, the judge said even if Ms Begum had been trafficked, that did not trump the home secretary's legal duty to make a national security decision to strip her of her British nationality.
"There is some merit in the argument that those advising the secretary of state see this as a black and white issue, when many would say that there are shades of grey," said the judge in his summary.
But despite those questions over how the case had been handled, the commission concluded the home secretary had still acted within his powers - even if there could have been a different outcome.
"If asked to evaluate all the circumstances of Ms Begum's case, reasonable people with knowledge of all the relevant evidence will differ, in particular in relation to the issue of the extent to which her travel to Syria was voluntary and the weight to be given to that factor in the context of all others," said the judge.
"Likewise, reasonable people will differ as to the threat she posed in February 2019 to the national security of the United Kingdom, and as to how that threat should be balanced against all countervailing considerations.
"However, under our constitutional settlement these sensitive issues are for the secretary of state to evaluate and not for the commission."
This isn't the first time a legal challenge by Ms Begum's lawyers has failed. In February 2020 the same commission rejected her team's argument that she had been made "de facto stateless" when her citizenship was removed.
It agreed with the Home Office's position that since she was technically entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship, it wasn't legally obliged to allow her to keep her UK rights.
In February 2021, the Supreme Court said she could not return to the UK to fight her case on security grounds.
Unlike the UK, other western countries like France, Germany and Australia have allowed an increasing number of former IS supporters back.
All US citizens who travelled to Syria to join the self-styled Islamic State group have been allowed to return to the country, barrister Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, told the BBC.
He said the pace of repatriations "seems to be increasing", with Germany allowing 100 citizens back, France allowing more than 100, and Sweden also allowing citizens to return in double figures.
He told BBC News: "Little by little, countries are beginning to change their posture from [a] strategic distance to try and manage their return.
"There is a bit of a risk that the UK could become a bit of an outlier."
In a statement, Ms Begum's lawyers Gareth Pierce and Daniel Furner called on Suella Braverman, the current home secretary, to look at the case again "in light of the commission's troubling findings".
They said the decision removes protections for British child trafficking victims in cases where national security is involved and leaves their client "in unlawful, arbitrary and indefinite detention without trial in a Syrian camp".
Her legal team said "every possible avenue to challenge this decision will be urgently pursued" without providing further details of any potential appeal.
A spokesman for the Home Office said it was "pleased" with the outcome, adding: "The government's priority remains maintaining the safety and security of the UK and we will robustly defend any decision made in doing so."
Mr Javid also welcomed the ruling. Ministers must have the "power to prevent anyone entering our country who is assessed to pose a threat to it", he said.
Human rights groups and campaigners have criticised the ruling and the government's position, maintaining that Ms Begum was a child exploitation victim.
Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK's refugee and migrant rights director, said: "The home secretary shouldn't be in the business of exiling British citizens."
Conservative MP David Davis, who has repeatedly challenged the government on civil liberties issues, described the situation as a "shameful abdication of responsibility and must be remedied".
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Ukraine war: King says Ukraine has 'suffered unimaginably' - BBC News
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2023-02-23
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Charles praises the "remarkable courage" of Ukrainians on the anniversary of the Russian invasion.
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UK
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Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murthy were joined by Ukraine's ambassador to the UK for the minute's silence outside 10 Downing Street
The Ukrainian people have "suffered unimaginably", King Charles has said in a message marking the first anniversary of Russia's invasion.
He also praised their "remarkable courage and resilience" after thousands have been killed and injured.
A minute's silence was held across the UK at 11:00 GMT.
Rishi Sunak later urged allies at a G7 meeting to provide Ukraine with long-term military and security assurances to "send a strong message" to Russia.
Ukrainian troops who are training in the UK joined the prime minister, his wife Akshata Murthy, and Kyiv's ambassador to Britain, Vadym Prystaiko, for the minute's silence observed outside No 10 Downing Street.
The Ukrainian national anthem was sung to mark the end of the silence.
The King visited a training site for Ukrainian military recruits in Wiltshire
In his message, the King said "the people of Ukraine have suffered unimaginably from an unprovoked full-scale attack on their nation. They have shown truly remarkable courage and resilience in the face of such human tragedy".
He said: "The world has watched in horror at all the unnecessary suffering inflicted upon Ukrainians, many of whom I have had the great pleasure of meeting."
The King, who met Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky at Buckingham Palace this month, added: "I can only hope the outpouring of solidarity from across the globe may bring not only practical aid, but also strength from the knowledge that, together, we stand united."
At a vigil on Thursday evening, a crowd listened to an emotional reading of the Ukrainian poem Take Only What Is Most Important by actress Dame Helen Mirren - who was visibly moved to tears. And Defence Secretary Ben Wallace paid tribute to Ukrainian soldiers as the "bravest of the brave".
The conflict, which began when Russia invaded on 24 February 2022, has seen at least 100,000 of each side's soldiers killed or injured, according to the US military.
Thousands of civilians have also died, with more than 13 million people made refugees or displaced within Ukraine.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: One year of war in Ukraine in 87 seconds
Rita and her four children were among those who fled in the early stages of the conflict and are now living in the UK with her British partner, Andy.
She told BBC Two's Newsnight programme her heart was "aching" from seeing how parts of Ukraine had changed after 12 months of conflict.
"The country is in pain," she said. "I know how my country is and how it can be, I know how beautiful it is. Now it's different [but] it can come back to that beautiful place."
Rita has been back to Ukraine since settling in the UK
The Archbishop of Canterbury called for peace between Russia and Ukraine as he reflected on the anniversary.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Thought of the Day segment, Justin Welby said: "There must be a future with a just and stable peace - a free and secure Ukraine - and the beginning of a generation's long process of healing and reconciliation."
The British ambassador to Ukraine, Dame Melinda Simmons, has recalled how the outbreak of the war last February was "such a traumatic time".
Dame Melinda told BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour programme her role became different and stopped being a job and became "a life because war isn't just a five-day thing".
People gathered next to the St Volodymyr Statue in Holland Park, London to mark the day
Meanwhile, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has announced fresh export bans on goods that could be used by the Russian military.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said the UK has ramped up sanctions on more products, including aircraft parts, radio equipment and electronic components.
Bosses at Russia's two largest defence companies and four banks will also face sanctions.
However, Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Ukraine's allies still could do more.
At a press conference on Friday, he said that the wave of sanctions imposed by Western nations "do not seem to have dented the Kremlin's ability or desire to wage war".
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
During a recent tour of Europe, President Zelensky increased his calls for Western nations to supply modern fighter jets.
The UK is to start training Ukrainian forces to fly Nato-standard aircraft. But like other Western nations, it has so far not supplied jets, but said it remains a long-term option.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the UK would be "very happy" to supply fighter jets to eastern European allies so they could release their Soviet-era planes to Ukraine. He said they were already being used by Kyiv and it would be a faster way of boosting Ukraine defences than suppling British Typhoon jets.
Rishi Sunak hosted Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky during his trip to London earlier this month
During a virtual meeting of leaders from the G7 group of advanced economies, Mr Sunak said that an acceleration in support for Ukraine is "what it will take to shift Putin's mindset".
He made the argument for supplying Ukraine with "longer-range weapons" to disrupt Russia's ability to target Ukraine's infrastructure, something to which he committed the UK earlier this month.
He said: "Instead of an incremental approach, we need to move faster on artillery, armour, and air defence."
Other senior UK politicians have sent messages to Ukraine on the anniversary of the war:
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Strikes: Schools, colleges and trains in Wales hit - BBC News
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2023-02-01
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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A guide to where industrial action is happening and what it could mean for you.
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Wales politics
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Protesters outside the UK government building in central Cardiff
Wales and the rest of the UK have seen waves of strikes, but Wednesday will be a particularly big day for disruption.
Schools, colleges, trains and government services will all be hit.
Unions were urged to take action on 1 February to coincide with the Trade Union Congress's "protect the right to strike" day, in protest against plans aimed at enforcing minimum service levels for some sectors during strikes.
Here is a roundup of what is happening where and how it might affect you.
A picket line was set up in support of teachers at Llanishen High School in Cardiff during the first day of teacher strikes
Thousands of pupils have been told to stay home on Wednesday, with many schools closing and some classes in those that stay open not happening.
It is due to action by the National Education Union (NEU) across state schools in Wales and England, the first of four planned strike days over pay by teachers and support staff.
The extent of the action will vary depending on how many NEU members are in your child's school and how many of them are striking - councils have urged people to check their websites for the latest information.
Teachers want an above-inflation rise of about 12%, which Welsh ministers say they cannot afford.
Non-striking staff could be asked to provide those online lessons to pupils at home, which might not be live and could be accessed by pupils in their own time.
Also on Wednesday, the National Association of Headteachers (NAHT) begins industrial action short of a strike, which includes only doing some tasks in core hours and refusing to cover striking staff.
"Enough is enough" read a sign outside Cardiff University during the first strike day by UCU members
Tens of thousands of staff in the Universities and College Union (UCU), including lecturers administrators, librarians and technicians are taking part in the first of 18 days of action in February and March.
Staff are striking at 62 universities, including Bangor, Cardiff, Swansea and University of Wales Trinity St David, over pay and working conditions as well as pensions.
At 83 institutions, including Cardiff Metropolitan University, the University of South Wales and Wrexham Glyndwr University, staff are walking out over pay and working conditions only.
Universities UK, representing 140 institutions, said some coursework deadlines had been extended and teaching rescheduled.
The union is asking for a salary rise worth either the RPI measure of inflation or 12% - whichever is higher - and also wants to end the use of zero hours and temporary contracts and tackle "excessive workloads" resulting in hours of "unpaid work".
The UCU said it was offered a pay deal worth between 4% and 5% in January.
The union wants changes to pensions that increased contributions and reduced future benefits to be reversed, saying losses will be "in the hundreds of thousands of pounds" for those beginning their careers.
The UCEA has warned any pay increase puts jobs at risk, and a pay award in August gave the lowest paid staff an increase of up to 9%, with a 3% rise for all others.
Universities UK said that without the changes in pension benefits employees would have had to pay much more in contributions.
Tye Holloway in Swansea says she sees both sides of the argument over striking rail workers
Drivers who are members of the Aslef union at 15 rail companies, including Avanti West Coast, Great Western Railway and CrossCountry, are striking on Wednesday and Friday.
Drivers were offered a 4% pay rise for two years in a row, but this was based on several changes to working practices.
The Rail Delivery Group (RDG), which represents train companies, said it was disappointing its "fair and affordable offer" was not put to the union's members.
The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, which also represents a few hundred train drivers, confirmed its members at 14 companies would also strike on the same dates in February.
The RDG expects just under a third of services to run but with "wide variations" across the network.
It says services may also be disrupted on the evenings before the strikes and the mornings after, because many trains will not be in the right depots
Travellers who have already bought tickets for cancelled, delayed or rescheduled services are entitled to a refund or change of ticket.
They can also use the ticket up to 7 February if their train was affected by either the 1 or 3 February strikes.
Train traveller Tye Holloway, 14, in Swansea, said she could see both sides of the issue.
"It's fair enough if they're not getting paid enough, it makes sense that they're striking because they deserve better wages for what they're doing but it's also quite frustrating not being able to get places that I want to go, when I need to," she said.
"I understand that for other people who need to get trains to get to work and things taking buses takes like hours, buses take so long. So trying to get a bus to places where you could get a train in 15 minutes, it'll take like two to three hours and that's really going to affect a lot of people."
A picket line in support of action for PCS union members in Cardiff
About 100,000 civil servants in the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) are also striking.
General secretary Mark Serwotka said it meant public services "from benefits to driving tests, from passports to driving licences, from ports to airports" would be affected.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) in Swansea, Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), National Library of Wales, Natural Resources Wales, the Land Registry and the Senedd will all be affected.
PCS has been calling for a 10% pay rise, improved pensions, more job security and no cuts to redundancy terms.
The DVSA said driving and motorcycle tests would be hit, but theory tests and MOTs for cars, vans and motorcycles are expected to carry on as usual.
The DVLA said its online services and contact centre would operate as normal.
In Cardiff Bay, Welsh Parliament business due to take place on Wednesday has been rescheduled, with the full meeting in the Senedd chamber in the afternoon cancelled.
The Senedd building will be open for visitors as usual, but the Pierhead will be closed.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-64416829
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NHS to use test that prevents babies going deaf - BBC News
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2023-02-09
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Commonly used antibiotics can seriously damage the hearing of some babies.
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Health
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A rapid test that can help preserve the hearing of newborn babies is set to be used by NHS hospitals.
For some babies, commonly used antibiotics can become toxic. The drugs damage sensory cells inside the ear leading to permanent hearing loss.
The test - which analyses babies' DNA - can quickly spot those who are vulnerable.
It means they can be given a different type of antibiotic and avoid having a lifetime of damaged hearing.
Gentamicin is the first-choice antibiotic if a newborn develops a serious bacterial infection. It is life-saving and safe for the majority of people.
However, it has a rare side effect. About 1,250 babies in England and Wales are born with a subtle change in their genetic code that allows the antibiotic to bind more strongly to the hair cells in their ears, where it becomes toxic.
These tiny hairs help convert sounds into the electrical signals that are understood by the brain. If they are damaged, it results in hearing loss.
The side effect is well known, but until now there was no test that could get the results fast enough. It would be dangerous to delay treatment, and alternative antibiotics are not used as they have their own side effects and because of concerns about antibiotic resistance.
The new genedrive kit analyses a sample taken from inside the baby's cheek. Tests at two neonatal intensive care units in Manchester and Liverpool showed it could spot who was susceptible to hearing loss in 26 minutes, and using it did not delay treatment.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) - which decides which drugs and technologies the NHS uses - has provisionally approved the test.
Mark Chapman, interim director of medical technology at NICE, said: "Hearing loss has a substantial impact on the quality of the life of the baby and their family.
"Having this test available to NHS staff can avoid the risk of hearing loss in babies with the variant who need treatment with antibiotics."
He also said the costs of treating hearing loss was "high". Fitting a pair of cochlear implants - which use a microphone to convert sounds to an electrical signal - costs about £65,000.
The NICE recommendations apply directly to England and Wales, but are often adopted more widely.
The test will be made available as part of an early assessment to consider how well it works in a range of hospitals, and to see what impact it has on antibiotic use, before it gets final approval.
Susan Daniels, chief executive of the National Deaf Children's Society, said: "It's very encouraging that more evidence will be gathered on this important development.
"I hope this additional evidence will support the argument for the rollout of technology which could play a pivotal role in preventing deafness in a small number of babies in the future."
• None Matching drugs to DNA is 'new era of medicine'
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Nicola Sturgeon, Jeremy Corbyn, NI Protocol: A week that changed UK politics? - BBC News
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2023-02-19
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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In three crucial ways, the landscape shifted - and the result could shape the next general election.
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UK Politics
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Half term in February. Kids bored at home. MPs away from Westminster. Not much is meant to happen, right?
Blink and you would have missed it, but these quiet winter days, according to one government minister, witnessed a "draw-the-line moment where a new chapter opens".
One veteran political campaigner reckons we have just lived through the week "that changes the next election".
Why? Well, in the same few days, Nicola Sturgeon quit. Keir Starmer told Jeremy Corbyn in plain terms that he couldn't run again as a Labour MP. And a Conservative Prime Minister edged close to resolving the tangle over the Northern Ireland Protocol, the last vestige of the long-running arguments over Brexit.
The first minister's presence in UK politics, Jeremy Corbyn's shadow over Keir Starmer's leadership and the Conservatives' fraught conversations over Northern Ireland have been fixtures of our politics for years.
The combined effect of removing those three factors could be immense. But, as ever in politics, beware pundits making grand assertions - so let's take each issue in turn.
Just a few weeks ago, Nicola Sturgeon told us she had "plenty in the tank". But after a huge controversy over gender rights that left the consummate professional struggling to get her words straight, that fuel ran dry.
The specific timing of her exit was a shock, but it has been clear for some time that the first minister felt she was edging towards the exit. That is why it was worth asking her how long she intended to serve when we sat down with her.
Her departure matters hugely. Many in the SNP felt "gutted", as one of her colleagues wrote.
But there was glee at the news elsewhere. One minister told me they "punched the air" when they heard.
For all her unrivalled success in elections, Nicola Sturgeon had become someone who divided the public, too. Just as there was a group of well-wishers outside her official residence in Edinburgh as she left, there was a different group who held a celebratory conga in Glasgow's George Square.
Now the political impact is being pored over. Labour sources are pointing already to polls that show them edging closer to the SNP. One insider calls it a "massive game-changer", which puts Labour closer to gaining a majority at the next general election.
It is not unreasonable to assume that without their formidable and seasoned leader, without a settled strategy on independence, the SNP will be an easier opponent.
It's also not daft for Conservatives to imagine that the SNP's push towards independence could be a lot easier to resist when its most formidable voice has left the stage. An independent Scotland without Nicola Sturgeon? Imagine Brexit without Boris Johnson - a very, very different campaign.
And when it comes to managing relationships between Holyrood and Westminster, with a highly experienced and wily politician out of the way there is perhaps less chance of the UK government ending up in knots.
But wise heads on the unionist and SNP sides caution at jumping to dramatic conclusions. The SNP's dominance in Scottish politics is profound.
The Scottish public is more or less evenly split on the question of becoming an independent country one day and that has been the case for years. Labour right now has a measly one Scottish MP in Westminster.
And while the SNP does not have an immediately obvious compelling successor with a massive presence, that is not to say that a real talent could not emerge. And don't forget, the Conservatives have for years played up Nicola Sturgeon as a political bogeywoman. That campaign trick could lose its power.
One minister told me: "The threat of Sturgeon is what kept us unionists together." With her exit, how will they respond?
There's no question overall that her departure has shifted the dial. But a shadow cabinet minister carefully says "it's an opportunity" rather than an assumption that the seats will automatically turn red again - Scotland was once Labour's heartland, but that was a very, very long time ago.
What has mattered, too, for the party's leadership this week was Keir Starmer making clear that Jeremy Corbyn will not stand again as a Labour MP. In a way, like Nicola Sturgeon's departure, this has been coming for a while, but the choosing of a moment is significant.
For Keir Starmer's team, it is another step on the road to show, with every sinew, that the party has changed since its calamitous defeat in 2019.
It has been a slow and painful process. There are very public tensions with the left wing of the party, not just because of Jeremy Corbyn's exclusion, but also because Keir Starmer has ditched some of the promises he made when he ran to be leader.
But as ever in politics, private fights inside political parties can be put to public use. Cynics might even suggest (surely not) sometimes they are picked on purpose.
Keir Starmer obviously feels strongly and genuinely that ridding the Labour Party of antisemitism was vital, that it was a shameful episode in the party's history, and the public verdict that the party had changed was essential. (You can read more about the latest report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission here.) He also obviously feels that it is impossible for Jeremy Corbyn to represent Labour again.
Mr Starmer's decision closes down the possibility that Jeremy Corbyn could be back on the party's benches again. (That doesn't mean, however, that he and his supporters still won't try to make it happen).
Crossing the former leader's name off the list can't make the issue completely disappear. One Labour insider said: "Starmer is working hard on this because it is still a problem - the fact that he is talking about Corbyn and making it a priority shows it is still an issue."
Nonetheless, the decision this week is an important symbol, as Keir Starmer moves his party on.
What about the prime minister's effort, then, to end a saga of many years and thousands of column inches? Is Rishi Sunak really on the verge of changing the landscape, too?
This weekend he is in what Number 10 believes could be the closing stages of tortuous negotiations with Brussels to make the Northern Ireland Protocol work - that's the special deal that was worked out as we left the EU to avoid having a hard border on the island of Ireland. To the horror of some unionists, it meant that Northern Ireland is treated differently to the rest of the UK. You can read more about this weekend's talks here.
There are the classic advance grumblings and warnings from the Brexiteer ranks of the Conservative Party, and the Northern Irish DUP, that if the deal isn't good enough, they won't back it, and ultimately the stalemate could just drag on.
But a deal seems much closer than it has at any previous point. With an agreement possible in the next couple of days, a vote has been pencilled in for Tuesday to approve the package. If it gets that far, Rishi Sunak just might be about to end an argument that plagued his party for years.
It's not that Tory backbenchers were ever particularly concerned about sending British sausages to Northern Ireland - it's that the row over the protocol became the totem for the bitter hangover of the Brexit years.
Downing Street is unlikely to be able to push a deal through without a political rumpus, alongside janglings of nerves that Boris Johnson could pile in too.
But if the deal gets done, and the prime minister gets it through Parliament, a Tory source says it would "show he's a serious guy who can get stuff done and he'll get credit for that".
One loyal minister suggests it would be a major win if Mr Sunak can "take on" the right of his party - the "difficult wing", they call them.
With legislation on small boats expected in the next couple of weeks too, the hope in loyal Conservative quarters is that slowly, carefully, the party will re-earn the right to be heard.
This is politics, though. It's also entirely possible that Rishi Sunak is about to provoke an almighty row - with the DUP furious, some of his backbenches cross too and his authority under pressure.
But this is not 2019 anymore - the potency of attacks from the most ardent Brexiteers has faded, not least because some of them are in Rishi Sunak's government, and some of the others are spending a lot of time in TV studios.
There are then, three really important ways in which our politics has been shifting.
The ideas that Scotland will suddenly stop arguing about the constitution, Labour's factions will cease fighting or the Tories won't wind each other up about Europe any more are crackers.
The notion, too, that somehow the outcome of the next election has just been decided is daft.
But this is a moment of transition - the fixings of much of the last few years of politics have come loose.
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Johnson NI intervention not entirely unhelpful - Mordaunt - BBC News
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2023-02-19
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The NI Protocol bill reminds the EU of the "bar" it must meet in Brexit talks with the UK, the Commons leader says.
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UK Politics
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Not unhelpful for Boris Johnson - or at least sources close to him - to stick his oar in the Brexit debate.
That was the verdict of Penny Mordaunt - leader of the House of Commons, and Johnson's companion on the Vote Leave red bus.
I’m not entirely sure that Rishi Sunak’s team will see it exactly the same way. There’s been trepidation, and an inevitability about the former PM and Brexit cheerleader getting involved in the arguments around new arrangements for Northern Ireland, after the protocol deal provoked such problems.
As the former chief whip Wendy Morton also on the show made clear this morning, Rishi Sunak faces a very tricky time indeed to get a new deal for Northern Ireland through the parliamentary party, even if he can agree something that has the backing of all parties in Belfast.
Mordaunt was careful to emphasise how an agreement simply couldn’t be done without the support and backing of the DUP in particular - the unionist party who are furious at how the existing protocol has created different rules for Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK.
There have been some whispers that there was a possibility of doing a deal, even without DUP support, but Mordaunt closed that idea down this morning.
There is a chance for Rishi Sunak to soothe the painful hangover from the Brexit talks in the next few days. But there’s no doubting there's a political headache in wait, even if the EU signs on the dotted line.
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news_live_uk-politics-64665383
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Tinder Swindler: Why I stood by my abusive ex - BBC News
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2023-02-19
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The ex-girlfriend of Tinder Swindler Simon Leviev says he emotionally abused her in their 18-month relationship.
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World
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When Netflix's documentary, the Tinder Swindler, came out in February 2022, Simon Leviev's girlfriend stood by him. Now she says she felt she had no choice, because she was under his emotional control.
A young blonde woman is sitting on the edge of a bed cradling her left foot with her left hand as she speaks into her phone. Some of her hair sticks to her face, which is wet from tears.
You see a cut on her heel. Her eyes are bloodshot and her face red, but her voice is clear as she gives the person on the other end of the phone line directions to the apartment. In front of her, an open and packed suitcase lies on the floor.
We are watching a video filmed on a phone from the night of 29 March 2022. The man filming the video raises his voice to say: "It's bullshit! Nothing's happened to her!"
The man is Simon Leviev, the convicted con artist and subject of the Netflix documentary, The Tinder Swindler. The woman is 23-year-old Israeli model Kate Konlin, who was then his girlfriend.
Leviev sent the video to the BBC with other videos and documents about their relationship.
"She lies and she lies," he wrote.
"Of course he'd call me a liar," Kate Konlin tells the BBC.
"He's called every woman who has spoken out against him a liar. He doesn't want me to tell my story of emotional abuse."
"Kate, he's too perfect," she recalls them gushing, "it's even a little scary."
Shimon Heyada Hayut (who legally changed his name to Simon Leviev), slipped into her Instagram DMs in 2020, and within weeks they were together.
"At first, our relationship was a love bomb," Ms Konlin tells the BBC. "He was obsessed with me."
Leviev accompanied her to modelling shoots and waited while she worked. He cleaned her home and sent her long and loving voicenotes.
It was intense but as a 23-year-old, it was what she thought love should be, she says.
But after a while, the fights started.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Kate Konlin: 'This is not the classic Tinder Swindler story about losing money'
Ms Konlin says that when he criticised her appearance, clothes, her weight and her skin (she experiences bouts of acne), she began to lose confidence. She wasn't sure what he would say next.
"I felt I was walking on eggshells," she says.
She saw her friends less and less during the 18 months they were together, and when she did they said she was no longer the lively, colourful and sociable person they had once known.
"They said I was 'grey'," she says, looking down at her hands.
After a few months, Leviev began to ask for money, borrowing thousands of dollars at a time, up to a total, Ms Konlin says, of $150,000. She was already an international model who had been on the cover of Vogue Japan, Grazia Italy and Wallpaper magazine in the UK. She was financially secure and she says he knew it.
Ms Konlin has sent the BBC more than a dozen of Leviev's voicenotes. He often shouts, and asks for loans saying that his own money is tied up in investments.
In one, he shouts as he explains why he cannot pay her back: "Kate, I'm a millionaire! And that's a fact. At the moment, I'm stuck. Understand? I'm stuck! Do you understand that in your screwed-up brain? That bird brain of yours. I'm stuck, Kate. I didn't steal from you. You gave it to me of your own free will. You lent it to me. I'm stuck, that's all."
Despite his convictions, Simon Leviev has thousands of followers on social media
The Tinder Swindler, which became Netflix's most-watched documentary in 90 countries when it was released in February 2022, alleged that Simon Leviev had conned women he met on the Tinder dating app out of about $10m. He denies the allegations.
Ms Konlin says she watched it while sitting next to him on the sofa.
"I knew it was all true," she says.
But she says she felt obliged to accept his version of events. According to her, it was a controlling relationship, and it was easy for him to persuade her to defend him publicly, for example on US news show Inside Edition.
"He told me, 'If you stick up for me, people will believe me, because you are a woman.'"
At the same time, her Instagram inbox filled with abuse sent by people who had seen shots of her at the end of the Tinder Swindler.
"People told me they wished that I would get cancer or be run over by a car, and that I deserved the worst of everything because I was in a relationship with him," Ms Konlin says.
The arguments between the couple intensified and on 29 March everything came to a head.
"I said, 'That's it, I'm leaving. I can't take it any more.' I started packing my stuff," she says.
Ms Konlin says the argument turned physical. She says he pushed her and she cut her foot on a step with a rough edge.
"I was bleeding. I felt dead. I wanted to kill myself," she says.
This brought the fight to a halt. It was then that Leviev filmed Ms Konlin as she called an ambulance, and shouted out that nothing had happened to her.
After going to hospital, she filed a complaint against Leviev with the police.
Ms Konlin says her confidence was undermined by Leviev's criticisms
When we asked Leviev to respond, he sent us nine emails within 45 minutes, and two more direct messages on the video-sharing app, Cameo, in the days that followed.
There were many screenshots of WhatsApp messages and a video which shows Ms Konlin shouting and grabbing him.
Leviev says he has never physically harmed any woman.
Janey Starling, a campaigner against domestic abuse, says the picture Ms Konlin paints of her relationship with Leviev follows a familiar pattern.
"Coercive control is something that happens on a daily basis and is very mundane. It's very small. It flies under the radar," she says.
"A lot of abusive men have never been physically violent to their partners… but they have been intensely controlling, intensely critical, belittling, and making threats.
"It's a bit of a red herring to look for physical violence as the ultimate determination of whether an abusive relationship is abusive."
We put to Leviev several allegations Ms Konlin made about his behaviour, including that he had coercively controlled her, and he said she was lying.
Despite being a convicted con artist, Leviev has thousands of followers on social media. He continues to post videos of himself driving expensive cars, and spending time with beautiful women. In some videos people ask for photographs with him, as if he were a celebrity. He charges £82 ($100) for a personalised video message and £165 for a call.
"We are seeing a glamorisation of a hyper-masculine anti-woman mindset and lifestyle, and it is being peddled to the most susceptible, most impressionable people, especially young men in their pre-teen years," says Jessica Reaves, editorial director of the ADL's Center on Extremism.
"It's incredibly dangerous because what you're saying is, 'You can have this lifestyle too and also, by the way, part and parcel of this is dehumanising, or generally hating women'."
We asked Leviev if he accepted this description of his posts on social media and he didn't respond.
Today, Ms Konlin laughs that she is perhaps one of the only models in the world who is happy to have gained weight - she says she was underweight from stress during her time with Leviev.
After almost a year without offers of work following the release of The Tinder Swindler, her modelling career has taken off again. She now wants to tell young women what an unhappy and controlling relationship can look like from the inside.
"If a woman who is in the same situation sees what I experienced and how I got out, and that today I am stronger and more beautiful than when I was with him, she will hopefully see that she can also leave."
If you have been affected by issues in this story, you can find sources of support on the BBC Action Line
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Boris Johnson NI intervention not entirely unhelpful, says Mordaunt - BBC News
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2023-02-19
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The former PM has urged Rishi Sunak not to drop the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which he introduced.
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UK Politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Mordaunt says Johnson's Brexit intervention not entirely unhelpful
An intervention by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson on post-Brexit trading arrangements for Northern Ireland is not "entirely unhelpful", Commons leader Penny Mordaunt has said.
He has urged Rishi Sunak not to abandon legislation that would give the government powers to scrap parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Ms Mordaunt told the BBC the bill had helped persuade the EU to negotiate.
She also said any deal must work for all communities in Northern Ireland.
The protocol came into effect in 2021 and aims to ensure free movement of goods across the Irish land border by conducting checks between Northern Ireland and Great Britain instead.
However, unionist parties, who support Northern Ireland being part of the UK, oppose the protocol and argue that placing an effective border across the Irish Sea undermines Northern Ireland's place within the UK.
Negotiations between the UK and the European Union to try to resolve issues with the protocol have been going on for more than a year but sources have suggested a deal could be sealed next week.
The momentum suggested a new agreement was very close but there is now unlikely to be anything concrete until the middle of the week at the earliest.
On Saturday, a source close to Mr Johnson said he believed it would be "a great mistake" to drop the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which many Conservatives see as an important bargaining chip for the UK to gain concessions from the EU.
Ms Mordaunt also suggested the bill had aided negotiations with the bloc.
There has been trepidation and a sense of inevitability about the former PM and Brexit cheerleader getting involved in the arguments around new arrangements for Northern Ireland - and Mr Sunak's team may not see his intervention in the same light as Ms Mordaunt.
Ms Mordaunt, who also campaigned to leave the EU during the 2016 referendum, told the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme: "I think the prime minister would give credit to his predecessors for enabling us to get this far.
"We have the bill... and in part it is because of that that we are now able to have these negotiations and the EU is talking about things that previously it said it wouldn't talk about."
She added: "It's a reminder to the EU the bar that they have to get over. But ultimately it's not really about what Boris Johnson or any members of the House of Commons think about a deal. It's what the people of Northern Ireland think about the deal."
The bill, which was first introduced by Boris Johnson, is currently paused in Parliament while the UK and EU try to hammer out a new agreement.
The BBC understands the EU will not move ahead with a deal unless there is a commitment by the UK to drop the Protocol Bill.
A senior government official has said if issues with the protocol arrangements can be resolved then there will be no need for the bill to go further in Parliament.
Many unionists oppose the protocol but a majority of Stormont politicians support it in some form
Former Northern Ireland Secretary and Labour peer Lord Mandelson told Sky News Mr Johnson was trying to "wreck" the protocol, which he agreed as part of the 2019 Brexit withdrawal agreement, to undermine the prime minister.
Former Conservative Chancellor George Osborne, who was a leading figure in the campaign to remain in the EU, also said Mr Johnson was "causing trouble" because he was "interested in becoming prime minister again".
"He wants to bring down Rishi Sunak and he will use any instrument to do it," he told Channel 4's The Andrew Neil Show.
Meanwhile, Ms Mordaunt said any deal on the protocol had to work for all communities in Northern Ireland and pass the seven tests set out by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
The DUP is preventing a government from being formed in Northern Ireland in protest over the protocol and says its tests must be met for it to end its boycott of Stormont.
There had been some whispers that there was a possibility of doing a deal, even without the support of the DUP, but Ms Mordaunt closed down that idea, saying: "If this deal does not pass those tests, it won't work, it's as simple as that."
She added: "What my colleagues might say and what they might do in a hypothetical vote, that is irrelevant unless it works for the whole of Northern Ireland."
Following the latest round of talks on Saturday, Mr Sunak warned an agreement was "by no means done" and said there were still "challenges to work through".
Labour has said it would support the government in a Commons vote on a protocol deal.
However, the prime minister could still face a rebellion by Eurosceptic Tory backbenchers.
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Ukraine war: Blinken says China might give weapons to Russia - BBC News
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2023-02-19
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The US said China was considering "lethal support" for Russia in Ukraine - a claim denied by Beijing.
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US & Canada
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The US says China is considering supplying weapons and ammunition to Russia for the Ukraine war - a claim strongly denied by Beijing.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Chinese firms were already providing "non-lethal support" to Russia and new information suggested Beijing could provide "lethal support".
Such an escalation would mean "serious consequences" for China, he warned.
Beijing said the claims were false and accused Washington of spreading lies.
"We do not accept the United States' finger-pointing on China-Russia relations, let alone coercion and pressure," China's foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular press conference on Monday, when asked about the allegations.
China has also denied reports that Moscow has requested military equipment.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and is yet to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine - but he has sought to remain neutral in the conflict and has called for peace.
Mr Blinken was speaking to CBS News after he met China's top diplomat, Wang Yi, on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference.
He said that during the meeting he expressed "deep concerns" about the "possibility that China will provide lethal material support to Russia".
"To date, we have seen Chinese companies... provide non-lethal support to Russia for use in Ukraine. The concern that we have now is based on information we have that they're considering providing lethal support," he said.
He did not elaborate on what information the US had received about China's potential plans. When pressed on what the US believed China might give to Russia, he said it would be primarily weapons as well as ammunition.
The US has sanctioned a Chinese company for allegedly providing satellite imagery of Ukraine to the mercenary Wagner Group, which supplies Russia with thousands of fighters.
Mr Blinken told CBS that "of course, in China, there's really no distinction between private companies and the state".
If China provided Russia with weapons, that would cause a "serious problem for us and in our relationship", he added.
Relations between Washington and Beijing were already poor after the US shot down an alleged Chinese spy balloon in early February. Both sides exchanged angry words, but equally both sides appeared embarrassed by the incident and seemed ready to move on.
But if China were to deliver weapons to help Russian forces in Ukraine, then US-Chinese relations would deteriorate much more severely.
It would be the most "catastrophic" thing that could happen to the relationship between the two giants, said top Republican senator Lindsay Graham.
"It would be like buying a ticket on the Titanic after you saw the movie," he told ABC News. "Don't do this."
Mr Blinken's warning seems to be clearly designed to deter China from doing that.
Mr Blinken also said the US was worried about China helping Russia evade Western sanctions designed to cripple Russia's economy. China's trade with Russia has been growing, and it is one of the biggest markets for Russian oil, gas, and coal.
Nato members, including the US, are sending a variety of weapons, ammunition and equipment to Ukraine, including tanks. They have stopped short of sending fighter jets, and Mr Blinken would not be drawn on whether the US would help other countries supply jets.
"We've been very clear that we shouldn't fixate or focus on any particular weapons system," he said.
He did, however, say that the West must ensure Ukraine had what it needed for a potential counter offensive against Russia "in the months ahead". Russia is currently trying to advance in eastern regions of Ukraine, where some of the fiercest fighting of the war has taken place.
The top US diplomat's remarks come ahead of a scheduled visit by Mr Wang to Moscow, as part of the Chinese foreign policy chief's tour of Europe.
Mr Wang said in Munich on Saturday that China had "neither stood by idly nor thrown fuel on the fire" for the Ukraine war, Reuters reported.
China would publish a document that laid out its position on settling the conflict, Mr Wang said. The document would state that the territorial integrity of all countries must be respected, he said.
"I suggest that everybody starts to think calmly, especially friends in Europe, about what kind of efforts we can make to stop this war," Mr Wang said.
He added that there were "some forces that seemingly don't want negotiations to succeed, or for the war to end soon", but did not say who he meant.
The Chinese President, Mr Xi, is scheduled to deliver a "peace speech" on the anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Friday, 24 February, according to Italy's foreign minister Antonio Tajani.
Mr Tajani told Italian radio that Mr Xi's speech would call for peace without condemning Russia, Reuters reported.
During their meeting, Mr Blinken and Mr Wang also exchanged strong words on the deepening row over an alleged Chinese spy balloon that was shot down over the US.
Mr Blinken said during the meeting that the US would not "stand for any violation of our sovereignty" and said "this irresponsible act must never again occur".
Mr Blinken told CBS that other nations were concerned about what he called China's "surveillance balloon program" across five continents.
Mr Wang, meanwhile, called the episode a "political farce manufactured by the US" and accused them of "using all means to block and suppress China". China has denied sending a spy balloon.
And on Sunday morning, Beijing warned that the US would "bear all the consequences" if it escalated the argument over the balloon. China would "follow through to the end" in the event "the US insists on taking advantage of the issue", it said in a foreign ministry statement reported by Reuters.
The full interview with CBS - the BBC's US broadcasting partner - is due to air on Sunday.
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Ukraine war: Russia must be defeated but not crushed, Macron says - BBC News
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2023-02-19
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The French president reaffirms support for Kyiv but hints that talks with Russia are a final goal.
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In a speech to world leaders, Emmanuel Macron did not shy away from mentioning Russia-Ukraine peace talks as a final goal
French President Emmanuel Macron has said he does not want to see Russia crushed by a defeat in Ukraine.
Speaking to French media, Mr Macron urged Western nations to increase military support for Kyiv and said he was prepared for a protracted war.
"I want Russia to be defeated in Ukraine, and I want Ukraine to be able to defend its position," he said.
But he hit out against those who he said wanted to extend the war to Russia itself in a bid to "crush" the nation.
The comments came as world leaders gathered at the Munich Security Conference, which saw promises to speed up the supply of weapons to Kyiv and impose tougher sanctions on Moscow.
"I do not think, as some people do, that we must aim for a total defeat of Russia, attacking Russia on its own soil," Mr Macron told the paper Le Journal du Dimanche.
"Those observers want to, above all else, crush Russia. That has never been the position of France and it will never be our position."
Addressing the conference in Munich on Friday, Mr Macron insisted that now was not the time for dialogue with Moscow.
But he did not shy away from mentioning peace talks as a final goal.
The president suggested that Ukrainian military efforts, supported by allies, were the only way to "bring Russia back to the table and build a lasting peace".
He also dismissed the prospect of regime change in Russia, describing similar efforts around the world as a "total failure".
Despite Mr Macron's comments, negotiations are a faraway prospect for Ukraine's leaders.
On Friday, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba welcomed the decision to not invite Moscow to the Munich conference.
Russian leaders should not be invited to the table as long as the "terrorist state kills, as long as it uses bombs, missiles and tanks as an argument for international politics", he said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has ruled out immediate talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, insisting there was "no trust" between the parties. In an interview with the BBC earlier this week, he also dismissed the idea of giving up territory to strike a peace deal with Moscow.
Mr Macron has previously been criticised by some Nato allies for sending what they believe are mixed messages on Ukraine.
Last June, he was condemned by Mr Kuleba for saying it was vital that Russia was not "humiliated over its invasion".
Mr Kuleba at the time responded that Russia - which was "humiliating itself" - needed to be put in its place.
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Rishi Sunak missing from NHS strike talks, says union boss - BBC News
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2023-02-06
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Unite's leader says the PM should intervene, ahead of the biggest week of walkouts in NHS history.
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UK Politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. We are not in talks with government over pay - Unite boss
The leader of a union representing striking ambulance workers has called on Rishi Sunak to intervene in the NHS pay dispute.
On the eve of the biggest week of strikes in NHS history, Unite's Sharon Graham said: "Where is Rishi Sunak, why is he not at the negotiating table?"
It came after the head of a nurses' union urged the PM to offer a new deal to avert nursing strikes in England.
The government insists its £1,400 rise for NHS workers this year is fair.
But Unite and other health unions say the increase - an average rise of 4.8% - fails to reflect rising living costs, and needs to be increased.
Health Secretary Stephen Barclay says he has held "constructive" talks with unions over pay for the next financial year, starting in April.
But speaking on BBC One's Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg, Ms Graham said Unite "are in no talks at any level whatsoever" with the government about NHS pay, accusing ministers of an "abdication of responsibility".
Calling on the prime minister to get personally involved in finding a solution, she said: "Instead of doing sort of press conferences about other things, come to the table and negotiate - roll your sleeves up and negotiate on the pay in the NHS."
Her call for Mr Sunak to intervene in the dispute over NHS pay in England follows a similar appeal from Pat Cullen, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing.
In a letter to the prime minister on Saturday, Ms Cullen wrote: "I am appealing directly to you for the first time: address this current impasse."
• University staff who are members of the University and College Union and Unison are on strike
• Union members at 150 universities have been taking part in industrial action Read more: Will my lecture be cancelled? There are currently no national strikes planned for this date There are currently no national strikes planned for this date There are currently no national strikes planned for this date There are currently no national strikes planned for this date There are currently no national strikes planned for this date There are currently no national strikes planned for this date There are currently no national strikes planned for this date There are currently no national strikes planned for this date There are currently no national strikes planned for this date There are currently no national strikes planned for this date There are currently no national strikes planned for this date
• More than 1,000 Passport Office workers are on strike in a dispute about jobs, pay and conditions
• Members of the Public and Commercial Services union have warned of delays to applications and the delivery of passports in the run-up to summer
• More than 1,000 Passport Office workers are on strike in a dispute about jobs, pay and conditions
• Members of the Public and Commercial Services union have warned of delays to applications and the delivery of passports in the run-up to summer
• More than 1,000 Passport Office workers are on strike in a dispute about jobs, pay and conditions
• Members of the Public and Commercial Services union have warned of delays to applications and the delivery of passports in the run-up to summer
• More than 1,000 Passport Office workers are on strike in a dispute about jobs, pay and conditions
• Members of the Public and Commercial Services union have warned of delays to applications and the delivery of passports in the run-up to summer
• More than 1,000 Passport Office workers are on strike in a dispute about jobs, pay and conditions
• Members of the Public and Commercial Services union have warned of delays to applications and the delivery of passports in the run-up to summer
• More than 1,000 Passport Office workers are on strike in a dispute about jobs, pay and conditions
• Members of the Public and Commercial Services union have warned of delays to applications and the delivery of passports in the run-up to summer There are currently no national strikes planned for this date
The RCN and several other health unions in Wales have suspended planned action next week after the Labour-run Welsh government offered NHS workers an extra 3% on top of the £1,400 for this year.
The RCN, along with the GMB union and the Royal College of Midwives (RCM), has also put strike action on hold in Scotland to allow further talks on the 2023 pay offer.
In her letter, Ms Cullen said the UK government was looking "increasingly isolated" by "refusing to reopen" talks over this year's pay deal in England.
Ambulance workers represented by Unite are still set to strike in Wales next week, after the union decided against joining others in suspending action.
But Ms Graham told Laura Kuenssberg she would be meeting with the Welsh health minister later, in a bid to find a deal.
She added that the Welsh government needed to "come back to the table" with an improved offer - but added the situation in Wales and Scotland was in "stark contrast" to the impasse in England.
Speaking on the same programme, Business Secretary Grant Shapps defended the government's approach to pay in England, adding that the £1,400 rise had been suggested by the NHS pay review body.
The government says it wants the body, made up of eight advisers, to recommend a pay award for next year in April.
However, the health department is yet to present its submission to the body - a key step in the process of drawing up a recommendation. The review body says it has evidence from the Treasury.
Health unions have said they won't formally submit evidence until the dispute over this year's pay is resolved, instead publishing a document setting out their argument for higher pay.
Monday will see combined industrial action in England, as members from the Royal College of Nursing will walk out alongside call handlers, paramedics and other ambulance staff - who are members of either the GMB and Unite unions.
The strike will affect non-life threatening calls only and people are advised to use the 999 service in an emergency.
Tuesday will see members of the RCN union go on strike again. The union represents roughly two-thirds of NHS nurses.
They are taking industrial action over pay, but life-preserving treatment must be provided, and all nurses in intensive and emergency care are expected to work.
NHS physiotherapists across England will go on strike on Thursday over pay and staffing, and the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) says 4,200 members are involved.
And on Friday, thousands of ambulance staff across five services in England - London, Yorkshire, South West, North East, and North West - are striking.
Have you had a medical appointment or operation cancelled due to the strikes? Share your experiences by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also get in touch in the following ways:
If you are reading this page and can't see the form you will need to visit the mobile version of the BBC website to submit your question or comment or you can email us at HaveYourSay@bbc.co.uk. Please include your name, age and location with any submission.
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Grant Shapps: Liz Truss's tax cuts were clearly the wrong approach - BBC News
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2023-02-06
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Grant Shapps, who briefly served in Liz Truss's cabinet, said inflation must fall before taxes are cut.
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UK
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Liz Truss' approach 'clearly' not right - Shapps
Liz Truss's radical tax-cutting plan was "clearly" not the right approach, according to Grant Shapps, who briefly served in her short-lived government.
In a return to the political fray, Ms Truss wrote in the Sunday Telegraph that her economic agenda was never given a "realistic chance".
Business Secretary Mr Shapps said he agreed with Ms Truss on wanting lower taxes - but inflation must fall first.
"You can't just go straight to those tax cuts," he said.
In her 4,000-word essay, Ms Truss stood by her plans to boost economic growth, arguing they were brought down by "the left-wing economic establishment".
But she acknowledged she was not "blameless" for the unravelling of the mini-budget.
They are the first public comments the former PM has made on her resignation in October of last year.
Ms Truss resigned after she and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng introduced a £45bn package of tax cuts - including a cut to the top rate of income tax - which panicked the markets and alienated Tory MPs.
Mr Shapps was asked on BBC One's Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg show whether Ms Truss's approach had been the right one.
"Clearly it wasn't," he said.
He admitted that the UK's tax burden was currently "very high", and said he agreed with Ms Truss that Conservatives must be "making the good arguments" that a lower-tax economy can be successful in the long term.
But before the government cuts tax, it must first halve inflation, get "growth into the economy" and get debt "under control", he said.
Grant Shapps was home secretary under Liz Truss for her final six days in office
He tried to avoid addressing Truss's criticism that the Conservative Party had failed, for years, to make the case for free-market economics with low taxes and low regulation.
Mr Shapps said he took the role of home secretary in the final days of Ms Truss's government out of a sense of "national duty", and that by that point "we'd seen the impact on the markets".
He replaced Suella Braverman, who resigned over two data breaches. Six weeks earlier, as Ms Truss entered Downing Street, she had fired Mr Shapps as transport secretary, a role he held under the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Ms Truss's brief time in power - 49 days - made her the shortest-serving prime minister in UK history.
In her essay, Ms Truss said that while her experience last autumn was "bruising for me personally", she believed that over the medium term her policies would have increased growth and therefore brought down debt.
She argued that the government was made a "scapegoat" for developments that had been brewing for some time.
"Frankly, we were also pushing water uphill. Large parts of the media and the wider public sphere had become unfamiliar with key arguments about tax and economic policy and over time sentiment had shifted leftward," she wrote.
She also said she had not appreciated the strength of the resistance she would face to her plans - including plans to abolish the 45p top rate of income tax.
"I assumed upon entering Downing Street that my mandate would be respected and accepted. How wrong I was."
Liz Truss resigned as prime minister in October 2022 and officially stepped down after a week-long contest to find her successor
Mr Kwarteng dropped the 45p income tax proposals 10 days after they were announced, telling the BBC it was "a massive distraction on what was a strong package".
Less than a fortnight later, Ms Truss sacked Mr Kwarteng, something she said she was "deeply disturbed by". She described Mr Kwarteng in her essay as "an original thinker and a great advocate for Conservative ideas" - but that it was clear the tax proposals could not survive.
With the benefit of hindsight, she would have acted differently during her premiership, she wrote - but she still backs her plans for growth.
Sir Jake Berry, who was Conservative party chairman under Ms Truss, said he agreed with her assessment of the problems facing the UK economy, but "not necessarily the cure".
Speaking on the Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg show, he added that Ms Truss had been wrong to say the Conservatives had failed to make the argument for lower taxes.
Meanwhile, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said Ms Truss's policies "made working people pay the price".
"The Conservatives crashed the economy, sank the pound, put pensions in peril and made working people pay the price through higher mortgages for years to come.
"After 13 years of low growth, squeezed wages and higher taxes under the Tories, only Labour offers the leadership and ideas to fix our economy and to get it growing."
While Ms Truss resigned as prime minister, she is still serving in parliament as the MP for South West Norfolk.
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Chris Mason: Sunak's backseat-driving former prime ministers - BBC News
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2023-02-06
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Rishi Sunak has a minibus full of predecessors who could end up as backseat drivers - with Liz Truss the latest to lurch towards the wheel.
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UK Politics
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Liz Truss beat Rishi Sunak in the first of last year's Conservative leadership contests, but now serves on the backbenches
There is always a risk for any prime minister that your predecessor ends up as a backseat driver.
The problem for Rishi Sunak is he has a minibus full of them behind him.
The final three are still in the House of Commons.
The latest to lurch their hands towards the minibus wheel - Liz Truss.
We have heard nothing from her in person since she left office.
Ms Truss spoke out for the first time this weekend since she was forced to resign as prime minister
Via a treatise in the Sunday Telegraph and the best part of an hour's conversation with the Spectator - two organs broadly sympathetic to her instincts - a defiant argument that amounts to "why I was right but I got the implementation wrong, and everyone else was against me".
And so, by implication, a critique of Mr Sunak, even though he wasn't mentioned at all in her article, and only fleetingly in her interview.
And all this, incidentally, after Boris Johnson was interviewed on TalkTV by Sunak sceptic and fellow Conservative MP Nadine Dorries on Friday night.
And before Sir John Major appears in front of MPs on Tuesday to talk about the Northern Ireland Protocol, one of the thorniest issues the prime minister faces.
What should we take from Ms Truss's argument?
The key thing is she holds to the view that her diagnosis of the UK's problems, as she sees them, is a lack of growth, and the underlying reason for this is an insufficiently Conservative approach to managing the economy - not least cutting tax.
Whatever you might think of that argument, it matters, because it illustrates in technicolour a discussion that burns away within the Conservative Party.
So, to Ms Truss in her own words in her Spectator interview.
Interesting, for we've heard nothing from her since she left office, until now.
There are moments of considerable understatement.
Things "didn't work out", she says.
There was "system resistance" she argues - the civil service and others, she claims, were sceptical about her approach.
She had, she acknowledges, "insufficient political support".
Again, an observation with a sprinkling of understatement.
There is at least some candour, too, about what she sees as her failings - "the communication wasn't good enough", and "I didn't have good enough infrastructure", a reference to the team assembled around her.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Liz Truss on whether or not she wants to be PM again
She wasn't questioned directly and bluntly on her tendency in both the Telegraph and the Spectator to blame plenty of other people while appearing to accept a limit to her personal responsibility.
Nor to apologise for causing a period of unprecedented political turmoil.
She accepts now that "I simply did not know about" what are called Liability Driven Investments - something at the core of the market turbulence that came along after her disastrous mini budget.
There is both an acknowledgement of ignorance but a delivery of blame - suggesting the Treasury or Bank of England should have warned her.
But her rival in the leadership race in the summer, the man who is now prime minister, had said over and over again her economic plans would be a disaster.
In an interview that was more intellectual than theatrical or particularly challenging, Liz Truss did, though, sketch out a fascinating argument about what she sees as the country's - and even the Conservative Party's - political instincts right now.
They are, she concludes, at odds with her own, and that helps explain why she failed.
She argues that, in the UK and elsewhere, there has been what she calls a "drift" towards "more socially democratic policies: higher taxes, higher spending, bigger government, relatively low interest rates and cheap money. There's no doubt that those of us on the side of politics who believe in smaller government and free markets have not been winning the argument."
Including, that is, to those in her own party.
Why might this be? The cuts since 2010? The massive government interventions during the pandemic? The state of public services?
Taxes and government spending are at generationally high levels, with neither the Conservatives or Labour promising to radically reduce this any time soon.
So perhaps, in that observation of political reality right now, Ms Truss is right.
But - fairly or otherwise - has her stint as prime minister, as short as it was calamitous, buried her political philosophy in a box marked "toxic, never reopen"?
Plenty of Conservatives think the blunt truth to that is yes, at least any time soon.
Others, who are more sympathetic, wonder if there are elements of her prospectus, around housebuilding and childcare for instance, where there may be hope of them being dug up and reincarnated.
Labour, privately, are delighted various former occupiers of No 10 are now occupying the airwaves too.
Meanwhile, the prime minister's official spokesman has said that Mr Sunak "will always listen to views of former prime ministers" and that it's "healthy to have a diverse debate".
Can you hear the gritted teeth from where you are too?
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64547349
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Ukraine war: King says Ukraine has 'suffered unimaginably' - BBC News
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2023-02-24
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Charles praises the "remarkable courage" of Ukrainians on the anniversary of the Russian invasion.
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UK
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Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murthy were joined by Ukraine's ambassador to the UK for the minute's silence outside 10 Downing Street
The Ukrainian people have "suffered unimaginably", King Charles has said in a message marking the first anniversary of Russia's invasion.
He also praised their "remarkable courage and resilience" after thousands have been killed and injured.
A minute's silence was held across the UK at 11:00 GMT.
Rishi Sunak later urged allies at a G7 meeting to provide Ukraine with long-term military and security assurances to "send a strong message" to Russia.
Ukrainian troops who are training in the UK joined the prime minister, his wife Akshata Murthy, and Kyiv's ambassador to Britain, Vadym Prystaiko, for the minute's silence observed outside No 10 Downing Street.
The Ukrainian national anthem was sung to mark the end of the silence.
The King visited a training site for Ukrainian military recruits in Wiltshire
In his message, the King said "the people of Ukraine have suffered unimaginably from an unprovoked full-scale attack on their nation. They have shown truly remarkable courage and resilience in the face of such human tragedy".
He said: "The world has watched in horror at all the unnecessary suffering inflicted upon Ukrainians, many of whom I have had the great pleasure of meeting."
The King, who met Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky at Buckingham Palace this month, added: "I can only hope the outpouring of solidarity from across the globe may bring not only practical aid, but also strength from the knowledge that, together, we stand united."
At a vigil on Thursday evening, a crowd listened to an emotional reading of the Ukrainian poem Take Only What Is Most Important by actress Dame Helen Mirren - who was visibly moved to tears. And Defence Secretary Ben Wallace paid tribute to Ukrainian soldiers as the "bravest of the brave".
The conflict, which began when Russia invaded on 24 February 2022, has seen at least 100,000 of each side's soldiers killed or injured, according to the US military.
Thousands of civilians have also died, with more than 13 million people made refugees or displaced within Ukraine.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: One year of war in Ukraine in 87 seconds
Rita and her four children were among those who fled in the early stages of the conflict and are now living in the UK with her British partner, Andy.
She told BBC Two's Newsnight programme her heart was "aching" from seeing how parts of Ukraine had changed after 12 months of conflict.
"The country is in pain," she said. "I know how my country is and how it can be, I know how beautiful it is. Now it's different [but] it can come back to that beautiful place."
Rita has been back to Ukraine since settling in the UK
The Archbishop of Canterbury called for peace between Russia and Ukraine as he reflected on the anniversary.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Thought of the Day segment, Justin Welby said: "There must be a future with a just and stable peace - a free and secure Ukraine - and the beginning of a generation's long process of healing and reconciliation."
The British ambassador to Ukraine, Dame Melinda Simmons, has recalled how the outbreak of the war last February was "such a traumatic time".
Dame Melinda told BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour programme her role became different and stopped being a job and became "a life because war isn't just a five-day thing".
People gathered next to the St Volodymyr Statue in Holland Park, London to mark the day
Meanwhile, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has announced fresh export bans on goods that could be used by the Russian military.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said the UK has ramped up sanctions on more products, including aircraft parts, radio equipment and electronic components.
Bosses at Russia's two largest defence companies and four banks will also face sanctions.
However, Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Ukraine's allies still could do more.
At a press conference on Friday, he said that the wave of sanctions imposed by Western nations "do not seem to have dented the Kremlin's ability or desire to wage war".
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
During a recent tour of Europe, President Zelensky increased his calls for Western nations to supply modern fighter jets.
The UK is to start training Ukrainian forces to fly Nato-standard aircraft. But like other Western nations, it has so far not supplied jets, but said it remains a long-term option.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the UK would be "very happy" to supply fighter jets to eastern European allies so they could release their Soviet-era planes to Ukraine. He said they were already being used by Kyiv and it would be a faster way of boosting Ukraine defences than suppling British Typhoon jets.
Rishi Sunak hosted Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky during his trip to London earlier this month
During a virtual meeting of leaders from the G7 group of advanced economies, Mr Sunak said that an acceleration in support for Ukraine is "what it will take to shift Putin's mindset".
He made the argument for supplying Ukraine with "longer-range weapons" to disrupt Russia's ability to target Ukraine's infrastructure, something to which he committed the UK earlier this month.
He said: "Instead of an incremental approach, we need to move faster on artillery, armour, and air defence."
Other senior UK politicians have sent messages to Ukraine on the anniversary of the war:
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Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption - BBC News
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2023-02-24
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Bosses of the messaging app fear the Online Safety Bill could force it to weaken its users' security.
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Technology
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The encrypted-messaging app Signal has said it would stop providing services in the UK if a new law undermined encryption.
If forced to weaken the privacy of its messaging system under the Online Safety Bill, the organisation "would absolutely, 100% walk" Signal president Meredith Whittaker told the BBC.
The government said its proposal was not "a ban on end-to-end encryption".
The bill, introduced by Boris Johnson, is currently going through Parliament.
Critics say companies could be required by Ofcom to scan messages on encrypted apps for child sexual abuse material or terrorism content under the new law.
This has worried firms whose business is enabling private, secure communication.
Element, a UK company whose customers include the Ministry of Defence, told the BBC the plan would cost it clients.
Previously, WhatsApp has told the BBC it would refuse to lower security for any government.
The government, and prominent child protection charities have long argued that encryption hinders efforts to combat online child abuse - which they say is a growing problem.
"It is important that technology companies make every effort to ensure that their platforms do not become a breeding ground for paedophiles," the Home Office said in a statement.
It added "The Online Safety Bill does not represent a ban on end-to-end encryption but makes clear that technological changes should not be implemented in a way that diminishes public safety - especially the safety of children online.
"It is not a choice between privacy or child safety - we can and we must have both."
Child protection charity the NSPCC said in reaction to Signal's announcement: "Tech companies should be required to disrupt the abuse that is occurring at record levels on their platforms, including in private messaging and end-to-end encrypted environments."
But the digital rights campaigners the Open Rights Group said it highlighted how the bill threatened to "undermine our right to communicate securely and privately".
But Ms Whittaker told the BBC it was "magical thinking" to believe we can have privacy "but only for the good guys".
She added: "Encryption is either protecting everyone or it is broken for everyone."
She said the Online Safety Bill "embodied" a variant of this magical thinking.
Signal has had over 100 million app downloads on the Google store alone.
It uses end-to-end encryption, a system where messages are scrambled so that even the company operating the service cannot read them.
Operated by a Californian based not-for-profit organisation, the app's users include journalists, activists and politicians.
WhatsApp also uses end-to-end encryption, as does Apple's iMessage system and optionally Facebook and Telegram.
Apple had proposed a system where messages sent from phones and other devices would be scanned for child abuse images before being encrypted but abandoned the plans following a backlash.
Called client-side scanning, some have said this is the approach that tech firms may end up having to use - but critics argue it effectively undermines the point of encryption.
It would in effect turn everyone's phone into a "mass surveillance device that phones home to tech corporations and governments and private entities", Ms Whittaker said.
Ms Whittaker said "back doors" to enable the scanning of private messages would be exploited by "malignant state actors" and "create a way for criminals to access these systems".
Asked if the Online Safety Bill could jeopardise their ability to offer a service in the UK, she told the BBC: "It could, and we would absolutely 100% walk rather than ever undermine the trust that people place in us to provide a truly private means of communication.
"We have never weakened our privacy promises, and we never would."
Matthew Hodgson chief executive of Element, a British secure communications company, said the threat of mandated scanning alone would cost him clients.
He argued that customers would assume any secure communication product that came out of the UK would "necessarily have to have backdoors in order to allow for illegal content to be scanned".
It could also result in "a very surreal situation" where a government bill might undermine security guarantees given to customers at the MoD and other sensitive areas of government, he added.
He also said the firm might have to cease offering some services.
Ms Whittaker said: "There's no-one who doesn't want to protect children," adding: "Some of the stories that are invoked are harrowing."
When asked how she would respond to arguments that encryption protects abusers, Ms Whittaker said she believed that most abuse took place in the family and in the community - where she argued the focus of efforts to stop it should be.
She pointed to a paper by Professor Ross Anderson, which argued for better funding of services working in child protection and warned that "the idea that complex social problems are amenable to cheap technical solutions is the siren song of the software salesman".
• None WhatsApp: We won't lower security for any government
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What is Nicola Sturgeon's report card? - BBC News
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2023-02-16
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As her time in Scottish politics comes to an end, BBC Scotland correspondents look at her record.
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Scotland
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Nicola Sturgeon often said that education was a top priority for her
Nicola Sturgeon has been Scotland's first minister for more than eight years, the longest anyone has stayed in the post.
As her time at the top of Scottish politics comes to an end, BBC Scotland correspondents look at how she has done in their area.
Nicola Sturgeon became first minister in the wake of the failed independence campaign in 2014, stepping in after Alex Salmond's resignation.
Her tenure will be remembered for many things but in the end she has not moved the dial on the founding issue which got her into politics - Scottish independence.
Ms Sturgeon took charge of a nation divided on the issue and will leave Bute House with the polls still broadly split down the middle.
She faced off with five different UK prime ministers - all Tory - but none would grant her a second crack at a referendum. In her opinion, a democratic outrage.
Ms Sturgeon has now decided to release the reins at the very moment where the next steps will be mapped out.
She has not given up on her dream of independence but it will be for someone else to decide the strategy and lead the campaign.
Before she was first minister, Nicola Sturgeon spent five years as health secretary.
In that time she made plenty of big calls - scrapping prescription charges, introducing minimum pricing legislation, a 12-week legal requirement to treat patients.
She was also involved in the early days of building the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow.
As first minister she'll undoubtedly be remembered as the woman who led Scotland during a global pandemic - fronting televised briefings and occasionally deciding that Covid rules would diverge from other parts of the UK.
But you are never far away from controversy when it comes to handling of the NHS.
There are record waiting times to access NHS treatment and high levels of staff vacancies - as well as the ongoing Hospitals Inquiry and the Scotland and UK Covid inquiries.
These could provide some uncomfortable verdicts on decision-making by Nicola Sturgeon's government.
Education was a top priority for Nicola Sturgeon when she became first minister.
Helping more young people from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds to do better at school and get to university was to be a defining mission.
However, her term ends with the first national teachers' strike since the 1980s and strained relations between the Scottish government and the teachers' unions.
Closing the attainment gap, another goal, was always going to be a complex, long term task.
Universities are now taking in a record number of students from the most disadvantaged parts of Scotland, but there are worries that other young people may be finding it harder to get on to certain courses.
Progress was being made closing the attainment gap in schools. Then came the pandemic and unthinkable disruption to the education system.
Supporters of the government can point to the progress being made helping children from the most disadvantaged areas before the pandemic.
But until the teachers' pay dispute is resolved, the risk is that the shadow of picket lines will hang over discussion about education itself.
It can be argued that Nicola Sturgeon's biggest single contribution to Scotland's justice system is her announcement of the abolition of the "not proven" verdict.
The undefined second verdict of acquittal, unique to Scotland, has caused angst for decades, if not centuries.
But depending on when she steps down, her legacy could also include something far more radical - a pilot of judge-only rape trials currently under consideration by her government.
The first minister portrays herself as a champion of women's rights and such a move would be expected to improve the conviction rate in rape cases.
But removing the right to a trial by jury, even for a limited time on limited basis, would be hugely controversial.
If that's the road the Scottish government decides to go down, Nicola Sturgeon will have played a significant part in making it happen.
The spiralling number of drug deaths in Scotland led the first minister to admit her government had taken its "eye off the ball" when it came to addiction.
Of course, Scotland isn't the only country with drug issues. In many respects, this is an inherited, multi-generational problem.
But Nicola Sturgeon's government hadn't prioritised that problem until 1,000 Scots a year or more were succumbing to addiction.
Before that, local treatment budgets had been cut just as a new dangerous wave of street Valium swept through poor communities.
The issue was particularly acute: Scotland saw seven years of record drug deaths and a death rate higher than any other European nation.
Experts would soon point out that it was comparable with North America's opioid crisis.
There were arguments about who should control drug policy - Holyrood or Westminster - but ultimately, Nicola Sturgeon's government accepted its own responsibilities and declared a national effort to reduce deaths.
Now £250m is being invested into addiction services but Scotland has yet to see a significant reduction in the number of fatal overdoses.
The first minister is a campaigner at heart. The economy has rarely seemed a priority for Nicola Sturgeon, seeing it as a foundation of wellbeing rather than wealth.
She has talked it up, announcing targets for exports, plans for skills and task forces for productivity.
But while focussing her attention on social policy, health and redistribution of income through new tax and welfare powers, she delegated business policy to other ministers.
She took a more prominent role intervening in failing businesses in an attempt to save jobs, with mixed success - an Inverclyde shipyard, a Fife fabrication yard, steel rolling in Motherwell and aluminium in Lochaber. They have created a legacy of higher costs and financial liabilities.
ScotRail was taken over by government. Transport spending shifted to buses. CalMac's ageing fleet is in crisis.
Ms Sturgeon has blocked further private involvement in the NHS. The takeover of Scottish firms and loss of corporate headquarters has been barely noticed across Scottish politics.
Since the COP26 summit in Glasgow, the first minister has argued for higher hurdles being placed in the way of further drilling for oil and gas.
She's urged a faster roll-out of renewable energy but faced criticism for the lack of Scottish content and jobs in it.
Other landmark policies on business suggested her instincts have been for regulation, to tackle other priorities - recently including a freeze on housing rents, the deposit and return scheme for drinks containers, plans to reduce alcohol advertising and to restrict marketing of unhealthy food.
Deciding whether to press on with these will be an early sign of whether her successor plans to change direction and perhaps become a closer friend to Scottish business.
Nicola Sturgeon received international praise for her leadership at and around the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow in 2021.
Though she had no official role, since it was a UK government gig, the first minister used the summit to push forward the climate agenda internationally.
Her government was the first in the world to declare a climate emergency back in 2019 and Scotland's climate leadership has been praised by the architect of the Paris Agreement, Christiana Figueres.
But Nicola Sturgeon's record when it comes to tackling climate change at home has been progressively sliding.
Seven of the last 11 annual greenhouse gas emissions targets have been missed and the Climate Change Committee says Scotland's lead over the rest of the UK has been lost.
Those longer term targets were challenging when they were set but the repeated failures make achieving them an even more difficult job for the next first minister.
No-one could doubt Nicola Sturgeon's dedication to reading, both personally and in schemes like the first minister's reading challenge which offered resources to groups working with young people to encourage reading.
She was a regular guest at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and there can barely be a book festival in Scotland, large or small, at which she hasn't appeared.
But while she's been a champion of the literary world, it hasn't resolved any of the deep-rooted problems that the industry has.
The literature sector, like all areas of the arts, faces a "perfect storm" caused by the pandemic, arts funding cuts and the cost of living crisis.
The wider cultural sector stands perched on that same financial precipice.
Creative Scotland has warned that a third of their regularly funded organisations are at risk in the months ahead if the 10% cuts to their budget go ahead as planned.
The UK-wide Campaign for the Arts Alliance has launched an 11th hour bid to "pull Scotland's cultural sector back from the brink" with an online petition.
Nicola Sturgeon's passion for literature has brought welcome profile to the sector but the reality of this particular chapter in Scottish cultural history looks pretty grim indeed.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-64661853
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Nicola Sturgeon resignation: Where does it leave the future of the UK? - BBC News
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2023-02-16
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The SNP's opponents believe Nicola Sturgeon's departure will hamper the push for Scottish independence.
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UK Politics
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Scottish politics has, for years now, had an outsized voice in the wider UK political conversation.
The reason is simple: the prospect of Scottish independence.
With the Scottish National Party running the Scottish government and holding the vast majority of Scottish seats at Westminster, the question of Scotland's constitutional future has remained live.
And that - to state the obvious - matters massively in Scotland, but also everywhere else in the UK too.
Nicola Sturgeon regards it as an outrage that despite winning election after election, the path to another referendum is blocked.
Whether an outrage or not, it is a fact that securing that referendum any time soon appears to be slipping away.
So what happens next and where does it leave the cause of independence?
For me, the most striking thing about the first minister's announcement is the reaction privately from senior Conservative and Labour figures.
Does the UK's future, in its current form, feel safer now she is leaving?
"Very much so," a senior Conservative figure tells me.
"When your opponent is a proven winner and they decide to leave, that is good news" said one Labour figure, candidly.
Another Labour source said they had long felt their party required two things to happen to change the game of Scottish politics and give Labour - once so dominant here - a fighting chance of making a significant recovery:
My source had assumed the former might happen before the latter.
But it's the latter that has happened already.
The SNP have been in power at Holyrood for 15 years
As a result of winning elections, the independence question and the Covid pandemic, which projected her into living rooms around the UK almost daily - Nicola Sturgeon came to personify her party not just in Scotland but around the UK.
And the SNP became and remain a significant player on the UK political stage: the third political party at Westminster and one with the potential to hold the balance of power in a hung parliament.
But how, if at all, might that now change?
Having been in power at Holyrood for 15 years and with options for another independence referendum looking increasingly limited, arguably political gravity is finally catching up with the SNP.
The party's opponents think Nicola Sturgeon leaving will chivvy that along.
But hang on a minute, say SNP insiders.
The Conservatives and Labour have been wrong before, and they will be wrong again, they argue.
The constitutional question remains live and unresolved, and changing leader doesn't change that, is the case they make.
It may even refresh it, for some.
Getting another independence referendum won't be easy.
Independence supporters staged a protest at Holyrood after the Supreme Court rejected a referendum
The SNP awaits a moment, currently eluding it, when they can secure agreement with the UK government to grant another vote.
A necessary, but not sufficient component in that is continuing to win elections and continuing to prove that Scottish public opinion remains, at the very least, split down the middle on the question of independence.
And so a key question is how the views of those whose support for independence is soft may change; those who are persuadable that, on balance, perhaps it's a good idea, but maybe it isn't.
How might their views be moulded by the contest to come and the leader to emerge from it?
The fascinating thing here is it is SNP members who now have - for the very first time -- the awesome responsibility of choosing a first minister on behalf of Scotland.
Around 100,000 people will have a vote, in a race whose rules and timetable will be decided at a hastily arranged meeting of the party's National Executive Committee on Thursday evening.
How will the collective instincts of some of those Scots most committed to the cause of independence express themselves in selecting the next figurehead for the cause, and how will they take that argument to the persuadable but not convinced?
Privately, senior SNP figures acknowledge Nicola Sturgeon's successor, whoever it is, won't have her stature, at least immediately.
The shop window of Scottish politics will soon be taking on a significant new look, and that can have a significant influence on what prospective customers make of what's inside.
To be clear, opinion polls suggest the SNP remains the colossus of Scottish politics.
But even a relatively modest retreat could have a big impact at the next general election, and a big impact on the argument about Scotland's future.
Sir Keir Starmer is due to address the Scottish Labour conference this weekend
Scottish Labour gather for their conference in Edinburgh at the weekend, with the UK party leader Sir Keir Starmer among the speakers.
Privately, Labour had hoped to be competitive in between 12 to 15 Scottish seats at the next UK general election.
To put that in perspective, the last time they won a general election, in 2005, they won 41 seats in Scotland.
They now hope the list of winnable seats gets a bit bigger.
And senior Conservatives, passionate about the future of the union, privately take at least some comfort on the constitutional question from Labour's soaring opinion poll figures.
They ponder that if left-leaning Scots, currently drawn to the SNP, do return to Labour, it could depress support for independence sufficiently to remove it as the dominating topic at the heart of Scottish politics.
What is clear is Scottish politics is changing, and changing in a big way.
And that matters wherever you are in the UK.
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Spain to extradite British suspect to US over Twitter hack - BBC News
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2023-02-20
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Joseph O'Connor faces several charges in connection with the hack of more than 130 Twitter accounts.
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Technology
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A Spanish court has approved the extradition to the US of a British man suspected of hacking the Twitter accounts of celebrities.
Police arrested Joseph James O'Connor, from Liverpool, in July 2021 in the southern city of Estepona.
He faces several charges in connection with the July 2020 hack of more than 130 accounts, including those of US President Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
The accounts of Bill Gates, Kanye West and Elon Musk were also hit.
A court statement said requirements had been met for handing over Mr O'Connor to US authorities for 14 charges, including the alleged crimes of revelation of secrets, membership of a criminal gang, illegal access to computer systems, internet fraud, money laundering and extortion.
It said he is wanted by courts in the Northern District of California and the Southern District of New York.
US officials allege Mr O'Connor hijacked the Twitter accounts and then asked their followers to send bitcoin to an account, promising to double their money.
Spain's National Court said that he is also suspected of hacking the Snapchat account of an unnamed public figure and then threatening to publish naked pictures of the person unless he was financially compensated.
Mr O'Connor is also wanted for several alleged cases of "swatting" - making malicious calls to emergency services aimed at falsely misdirecting the police to visit various locations.
It said the "necessary conditions" were met for Spain to agree to a US extradition request for the 23-year-old, who is also known by the alias Plugwalk Joe.
The court rejected arguments by Mr O'Connor's lawyers that he should be tried in Spain because the servers he used were located there.
Spain's cabinet must approve the extradition, although it usually complies with the court's decisions.
Mr O'Connor can appeal against the extradition.
He told the New York Times before his detention: "I don't care - they can come arrest me.
"I would laugh at them. I haven't done anything."
A Florida teenager accused of masterminding the attacks was sentenced by a US court in 2021 to three years in juvenile prison in a plea agreement.
Graham Ivan Clark was only 17 when he was charged and his case was transferred to a Florida state court because of his juvenile status.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-64705984
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Tinder Swindler: Why I stood by my abusive ex - BBC News
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2023-02-20
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The ex-girlfriend of Tinder Swindler Simon Leviev says he emotionally abused her in their 18-month relationship.
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World
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When Netflix's documentary, the Tinder Swindler, came out in February 2022, Simon Leviev's girlfriend stood by him. Now she says she felt she had no choice, because she was under his emotional control.
A young blonde woman is sitting on the edge of a bed cradling her left foot with her left hand as she speaks into her phone. Some of her hair sticks to her face, which is wet from tears.
You see a cut on her heel. Her eyes are bloodshot and her face red, but her voice is clear as she gives the person on the other end of the phone line directions to the apartment. In front of her, an open and packed suitcase lies on the floor.
We are watching a video filmed on a phone from the night of 29 March 2022. The man filming the video raises his voice to say: "It's bullshit! Nothing's happened to her!"
The man is Simon Leviev, the convicted con artist and subject of the Netflix documentary, The Tinder Swindler. The woman is 23-year-old Israeli model Kate Konlin, who was then his girlfriend.
Leviev sent the video to the BBC with other videos and documents about their relationship.
"She lies and she lies," he wrote.
"Of course he'd call me a liar," Kate Konlin tells the BBC.
"He's called every woman who has spoken out against him a liar. He doesn't want me to tell my story of emotional abuse."
"Kate, he's too perfect," she recalls them gushing, "it's even a little scary."
Shimon Heyada Hayut (who legally changed his name to Simon Leviev), slipped into her Instagram DMs in 2020, and within weeks they were together.
"At first, our relationship was a love bomb," Ms Konlin tells the BBC. "He was obsessed with me."
Leviev accompanied her to modelling shoots and waited while she worked. He cleaned her home and sent her long and loving voicenotes.
It was intense but as a 23-year-old, it was what she thought love should be, she says.
But after a while, the fights started.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Kate Konlin: 'This is not the classic Tinder Swindler story about losing money'
Ms Konlin says that when he criticised her appearance, clothes, her weight and her skin (she experiences bouts of acne), she began to lose confidence. She wasn't sure what he would say next.
"I felt I was walking on eggshells," she says.
She saw her friends less and less during the 18 months they were together, and when she did they said she was no longer the lively, colourful and sociable person they had once known.
"They said I was 'grey'," she says, looking down at her hands.
After a few months, Leviev began to ask for money, borrowing thousands of dollars at a time, up to a total, Ms Konlin says, of $150,000. She was already an international model who had been on the cover of Vogue Japan, Grazia Italy and Wallpaper magazine in the UK. She was financially secure and she says he knew it.
Ms Konlin has sent the BBC more than a dozen of Leviev's voicenotes. He often shouts, and asks for loans saying that his own money is tied up in investments.
In one, he shouts as he explains why he cannot pay her back: "Kate, I'm a millionaire! And that's a fact. At the moment, I'm stuck. Understand? I'm stuck! Do you understand that in your screwed-up brain? That bird brain of yours. I'm stuck, Kate. I didn't steal from you. You gave it to me of your own free will. You lent it to me. I'm stuck, that's all."
Despite his convictions, Simon Leviev has thousands of followers on social media
The Tinder Swindler, which became Netflix's most-watched documentary in 90 countries when it was released in February 2022, alleged that Simon Leviev had conned women he met on the Tinder dating app out of about $10m. He denies the allegations.
Ms Konlin says she watched it while sitting next to him on the sofa.
"I knew it was all true," she says.
But she says she felt obliged to accept his version of events. According to her, it was a controlling relationship, and it was easy for him to persuade her to defend him publicly, for example on US news show Inside Edition.
"He told me, 'If you stick up for me, people will believe me, because you are a woman.'"
At the same time, her Instagram inbox filled with abuse sent by people who had seen shots of her at the end of the Tinder Swindler.
"People told me they wished that I would get cancer or be run over by a car, and that I deserved the worst of everything because I was in a relationship with him," Ms Konlin says.
The arguments between the couple intensified and on 29 March everything came to a head.
"I said, 'That's it, I'm leaving. I can't take it any more.' I started packing my stuff," she says.
Ms Konlin says the argument turned physical. She says he pushed her and she cut her foot on a step with a rough edge.
"I was bleeding. I felt dead. I wanted to kill myself," she says.
This brought the fight to a halt. It was then that Leviev filmed Ms Konlin as she called an ambulance, and shouted out that nothing had happened to her.
After going to hospital, she filed a complaint against Leviev with the police.
Ms Konlin says her confidence was undermined by Leviev's criticisms
When we asked Leviev to respond, he sent us nine emails within 45 minutes, and two more direct messages on the video-sharing app, Cameo, in the days that followed.
There were many screenshots of WhatsApp messages and a video which shows Ms Konlin shouting and grabbing him.
Leviev says he has never physically harmed any woman.
Janey Starling, a campaigner against domestic abuse, says the picture Ms Konlin paints of her relationship with Leviev follows a familiar pattern.
"Coercive control is something that happens on a daily basis and is very mundane. It's very small. It flies under the radar," she says.
"A lot of abusive men have never been physically violent to their partners… but they have been intensely controlling, intensely critical, belittling, and making threats.
"It's a bit of a red herring to look for physical violence as the ultimate determination of whether an abusive relationship is abusive."
We put to Leviev several allegations Ms Konlin made about his behaviour, including that he had coercively controlled her, and he said she was lying.
Despite being a convicted con artist, Leviev has thousands of followers on social media. He continues to post videos of himself driving expensive cars, and spending time with beautiful women. In some videos people ask for photographs with him, as if he were a celebrity. He charges £82 ($100) for a personalised video message and £165 for a call.
"We are seeing a glamorisation of a hyper-masculine anti-woman mindset and lifestyle, and it is being peddled to the most susceptible, most impressionable people, especially young men in their pre-teen years," says Jessica Reaves, editorial director of the ADL's Center on Extremism.
"It's incredibly dangerous because what you're saying is, 'You can have this lifestyle too and also, by the way, part and parcel of this is dehumanising, or generally hating women'."
We asked Leviev if he accepted this description of his posts on social media and he didn't respond.
Today, Ms Konlin laughs that she is perhaps one of the only models in the world who is happy to have gained weight - she says she was underweight from stress during her time with Leviev.
After almost a year without offers of work following the release of The Tinder Swindler, her modelling career has taken off again. She now wants to tell young women what an unhappy and controlling relationship can look like from the inside.
"If a woman who is in the same situation sees what I experienced and how I got out, and that today I am stronger and more beautiful than when I was with him, she will hopefully see that she can also leave."
If you have been affected by issues in this story, you can find sources of support on the BBC Action Line
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-64666638
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news_world-64666638
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Roald Dahl: Rishi Sunak joins criticism of changes to author's books - BBC News
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2023-02-20
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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A debate rages over changes to references to characters' appearance and weight in the author's works.
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Entertainment & Arts
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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has criticised changes to Roald Dahl books, after the removal of some references to things like characters' appearance and weight sparked a fierce debate.
Dahl's estate and publisher said works including The BFG and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory had been updated to be more suitable for modern audiences.
Some said they approved of the changes.
But Mr Sunak's spokesman said works of fiction should be "preserved and not airbrushed".
Borrowing a word Dahl invented for playing with language, the PM's spokesman said: "When it comes to our rich and varied literary heritage, the prime minister agrees with the BFG that we shouldn't gobblefunk around with words."
Others to speak out against the changes include author Sir Salman Rushdie.
"Roald Dahl was no angel but this is absurd censorship," the Midnight's Children and Satanic Verses writer posted on Twitter. "Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed."
The Roald Dahl Story Company has said any edits to have come from its review process, which has been ongoing since 2020, were "small and carefully considered".
His Dark Materials author Philip Pullman told BBC Radio 4 that Dahl's books "should be allowed to fade away" rather than be changed if they are deemed offensive.
"If Dahl offends us, let him go out of print," said Pullman. "Read all these [other] wonderful authors who are writing today, who don't get as much of a look-in because of the massive commercial gravity of people like Roald Dahl."
But poet and author Debjani Chatterjee believes it is "a very good thing that the publishers are reviewing his work".
She told the BBC World Service: "I think it's been done quite sensitively. Take the word 'fat'. They've used 'enormous'. If anything, I actually think 'enormous' is even funnier."
Children's author John Dougherty told BBC Radio 5 Live: "There's no reason the BFG shouldn't have a black cloak. That just seems absurd.
"And Augustus Gloop, for instance - the whole point of the character is that he's hugely overweight because he won't stop eating - he's greedy.
"Now, there might be an argument that that's offensive in today's world," Dougherty continued. "I think if you're going to decide that, then the only answer is to put the book out of print. I don't think you can say, 'So let's change Dahl's words but keep the character'."
Kate Clanchy, an ex-teacher who revised her own memoir after being criticised for some descriptions, said children's books should be treated particularly carefully.
"Augustus Gloop is a greedy character. He'll still remain morally greedy and his moral greed will be wrong, whether or not we have lots of lots and lots of references to how fat he is, which I think can be upsetting," she told 5 Live.
"We've always updated children's books. It's a tribute to the way that these books are becoming myths... that we've adjusted them again."
Laura Hackett, deputy literary editor of the Sunday Times, said she would continue to read her original copies of Dahl's books to her children in all "their full, nasty, colourful glory".
"I think the sort of the nastiness is what makes Dahl so much fun," she told 5 Live. "You love it when, in Matilda, Bruce Bogtrotter is forced to eat that whole chocolate cake, or you are locked up in the Chokey [a torture device] - that's what children love.
"And to remove all references to violence or anything that's not clean and nice and friendly, then you remove the spirit of those stories."
Many of Roald Dahl's books have also been made into movies
The books have been amended after being reviewed by sensitivity readers, who check for potentially offensive content.
The Roald Dahl Story Company worked with publishers Puffin and Inclusive Minds, a collective working towards inclusion and accessibility in children's literature.
A spokesperson for the Roald Dahl Story Company said it wanted "to ensure that Roald Dahl's wonderful stories and characters continue to be enjoyed by all children today".
"When publishing new print runs of books written years ago, it's not unusual to review the language used alongside updating other details including a book's cover and page layout," it said.
It added: "Our guiding principle throughout has been to maintain the storylines, characters, and the irreverence and sharp-edged spirit of the original text."
Dahl, who died aged 74 in 1990, remains one of the UK's most popular children's authors, and Netflix bought the rights to his works in 2021.
But antisemitic comments made throughout his life led to Dahl being a highly problematic figure.
In 2020, his family apologised, saying they recognised the "lasting and understandable hurt caused by Roald Dahl's antisemitic statements".
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64702224
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news_entertainment-arts-64702224
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Boris Johnson NI intervention not entirely unhelpful, says Mordaunt - BBC News
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2023-02-20
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The former PM has urged Rishi Sunak not to drop the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which he introduced.
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UK Politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Mordaunt says Johnson's Brexit intervention not entirely unhelpful
An intervention by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson on post-Brexit trading arrangements for Northern Ireland is not "entirely unhelpful", Commons leader Penny Mordaunt has said.
He has urged Rishi Sunak not to abandon legislation that would give the government powers to scrap parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Ms Mordaunt told the BBC the bill had helped persuade the EU to negotiate.
She also said any deal must work for all communities in Northern Ireland.
The protocol came into effect in 2021 and aims to ensure free movement of goods across the Irish land border by conducting checks between Northern Ireland and Great Britain instead.
However, unionist parties, who support Northern Ireland being part of the UK, oppose the protocol and argue that placing an effective border across the Irish Sea undermines Northern Ireland's place within the UK.
Negotiations between the UK and the European Union to try to resolve issues with the protocol have been going on for more than a year but sources have suggested a deal could be sealed next week.
The momentum suggested a new agreement was very close but there is now unlikely to be anything concrete until the middle of the week at the earliest.
On Saturday, a source close to Mr Johnson said he believed it would be "a great mistake" to drop the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which many Conservatives see as an important bargaining chip for the UK to gain concessions from the EU.
Ms Mordaunt also suggested the bill had aided negotiations with the bloc.
There has been trepidation and a sense of inevitability about the former PM and Brexit cheerleader getting involved in the arguments around new arrangements for Northern Ireland - and Mr Sunak's team may not see his intervention in the same light as Ms Mordaunt.
Ms Mordaunt, who also campaigned to leave the EU during the 2016 referendum, told the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme: "I think the prime minister would give credit to his predecessors for enabling us to get this far.
"We have the bill... and in part it is because of that that we are now able to have these negotiations and the EU is talking about things that previously it said it wouldn't talk about."
She added: "It's a reminder to the EU the bar that they have to get over. But ultimately it's not really about what Boris Johnson or any members of the House of Commons think about a deal. It's what the people of Northern Ireland think about the deal."
The bill, which was first introduced by Boris Johnson, is currently paused in Parliament while the UK and EU try to hammer out a new agreement.
The BBC understands the EU will not move ahead with a deal unless there is a commitment by the UK to drop the Protocol Bill.
A senior government official has said if issues with the protocol arrangements can be resolved then there will be no need for the bill to go further in Parliament.
Many unionists oppose the protocol but a majority of Stormont politicians support it in some form
Former Northern Ireland Secretary and Labour peer Lord Mandelson told Sky News Mr Johnson was trying to "wreck" the protocol, which he agreed as part of the 2019 Brexit withdrawal agreement, to undermine the prime minister.
Former Conservative Chancellor George Osborne, who was a leading figure in the campaign to remain in the EU, also said Mr Johnson was "causing trouble" because he was "interested in becoming prime minister again".
"He wants to bring down Rishi Sunak and he will use any instrument to do it," he told Channel 4's The Andrew Neil Show.
Meanwhile, Ms Mordaunt said any deal on the protocol had to work for all communities in Northern Ireland and pass the seven tests set out by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
The DUP is preventing a government from being formed in Northern Ireland in protest over the protocol and says its tests must be met for it to end its boycott of Stormont.
There had been some whispers that there was a possibility of doing a deal, even without the support of the DUP, but Ms Mordaunt closed down that idea, saying: "If this deal does not pass those tests, it won't work, it's as simple as that."
She added: "What my colleagues might say and what they might do in a hypothetical vote, that is irrelevant unless it works for the whole of Northern Ireland."
Following the latest round of talks on Saturday, Mr Sunak warned an agreement was "by no means done" and said there were still "challenges to work through".
Labour has said it would support the government in a Commons vote on a protocol deal.
However, the prime minister could still face a rebellion by Eurosceptic Tory backbenchers.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64695633
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news_uk-politics-64695633
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Ukraine war: Blinken says China might give weapons to Russia - BBC News
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2023-02-20
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The US said China was considering "lethal support" for Russia in Ukraine - a claim denied by Beijing.
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US & Canada
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The US says China is considering supplying weapons and ammunition to Russia for the Ukraine war - a claim strongly denied by Beijing.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Chinese firms were already providing "non-lethal support" to Russia and new information suggested Beijing could provide "lethal support".
Such an escalation would mean "serious consequences" for China, he warned.
Beijing said the claims were false and accused Washington of spreading lies.
"We do not accept the United States' finger-pointing on China-Russia relations, let alone coercion and pressure," China's foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular press conference on Monday, when asked about the allegations.
China has also denied reports that Moscow has requested military equipment.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and is yet to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine - but he has sought to remain neutral in the conflict and has called for peace.
Mr Blinken was speaking to CBS News after he met China's top diplomat, Wang Yi, on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference.
He said that during the meeting he expressed "deep concerns" about the "possibility that China will provide lethal material support to Russia".
"To date, we have seen Chinese companies... provide non-lethal support to Russia for use in Ukraine. The concern that we have now is based on information we have that they're considering providing lethal support," he said.
He did not elaborate on what information the US had received about China's potential plans. When pressed on what the US believed China might give to Russia, he said it would be primarily weapons as well as ammunition.
The US has sanctioned a Chinese company for allegedly providing satellite imagery of Ukraine to the mercenary Wagner Group, which supplies Russia with thousands of fighters.
Mr Blinken told CBS that "of course, in China, there's really no distinction between private companies and the state".
If China provided Russia with weapons, that would cause a "serious problem for us and in our relationship", he added.
Relations between Washington and Beijing were already poor after the US shot down an alleged Chinese spy balloon in early February. Both sides exchanged angry words, but equally both sides appeared embarrassed by the incident and seemed ready to move on.
But if China were to deliver weapons to help Russian forces in Ukraine, then US-Chinese relations would deteriorate much more severely.
It would be the most "catastrophic" thing that could happen to the relationship between the two giants, said top Republican senator Lindsay Graham.
"It would be like buying a ticket on the Titanic after you saw the movie," he told ABC News. "Don't do this."
Mr Blinken's warning seems to be clearly designed to deter China from doing that.
Mr Blinken also said the US was worried about China helping Russia evade Western sanctions designed to cripple Russia's economy. China's trade with Russia has been growing, and it is one of the biggest markets for Russian oil, gas, and coal.
Nato members, including the US, are sending a variety of weapons, ammunition and equipment to Ukraine, including tanks. They have stopped short of sending fighter jets, and Mr Blinken would not be drawn on whether the US would help other countries supply jets.
"We've been very clear that we shouldn't fixate or focus on any particular weapons system," he said.
He did, however, say that the West must ensure Ukraine had what it needed for a potential counter offensive against Russia "in the months ahead". Russia is currently trying to advance in eastern regions of Ukraine, where some of the fiercest fighting of the war has taken place.
The top US diplomat's remarks come ahead of a scheduled visit by Mr Wang to Moscow, as part of the Chinese foreign policy chief's tour of Europe.
Mr Wang said in Munich on Saturday that China had "neither stood by idly nor thrown fuel on the fire" for the Ukraine war, Reuters reported.
China would publish a document that laid out its position on settling the conflict, Mr Wang said. The document would state that the territorial integrity of all countries must be respected, he said.
"I suggest that everybody starts to think calmly, especially friends in Europe, about what kind of efforts we can make to stop this war," Mr Wang said.
He added that there were "some forces that seemingly don't want negotiations to succeed, or for the war to end soon", but did not say who he meant.
The Chinese President, Mr Xi, is scheduled to deliver a "peace speech" on the anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Friday, 24 February, according to Italy's foreign minister Antonio Tajani.
Mr Tajani told Italian radio that Mr Xi's speech would call for peace without condemning Russia, Reuters reported.
During their meeting, Mr Blinken and Mr Wang also exchanged strong words on the deepening row over an alleged Chinese spy balloon that was shot down over the US.
Mr Blinken said during the meeting that the US would not "stand for any violation of our sovereignty" and said "this irresponsible act must never again occur".
Mr Blinken told CBS that other nations were concerned about what he called China's "surveillance balloon program" across five continents.
Mr Wang, meanwhile, called the episode a "political farce manufactured by the US" and accused them of "using all means to block and suppress China". China has denied sending a spy balloon.
And on Sunday morning, Beijing warned that the US would "bear all the consequences" if it escalated the argument over the balloon. China would "follow through to the end" in the event "the US insists on taking advantage of the issue", it said in a foreign ministry statement reported by Reuters.
The full interview with CBS - the BBC's US broadcasting partner - is due to air on Sunday.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64695042
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news_world-us-canada-64695042
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Omagh bomb inquiry 'a significant decision', says NI secretary - BBC News
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2023-02-02
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The choice to establish a independent statutory inquiry into the Omagh bombing is a "significant decision", the Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris has said.
He made the statement in the House of Commons on Thursday afternoon.
Twenty-nine people died in the biggest single atrocity in the Northern Ireland Troubles on 15 August 1998.
Mr Heaton-Harris said the inquiry will examine four issues identified by a 2021 High Court ruling, including plausible arguments that the bombing could have been prevented.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-64501634
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news_uk-northern-ireland-64501634
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Nicola Sturgeon: Rapist Isla Bryson 'almost certainly' faking trans status - BBC News
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2023-02-02
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Nicola Sturgeon was responding to a claim by a victim of Isla Bryson that she was not "truly transgender".
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Scotland politics
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Isla Bryson start identifying as a woman after being accused of two rapes
A double rapist who was sent to a women's prison last week is "almost certainly" faking being trans, Nicola Sturgeon has suggested.
Isla Bryson was convicted of attacking two women while known as a man called Adam Graham.
One of the victims later said she was sure Bryson was pretending to be trans to "make life easier".
Bryson was moved from Cornton Vale to the male prison estate after a public outcry.
A "pause" was subsequently placed on the transfer to women's jails of trans inmates with convictions for violence after it was reported that another transgender woman, Tiffany Scott - who was convicted of stalking a 13-year-old girl before her transition and has a history of violence - was due to be moved to a female prison.
The Bryson case was raised at First Minister's Questions by Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross on Thursday.
Mr Ross said: "I believe a double rapist, anyone who rapes a woman, is a man. They cannot be considered anything else.
"When a man rapes two women, we don't think that he should be considered a woman just because he says so. We should call out criminals like this who are abusing the system.
"Adam Graham, who wants to be know as Isla Bryson, raped two women. He is an abusive man seeking to exploit loopholes in the government's current policy."
Mr Ross asked the first minister: "Is this double rapist a woman?"
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. The first minister is challenged to say whether she believes a double rapist is a woman
Ms Sturgeon initially said she did not have enough information to say whether Bryson's claim to be a woman was valid or not.
She added: "I don't think Douglas Ross and I are disagreeing here, because what I think is relevant in this case is not whether the individual is a man or claims to be a woman or is trans.
"What is relevant is that the individual is a rapist. That is how the individual should be described, and it is that that should be the main consideration in deciding how the individual is dealt with.
"That is why, of course, the individual is in a male prison, not in the female prison, these are the issues that matter."
Mr Ross went on to read a quote from one of Bryson's victims, who said: "I don't believe he is truly transgender. I feel as if he has made a mockery out of them using it. As far as I'm concerned, that was to make things easier for himself. I'm sure he is faking it."
Bryson was convicted of rapes while known as Adam Graham
The first minister responded: "My feeling is that is almost certainly the case, which is why the key factor in this case is not the individual's claim to be a woman.
"The key and in fact only important factor in this is that the individual is convicted of rape - the individual is a rapist - and that is the factor that should be the deciding one in decisions about how that prisoner is now treated."
Ms Sturgeon went on to say it was "really important" to "look seriously" at the issues thrown up by the Bryson case, adding: "But that in doing so, we bear in mind two things.
"Firstly, as I've said, that we do not further stigmatise trans people generally - I think that is important - but secondly that we don't cause undue concern amongst the public."
Ms Sturgeon added that there were exemptions under the current UK equality law that "even if it wanted to this parliament couldn't change" that enabled trans women to be excluded from some single sex spaces.
The Scottish Prison Service has operated a form of gender self-identification since 2014.
As Justice Secretary Keith Brown put it on BBC Radio Scotland on Monday: "If somebody presents as a trans person then we accept that on face value."
It is that "face value" approach that appears to have caused such difficulty in the cases of Tiffany Scott and especially Isla Bryson, the double rapist who was initially remanded at Cornton Vale women's prison.
While identifying as trans does not give any prisoner the right to decide where they are jailed, the system does take their acquired gender into account.
Critics say that's open to abuse by predatory men but ministers say robust risk assessment should prevent that and may ultimately have excluded Bryson and Scott from the female prison estate.
When asked about the Bryson case on Monday, Justice Secretary Keith Brown told BBC Scotland's The Nine: "We have to accept people identify - in this case - as women. I think that is commonly accepted and that's the starting approach we take."
But Mr Brown stressed that this did not mean they would automatically have the right to go to a female prison, with a "rigorous" risk assessment being carried out first.
However, when asked earlier in the week why the gender claims of prisoners were accepted at face value, Ms Sturgeon said: "That is the case for trans people but if you take the two cases that have been in the media, for my point of view it's not so important what gender they are, it's the crimes that they have committed."
Bryson was found guilty last month of raping two women in 2016 and 2019 before she changed gender after being arrested.
While awaiting trail, she enrolled on a beauty course Ayrshire College, where she was known as Annie, and remained there for three months before being asked to leave.
Her classmates were almost exclusively female and much younger than Bryson, and were not aware of the rape allegations.
One former classmate told BBC Scotland last week that she felt "violated" after learning of the crimes Bryson had committed.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Justice Secretary Keith Brown told The Nine it had been accepted that trans prisoners Isla Bryson and Tiffany Scott were women
Scottish government legislation aimed at allowing people to self-identify their legal sex has been blocked by the UK government over its potential impact on equalities laws.
The UK government said during a Westminster debate on Thursday that it was up to the Scottish government to bring forward a new Gender Recognition Reform bill that addresses the legal issues which caused the bill to be blocked.
Cabinet Office minister Alex Burghart said the decision to block the legislation using what is known as a Section 35 order was used very carefully and reluctantly in order to preserve the balance of powers between Scotland and England.
SNP MP Patrick Grady said the UK government should publish its own amendments to the Bill to make it acceptable and claimed the Conservatives were undermining the Scottish Parliament.
And backbench Conservative MP said he believed the legal arguments used by the government for halting the legislation were "shaky".
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-64501436
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news_uk-scotland-scotland-politics-64501436
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Ex-spy says MI5 did not want Real IRA leader arrested - BBC News
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2023-03-21
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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US trucker David Rupert infiltrated the innermost circles of the group behind the 1998 Omagh bomb attack.
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Northern Ireland
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. David Rupert said the Real IRA's leader Michael McKevitt wanted an American on its army council.
A US trucker who spied on a dissident Irish republican group says the security service MI5 did not want its leader arrested.
David Rupert infiltrated the Real IRA, the group behind the 1998 Omagh bomb atrocity, for the FBI and MI5.
His undercover evidence was used in 2003 to prosecute Michael McKevitt, the leader of the Real IRA, for directing terrorism.
Mr Rupert told BBC Spotlight that MI5 wanted to keep gathering intelligence.
The programme put this to MI5 but they did not respond.
The recent shooting of a top police officer in Northern Ireland shows the threat from dissident republicans has not gone away.
Dissident republicans have not signed up to the peace process and remain committed to using violence to try to bring about a united Ireland.
Mr Rupert, who ran a trucking company in Chicago, first visited Ireland in 1992.
His ongoing trips and friendship with Joe O'Neill, a hard-line Irish republican who ran a pub in Bundoran, County Donegal, coincided with a critical point in Northern Ireland's peace process.
When an FBI agent arrived at his Chicago office in the summer of 1994, Rupert at first thought he had come to talk about the trucking business, but the agent raised the subject of Ireland and O'Neill.
"I wouldn't have done anything really illegal but the grey area was my specialty. So we went back and forth.
"'Would you come to work for us?' he asked. I said, 'No man, I don't need to get on the bad side of a foreign terrorist organisation'."
The first IRA ceasefire of 1994 meant someone like Rupert would be a valuable asset to the FBI.
With US President Bill Clinton heavily invested in the peace process, the White House needed to know from their own spies on the ground if breakaway republicans, like Joe O'Neill who was aligned to a group known as the Continuity IRA, would fill the vacuum.
The FBI agent returned to Rupert's office with a new proposition - the FBI would pay for his trips to Ireland in return for information.
The flights-for-information agreement worked out and eventually led to the US trucker and his wife Maureen moving to Ireland to run a pub in County Leitrim, financed by the FBI.
"The value was it allowed me to become ingrained in the IRA population and to become accepted," said Rupert.
Watch Spotlight - I Spy on iPlayer or on BBC One Northern Ireland on Tuesday 21 March at 22.40 GMT.
By early 1997, the couple was no longer running the pub but the FBI's investment in the trucker turned spy had paid off.
He had become trusted by O'Neill's Continuity IRA group, and he had also positioned himself as the bagman for their US fundraising effort, regularly delivering thousands of dollars from Chicago to O'Neill's group in Ireland.
In the wake of a second IRA ceasefire in 1997, the danger posed by dissident republicans was even higher.
The FBI already had a US spy embedded within the Continuity IRA.
MI5 then made their move and by the summer of 1997, Rupert was working for the FBI and MI5.
"We used an encryption system when I sent an email it went to both handlers," he said.
That year, a dangerous split within the republican movement would radically change Rupert's spy operations against dissident republicans opposed to the peace process.
The Real IRA was formed in 1997 by Michael McKevitt, who left the Provisional IRA in fury over the direction of the peace process.
David Rupert gave his first television interview to BBC NI Spotlight reporter Jennifer O'Leary
McKevitt, the man who had been in charge of the Provisional IRA's arsenal for decades, saw peace talks as a sell-out and was determined to continue the war against the British.
In 1999, McKevitt not only brought Rupert into his secret army to help him fund his terror, he spoke in detail during what was only their second meeting about his plans to bomb Britain.
"Their first hit is going to be directed specifically at something like troops or London centre financial district," Rupert wrote as part of an email to his MI5 handler.
"To make a big enough splash to overshadow anything that could have happened at Omagh."
The 1998 Omagh bomb atrocity killed 29 people including a woman pregnant with twins, which the Real IRA claimed responsibility for.
Rupert's infiltration of the Real IRA put him in a different league of danger - McKevitt lived by a militant Irish republican code that demanded spies be executed.
Yet, despite the risks Rupert maintained his facade and was appointed to the top table of the Real IRA, its army council.
The development prompted elation from his MI5 handler, said Rupert.
"MI5 were wonderful to work with," he said.
"I would call them on my way to a meeting with McKevitt and they would tell me that he's probably going to ask you this or that and when he does, here's what we want you to tell him, and they were pretty accurate."
However, Rupert's spy masters seemingly had different priorities.
The FBI is primarily an evidence-gathering organisation, versus MI5 whose focus is on intelligence gathering.
"MI5 wanted to keep it going forever," said Rupert.
"The FBI won. I mean they won the argument. It was more important to MI5 to have a thumb on the pulse than it is to go arrest a couple of people and prosecute them."
In early 2001, in a top-secret meeting in Dublin, Rupert made a detailed statement to Irish police who were building a case to prosecute McKevitt, who lived in the Irish Republic.
His day of reckoning came on 29 March 2001, when police knocked on his door.
Rupert went on to face the Real IRA leader in a Dublin court and in August 2003, McKevitt was sentenced to 20 years in prison for directing the activities of the Real IRA.
"I was just doing a job," said Rupert.
"And doing a job that I viewed as doing for good to stop them from killing people."
• None Who are the dissident republicans?
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Olivia Pratt-Korbel murder-accused was 'high-level' drug dealer - BBC News
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2023-03-21
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Thomas Cashman tells a jury he was making between £3,000 and £5,000 a week selling cannabis.
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Liverpool
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The man accused of murdering Olivia Pratt-Korbel was a "high-level cannabis dealer", he has told a court.
Thomas Cashman is accused of killing the nine-year-old and injuring her mother after chasing Joseph Nee into their house in Liverpool on 22 August.
He has started giving evidence at the trial at Manchester Crown Court.
The 34-year-old told the jury he was making between £3,000 and £5,000 a week selling 5kg - 10kg (11 - 22lb) of cannabis.
He said: "I would buy cars, bikes, save some, go on holidays and just spend it on stuff that I enjoyed basically."
He said he left school at the age of 13 or 14 and by the time he was about 16 and working at a fair in Wales he was smoking cannabis every day.
Mr Cashman, who has two children with "childhood sweetheart" Kaylee Sweeney, said he started selling cannabis when he was about 18 on a "small scale".
He said: "I was basically smoking my profit."
But by 2021, when he and the family moved to a home in Grenadier Drive, Liverpool, he was selling at a "high level", he told the court.
He said: "I only ever sold it in my area where I've been brought up, so everyone I sold it to was everyone I knew."
Olivia was shot when a man burst into her house and opened fire
John Cooper KC, defending, said: "You became a cannabis dealer, didn't you?"
Mr Cooper then asked: "Were you a high-level cannabis dealer?"
To which the defendant answered: "Yes."
He said his "catchment area" was around the Finch Lane area of Dovecot in Liverpool and he would often get the drugs dropped at his sister's house in Mab Lane.
From there he said he would take them to whoever had asked for them, or to his friend's house, which he said was used as a "stash house".
But there were issues with him using his sister's house, he told the court.
He said: "My sister's boyfriend is an ex-police officer.
"He didn't like it and he got on [at] my sister over it and they were having arguments between each other about me always being there."
He said on the day of the shooting his sister had told him to stop having people round to the house because of the arguments.
The defendant told the jury he knew Mr Nee, who he is alleged to have targeted in the shooting, and never had any problems with him or his brothers.
He claimed the day before Olivia was shot he was at the Nee family home to look at his brother's new Audi A6 car.
Asked about the suggestion he was "scoping things out" the day before the shooting, he said: "That is untrue, I wasn't."
Thomas Cashman told the jury he was making between £3,000 and £5,000 a week selling cannabis
He denied making any "confession" after the shooting to a key prosecution witness, a woman Mr Cashman was said to be having a "fling" with.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, claims Mr Cashman came to her house after the shooting where he changed his clothing and she overheard him say he had "done Joey".
Mr Cashman said he dealt drugs to the woman's boyfriend, who owed him £25,000, and said she threatened to tell his partner they were having a relationship because he refused to go to Marbella to start a new life with her.
Earlier the court heard the intended target of the shooting that killed Olivia was a convicted drug dealer with "enemies".
The jury was told the shooting was not the first Mr Nee had been involved in with David McLachlan KC, prosecuting, saying he and members of his immediate family "had their enemies".
He said Mr Nee was shot at by someone in March 2018, though the prosecution did not suggest Mr Cashman was responsible for or involved in the incident.
The jury was also told Mr Nee had convictions for conspiracy to supply controlled drugs, possession with intent to supply controlled drugs, possession of controlled drugs, burglary and theft, aggravated vehicle taking, theft of or from vehicles, associated motoring offences and a public order offence.
Mr Cashman denies the murder of Olivia, the attempted murder of Mr Nee, wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm to Olivia's mother Cheryl Korbel, and two counts of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life.
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Alex Murdaugh: Power, privilege, murder and the downfall of a dynasty - BBC News
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2023-03-03
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Alex Murdaugh's trial for the killing of his wife and son uncovered fraud, drug abuse and a suicide plot.
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US & Canada
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Alex Murdaugh (right) murdered his wife, Maggie, and his youngest son Paul
For generations, the Murdaugh family dominated their rural swathe of South Carolina - then Alex Murdaugh was accused of the brutal murders of his wife and son. What followed was the stunning unravelling of a life of power and privilege, exposing embezzlement, drug abuse - ultimately ending in his conviction and a sentence of life imprisonment.
You may find some language offensive.
In the fifth week of his murder trial, Alex Murdaugh took the stand.
Over nearly 10 hours testifying in his own defence, the crowded courtroom in Walterboro, South Carolina, would see two versions of Murdaugh. One seemed tired, his voice lilting and thin. His clothes hung loose; months in prison had whittled down his formerly heavy frame. He rocked back and forth, shook his head from side to side, and wept.
The other seemed much more like the man that other witnesses had described - savvy and charming, once a formidable player in the state's clubby legal circuit. This Murdaugh addressed the jury directly, was relaxed and in control.
"What a tangled web we weave," he told them.
Directly ahead of him, on the rear wall of the courtroom, there was a rectangular-shaped sun stain where a painting used to be - a portrait of his namesake, his great-grandfather Randolph "Buster" Murdaugh, which had been taken down for the trial.
For nearly a century, the Murdaugh family reigned in this southern corner of South Carolina - a flat expanse of marshlands, palm trees and porch-ringed houses - presiding over the local prosecutor's office and the private law firm that made them rich.
But since the brutal killings of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, in June 2021, a series of bizarre and tragic events helped bring about Murdaugh's spectacular fall from grace. The 54-year-old has denied the murders, which prosecutors allege were a desperate diversion from decades of financial wrongdoing. But on the stand, he admitted to a number of other crimes, including embezzlement, fraud and a faked assassination attempt.
The trial has become one of the most closely watched in the country. It has exposed what some see as the apparently unchecked power of the Murdaugh family in their small community, and brought about the undoing of a local dynasty.
"This is what happens when average people have no checks and balances," said Bill Nettles, former US attorney for South Carolina.
"And there were no checks and balances on him."
Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were shot at the family's secluded estate in June 2021
To know South Carolina's Lowcountry is to know the Murdaugh family name. Between 1920 and 2006, three generations of Murdaugh men presided as the chief prosecutor for the state's Fourteenth Judicial Circuit, the longest such stretch of family control in United States history.
"They were the law," Mr Nettles said.
For even longer, the Murdaughs worked at the family-founded litigation firm - Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth & Detrick (PMPED) - amassing a small fortune and building out their dominance in all corners of the Lowcountry. By all accounts, in a region where personal injury firms thrived, theirs was the best.
"They could get a verdict that would exceed the norm dramatically," said South Carolina lawyer Joe McCulloch.
"And when I say exceed the norm - they could turn a $100,000 case into a million dollar settlement."
Their judicial circuit became known as a mecca for plaintiffs. Corporations who could avoid it reportedly skipped the area entirely.
To juries, locals said, the Murdaughs were familiar faces - a reliable advantage at trial.
"When people graduated high school, they would send gifts; they paid for funerals, sent flowers to people who were in the hospital," said Eric Bland, a malpractice attorney based in South Carolina. "They salted the town with goodwill."
From their two offices in Hampton, the Murdaughs established themselves as a de facto authority of the Lowcountry. Their influence was not wide - it did not even span the width of the state - but it was deep. In the small, insular community where they lived, residents said, the Murdaugh family ruled.
"We all knew them," said one waitress in town, who also didn't want to give her name, saying she didn't want to "get in trouble" for speaking out of turn. She also didn't want to be recorded. "You're just going to have to remember this," she said. "They had power. And they took it too far."
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In the third week of the trial, the former chief financial officer of PMPED Jeanne Seckinger described Alex Murdaugh's approach as a lawyer. "The art of bullshit, basically," she said.
Murdaugh's success was due "not from his work ethic", Ms Seckinger said, "but his ability to establish relationships and manipulate people into settlements and clients into liking him."
That work made him rich, millions of dollars that fed his family's wealthy lifestyle - a speedboat, a beach house, their sprawling 1,700 acre hunting property called Moselle, and a staff to assist. But the success, seemingly a Murdaugh birthright, belied his secret: a raging addiction to painkillers and years of theft, fraud and embezzlement.
On the stand in Walterboro, Murdaugh tearfully admitted to taking millions from settlements meant for his clients, stealing $3.7m (£3m) in 2019 alone. It was wrong, he said, but he was desperate: his addiction had drained his bank accounts.
State prosecutors painted a picture of fraud and theft at an almost implausible scale, and of a perpetrator convinced of his impunity. Murdaugh, they allege, stole indiscriminately from colleagues and clients, the young and old, the disabled and sick. He faces nearly 100 separate financial charges.
For years, Ms Seckinger testified, she had noticed yellow flags, small irregularities in Murdaugh's files. But the firm was a "brotherhood", she said. "They trusted him."
Tony Satterfield was another person who trusted Murdaugh. When Mr Satterfield's mother, Gloria - the Murdaugh's housekeeper for 20 years - died after a fall at work, Murdaugh told Tony and his brother they should file a wrongful death suit against him, and that his home insurance would pay compensation. He even suggested a lawyer who could help sue him.
Two of Murdaugh's insurance policies paid out a total of $4.3m, but the Satterfields did not receive a dime. They did not even know the case had been settled. Alex Murdaugh, as he himself admitted in court, had stolen it.
"I feel like if someone had paid closer attention, they would have figured this out," said Eric Bland, the malpractice lawyer who represented the Satterfields against Murdaugh. "But those kids revered the Murdaughs, they trusted him."
The trial has gripped America, with people travelling long distances to be in court
One year after Gloria Satterfield died, there was another fatal accident in the Murdaugh family orbit. But this time, prosecutors allege, the tragedy would present a problem that Alex Murdaugh could not contain.
Late in the evening of 24 February 2019, Paul Murdaugh was aboard the family boat when it rammed headlong into a bridge, throwing three of the six passengers - all young adults - into the cold water below. One of them, 19-year-old Mallory Beach, was killed, her body recovered days later in a marsh several miles away.
At the time of impact, according to all of the other passengers, Paul had been driving. A blood test would find the 19-year-old Murdaugh's blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit.
Taken together, witness testimony from the night renders an image of Murdaugh hellbent on insulating his son. He roamed from room to room, they said, trying to speak to the teenagers. A nurse said he looked like he was trying to "orchestrate something". One passenger, Connor Cook, said in a deposition he was told by Murdaugh "to keep my mouth shut". He was scared, he said, "them being who they are".
Alex Murdaugh's surviving son, Buster, has testified in his father's defence
On the stand last week, Murdaugh called any claims that he had "fixed witnesses" or influenced any part of the boat wreck investigation "totally false".
Still, to those in the Lowcountry, the boat crash was seen "as a test of the system", said Mandy Mattney, a reporter based in South Carolina who has led coverage of the Murdaughs since 2019. "Everyone in Hampton really believed that Paul wouldn't be charged."
Months later, however, Paul was charged with three crimes, including boating under the influence resulting in death. He pleaded not guilty to the charges but died before he faced trial.
Looking back now, it may have been the moment Alex Murdaugh's life began to unravel.
The family of Mallory Beach hired a lawyer named Mark Tinsley to represent them in a wrongful death suit against Murdaugh that could have resulted in millions in damages.
Murdaugh claimed he was broke. "I didn't believe it," Mr Tinsley said during the trial this month.
So Mr Tinsley filed a motion to compel Murdaugh to disclose his finances. A hearing on the matter was scheduled for 10 June, 2021. The disclosure would reveal his years of corporate fraud.
"The fuse was lit," Mr Tinsley said.
On 7 June 2021, three days before the hearing on his finances was scheduled, Alex Murdaugh called 911. His wife Maggie and son Paul had been shot, he said.
By the time the first sheriff's deputy arrived at Moselle, Murdaugh told him his theory: Paul and Maggie had been killed in retaliation for the boat accident.
"He's getting threats," Murdaugh said of his son. "I know that's what it is."
Many in the Lowcountry believed him, and with Paul dead, the wrongful death lawsuit stalled.
But three months later, Murdaugh called 911 again, this time to report that he had been shot in the head on the side of a rural road. He later admitted to arranging a hit on himself so that his surviving son, Buster, could collect on his life insurance. As the ploy fell apart, his firm disclosed they had pushed him out just the day before the incident over alleged embezzlement.
For months, the mystery of Maggie and Paul's murders deepened as authorities said little about the case, offering no clues about suspects or motive. Then, in July 2022, Murdaugh was arrested in connection with the killings.
For more than a month now, Alex Murdaugh's downfall has drawn early morning crowds to the Walterboro courthouse, a line too long to fit inside. Upstairs, in the courtroom's cool air, spectators in suits and sundresses have filled row after row of the dark wooden pews that line the room. At times, the mood has felt strangely like a church reception, Murdaugh's brother and son milling around, offering handshakes and tepid smiles.
The prosecution and defence will present closing arguments in the coming days before the jury retires to consider its verdict.
Here in the Lowcountry, many said they believed Alex Murdaugh was at the end of the line.
But for decades, the Murdaugh family has made an ally out of juries, walking out of courtrooms with the judgments that built their fortunes and cemented their influence.
Alex Murdaugh's fate will be decided the same way, perhaps a final test of his influence in a case where all the evidence is circumstantial - there was no murder weapon found, no blood on Murdaugh's t-shirt that night, no eyewitnesses to the killings.
And his decision to testify - both an unusual move and a legal risk - was perhaps a testament to an enduring self-belief, a confidence in his ability to sway people, like he has done for years.
"I can promise you I would hurt myself before I would hurt one of them," he said last week. "Without a doubt."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64645725
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Worcester school mirrors replaced with 'provocative' posters - BBC News
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2023-03-03
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The posters in girls' toilets at a school in Worcester brand make-up a "harmful drug".
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Hereford & Worcester
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Posters were displayed in one bathroom at Christopher Whitehead Language College in Worcester
A school has been criticised after replacing mirrors in a girls' toilets with posters containing "provocative" messages.
The posters were displayed at Christopher Whitehead Language College in Worcester.
According to images posted on social media some of the quotes included "beauty is nothing without brains" and "make-up is a harmful drug".
The temporary measure was introduced after some "misuse" said the school.
The school's head teacher, Neil Morris, said the bathroom had become a "congregational social area" with some older students blocking the path to toilets, while they socialised.
"One of the English department staff has used this as an opportunity to provide some argumentative discursive letter writing," he said.
"They put some provocative posters up in the one toilet area in their corridor before the lesson.
"This has produced some 'frenzied' powerful writing and debate. With hindsight, the posters should have been placed in their classroom area, not in one toilet."
Speaking to BBC Hereford and Worcester one parent said images of the posters had "circulated very quickly" via social media.
The wording of the posters had made many parents "quite angry", she said.
"Saying that make-up is a harmful drug, and that it's addictive, saying that boys won't start to like you unless you take make-up off, you'll feel ugly if you don't wear it - I think how they've gone about it is not right and they should have let parents know what they were doing."
The mum said her daughter, who had seen the messages via social media, thought the wording to be "quite disturbing".
"I just don't think they're going about it in the right way, this won't stop young girls putting make-up on," she added.
There had been "ongoing" issues about behaviour around toilets at the school, she explained.
"Apparently there's a lot of bullying going on in there, there are horrible comments being written on the mirrors and it sounds as if the staff have had enough."
"[But] they could have got parents together, called a meeting - for the students as well - and maybe try to get some ideas about how the behaviour can be restored back to how it should be."
A "very productive" meeting had been held with pupils and two parents on Wednesday said head teacher, Mr Morris.
He said while the student council was "being challenged to come up with an action plan", staff had noticed pupils' behaviour had "noticeably improved this week".
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Airlines sue Dutch government over flight cuts - BBC News
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2023-03-03
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The government cited noise pollution and climate concerns in its decision to restrict flights.
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Science & Environment
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Five airlines are suing the Dutch government over plans to cut the number of flights operating from Europe's third-busiest airport.
The government cited local concerns at Amsterdam Schiphol about the impact of flying on noise pollution and climate in its decision.
Airlines KLM, Easyjet, Delta, Tui and Corenden say the plans are in breach of EU and international law.
The cap would reduce the annual number of flights from 500,000 to 440,000.
The government says it wants to strike a balance between the economic benefits of a large airport and a healthy living environment, prioritising tackling noise pollution.
Global aviation is responsible for 2.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. These gases warm the atmosphere, contributing to global warming and climate change.
On Friday, KLM announced its intention to challenge the government's plans along with the four other airlines.
In a statement the companies said they are "confident they can reduce noise levels and CO2 emissions while maintaining a network of destinations for the millions of passengers and tonnes of cargo they carry annually to and from Schiphol."
The International Air Transport Association is supporting the legal action with a separate challenge, claiming "no meaningful consultation" with the industry has been undertaken.
In response, a spokesperson for the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure said: "As we are currently facing a potential legal procedure we cannot at this time respond to the arguments shared by KLM and other parties."
They pointed to the ministry's decision to reduce the number of flights, which highlights that residents are concerned about noise pollution and "the impact of the airport on their health, the natural environment and the climate more generally."
The aviation industry globally is wrestling with the challenge of reducing its carbon footprint, including by investing in the development of greener fuels.
"The aviation industry is pursuing a net-zero CO2 emissions goal. This will be achieved primarily through sustainable aviation fuels and new technology. Displacing flights from one airport to another is not going to tackle aviation emissions," an IATA spokesperson told BBC News.
Last week scientists at the Royal Society warned that climate-friendly flying remains out of reach as there are currently no clear alternatives to jet fuel.
Demand for flights is expected to increase despite the growing threat to the planet from global warming. Some environmentalists say that taxes should be introduced to discourage frequent flying.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64842394
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news_science-environment-64842394
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Former prime minister Liz Truss: I didn't do everything perfectly - BBC News
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2023-03-03
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Former UK PM Liz Truss says she "wants to use experience from inside government" to help constituents.
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Norfolk
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Former prime minister Liz Truss has been speaking on a visit to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) in King's Lynn
Liz Truss has admitted she "didn't do everything perfectly" while UK prime minister for just 45 days last year.
The South West Norfolk MP has told the BBC she had been trying to "turn around an economy" by increasing borrowing in her mini budget.
Speaking on a visit to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) in King's Lynn, she said she now had more time to "fight for her constituents".
She refused to apologise for increasing national borrowing.
Ms Truss was UK premier for 45 days in 2022, the shortest serving prime minister in British history.
Speaking to the BBC, she said she had been "trying to turn around an economy that wasn't growing" and deal with serious issues such as those in the NHS and the energy crisis.
"I didn't do everything perfectly and I fully acknowledge that," she said, "but I think I tried to deal with the real issues we were facing."
Liz Truss has been the MP for South West Norfolk since 2010
She declined to apologise for the increase in national borrowing and interest rates following her mini budget, instead insisting the rates would have gone up anyway.
"I've said I could have communicated better, but... the general trend internationally has been interest rates rising," she said.
"We've been through a period of very, very, low interest rates since the end of the financial crisis and setting the interest rate policy is a matter for the Bank of England and they have been putting rates up, as has the Federal Reserve in the US.
"It's easy to point fingers but we were facing a very difficult situation.
"People were very concerned about the cost of their energy bills and their taxes."
Ms Truss inspected the supports holding up the hospital's ageing roof
Last week, Ms Truss was reselected by the South West Norfolk Conservative Association (SWNCA) to stand as a candidate at the next general election. She has represented the safe Conservative seat since May 2010.
She told BBC East she now has "more time to contribute locally" and "fight for constituents" and the services and infrastructure they need.
"That's why I'm here at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital," she said.
"We desperately need a new hospital. The fact is, this one is falling apart, we can see there are stilts holding it up... the roof doesn't work.
"I'm pushing very hard. I'm seeing Jeremy Hunt next week to try and get the commitment to funding this hospital in the budget."
The South West Norfolk MP said she "wants to use experience from inside government" to help her constituents
Ms Truss also wants to fight for better dental services in Norfolk, to try to broker an agreement with local councillors over devolution and make the argument, within the Conservative party, for lower taxes.
"I want to use my experience from inside government," she said.
"I know I got some things right and some things wrong, but I do know how it works and I want to contribute to the future of our country."
She also confirmed she has no plans to try to lead the Conservatives again.
"I've been there I've got the T-shirt," she said.
"I am not interested in running for it again... what I want is a Conservative party that reflects the values of all members across the country."
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Barrister hits out at government response to report into domestic killers - BBC News
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2023-03-17
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The government should take on more of my suggestions, says the head of a review into domestic abuse murders.
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UK
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Poppy Devey Waterhouse and Ellie Gould were murdered by their ex-boyfriends
A barrister who led a review into how domestic killers are sentenced said she is "disappointed" her report has not been adopted in full.
Clare Wade recommended 17 reforms she said were needed to ensure justice for victims of abuse in serious cases.
The government is proceeding with some of them initially, including longer sentences for killers with a history of coercive control or extreme violence.
Justice Secretary Dominic Raab said other proposals are being considered.
Ms Wade's report - published on Friday - recognised that the majority of people killed in domestic cases where there is a background of abuse are women attacked by men.
It was commissioned following the deaths of Ellie Gould 17, and Poppy Devey Waterhouse, 24, who were both stabbed to death in their homes by male partners.
Under the government's plans, judges will be required by law to consider a history of coercive or controlling behaviour as an aggravating factor when deciding on a jail term, meaning those offenders will serve longer behind bars.
Changes will also ensure judges hand down longer sentences where "overkill" - or excessive violence - has been used.
Mr Raab told the BBC he is committed to cracking down on violence against women - but the head of the review warned the proposals "won't achieve the justice they are intended to achieve if they are all only implemented in part".
Ms Wade was asked by the government in September 2021 to review sentencing guidelines after ministers were warned about "systemic misogyny within the criminal justice system" by the victims' commissioner and domestic abuse commissioner.
She said she was concerned the government is pressing ahead with making a history of controlling or coercive behaviour an aggravating factor - but without enshrining it in law as a mitigating factor for when victims who kill their abusers.
Ms Wade, who was the defence barrister for Sally Challen when she became the first woman to have her murder conviction quashed under coercive control laws, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the government's approach "will make matters much worse for women who kill their abusive partners".
Mr Raab told the BBC he was "very sympathetic" to the mitigation argument but insisted he would take time between now and the summer to look at the remaining measures "carefully and not in a knee-jerk way".
Ms Wade found that under the current rules women who kill a dangerous and abusive partner with a weapon can be jailed for longer than men who use their physical strength to murder.
That is because of guidelines mandating a higher starting sentence for crimes where a weapon is used - a rule which was introduced to tackle street knife violence - which Ms Wade wants to be discounted in domestic cases.
Campaigners have previously said that the law inadvertently leads to higher sentences for women who use a weapon to defend themselves from a violent partner or ex, but the government has not adopted this recommendation.
The barrister said "two or three" of her recommendations had been adopted - but she had been told by the government that today's announcement is "interim".
Mr Raab told BBC Breakfast he was "looking at the wider recommendations" and had announced measures that can be introduced swiftly.
Other recommendations in the report which have not yet been adopted include:
Mr Raab said he wasn't able to provide a timetable for when the changes would be implemented.
The government is expected to set out a full response to the review in the summer and legislation "will be introduced as soon as Parliamentary time allows", a Ministry of Justice spokesperson said.
Justice Secretary Dominic Raab said he was committed to making sentences tougher for domestic killers
As well as ensuring that judges take coercive control and extreme violence into account, the government will also:
Carole Gould and Julie Devey, whose daughters' murders by ex-partners led to the review, welcomed the changes but told the BBC they would wait to see what weight the aggravating factors were actually given in court.
Ms Gould told the BBC she would like to see a 25-year starting point for jail sentences where extreme violence was a factor, which she said would have doubled her daughter's killer's sentence.
Ellie Gould, from Wiltshire, was stabbed to death by Thomas Griffiths, then 17, in 2019. He was jailed for 12-and-a-half years, with his age a factor in his sentence.
"In Ellie's case she was strangled and then she was stabbed 13 times. So these murders are particularly violent and brutal and I think we need to push to make sure that's recognised in the sentencing," she said.
Ms Devey, whose daughter Poppy Devey Waterhouse was stabbed 49 times in 2018, said the problem would be how much extra time was added on for the new aggravating factors.
Ms Wade said she did not advocate introducing a 25-year starting point, adding the "system is not designed to be applied mechanistically", and called for emphasis to be put on the history of abuse rather than relying on an automatic sentence requirement.
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Why are doctors demanding the biggest pay rise? - BBC News
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2023-03-17
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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How junior medics have reached the brink of their biggest walkout, in a fight for a 35% hike.
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Health
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On Monday, thousands of junior doctors in England will start a 72-hour strike. They want a 35% pay rise. Yet doctors are among the highest paid in the public sector. So why do they have the biggest pay claim?
The origins of the walkout by British Medical Association members - the biggest by doctors in the history of the NHS - can be found in a series of discussions on social media platform Reddit in late 2021.
A collection of junior doctors were expressing their dissatisfaction about pay.
The numbers chatting online grew quickly and by January 2022 it had led to the formation of the campaign group Doctors Vote, with the aim of restoring pay to the pre-austerity days of 2008.
The group began spreading its message via social media - and, within months, its supporters had won 26 of the 69 voting seats on the BMA ruling council, and 38 of the 68 on its junior doctor committee.
Dr Vivek Trivedi and Dr Rob Laurenson stood for BMA election on a Doctors Vote platform
Two of those who stood on the Doctors Vote platform - Dr Rob Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi - became co-chairs of the committee.
"It was simply a group of doctors connecting up the dots," Dr Laurenson says. "We reflect the vast majority of doctors," he adds, pointing to the mandate from the wider BMA junior doctor membership - 77% voted and of those, 98% backed strike action.
Among some of the older BMA heads, though, there is a sense of disquiet at the new guard. One senior doctor who has now stood down from a leadership role says: "They're undoubtedly much more radical than we have seen before. But they haven't read the room - the pay claim makes them look silly."
Publicly, the BMA prefers not to talk about wanting a pay rise. Instead, it uses the term "pay restoration" - to reverse cuts of 26% since 2008. This is the amount pay has fallen once inflation is taken into account.
To rectify a cut of 26% requires a bigger percentage increase because the amount is lower. This is why the BMA is actually after a 35% increase - and it is a rise it is calling for to be paid immediately.
The argument is more complicated than the ones put forward by most other unions - and because of that it has raised eyebrows.
Firstly, no junior doctor has seen pay cut by 26% in that period. There are five core pay points in the junior doctor contract with each a springboard to the next. It means they move up the pay scale over time until they finish their training.
A junior doctor in 2008 may well be a consultant now, perhaps earning four times in cash terms what they were then.
Secondly, the 26% figure uses the retail price index (RPI) measure of inflation, which the Office for National Statistics says is a poor way to look at rising prices. Using the more favoured consumer price index measure, the cut is 16% - although the BMA defends its use of RPI as it takes into account housing costs.
"The drop in pay is also affected by the start-year chosen," Lucina Rolewicz, of the Nuffield Trust think tank, says. A more recent start date will show a smaller decline, as would going further back in the 2000s.
Another way of looking at pay is comparing it with wages across the economy by looking at where a job sits in terms of the lowest to highest earners.
The past decade has not been a boom time for wage growth in many fields, as austerity and the lack of economic growth has held back incomes.
Last year, the independent Doctors' and Dentists' Remuneration Body looked at this. It found junior doctors had seen their pay, relative to others, fall slightly during the 2010s, but were still among the highest earners, with doctors fresh out of university immediately finding themselves in the top half of earners, while those at the end of training were just outside the top 10%.
Then, of course, career prospects have to be considered. Consultants earn well more than £100,000 on average, putting them in the top 2%. GP partners earn even more.
A pension of more than £60,000 a year in today's prices also awaits those reaching such positions.
But while the scale of the pay claim is new, dissatisfaction with working conditions and pay pre-date the rise of the Doctors Vote movement.
Studying medicine at university takes five years, meaning big debts for most. Dr Trivedi says £80,000 of student loans are often topped up by private debt.
On top of that, doctors have to pay for ongoing exams and professional membership fees. Their junior doctor training can see them having to make several moves across the country and with little control over the hours they work. Their contract means they are required to work a minimum of 40 hours and up to 48 on average - additional payments are made to reflect this.
This lasts many years - junior doctors can commonly spend close to a decade in training.
It is clearly hard work. And with services getting increasingly stretched, it is a job that doctors say is leaving them "demoralised, angry and exhausted", Dr Trivedi says, adding: "Patient care is being compromised."
But while medicine is undoubtedly tough, it remains hugely attractive.
Junior doctor posts in the early years are nearly always filled - it is not until doctors begin to specialise later in their training that significant gaps emerge in some specialities such as end-of-life care and sexual health.
Looking at all doctor vacancy rates across the NHS around 6% of posts are unfilled - for nurses it is nearly twice that level.
Many argue there is still a shortage - with not enough training places or funded doctor posts in the NHS in the first place.
But the fact the problems appear more severe in other NHS roles is a key reason why the government does not seem to be in a hurry to prioritise doctors - formal pay talks to avert strikes have begun with unions representing the rest of the workforce
"If we have some money to give a pay rise to NHS staff," a source close to the negotiations says, "doctors are not at the front of the queue."
Update: This article was updated on 18 May 2023 to make it clear doctors can be required to work up to 48 hours and the footnote on the first chart has changed 'overtime' to 'additional hours'.
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PC's blows against Dalian Atkinson 'outrageous' - BBC News
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2023-03-17
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PC Mary Ellen Bettley-Smith hit the ex-footballer in two sets of three baton strikes, a hearing is told.
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Shropshire
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PC Bettley-Smith's lawyer said of the events: "There's a huge difference between reading about it, and being there"
A PC's second set of blows to ex-footballer Dalian Atkinson on the night he was killed by her colleague was "wholly unjustified" and "outrageous", a disciplinary panel has heard.
Mary Ellen Bettley-Smith beat Mr Atkinson multiple times with her baton as he lay on the ground in 2016.
A criminal retrial last year acquitted her of actual bodily harm.
In a separate police hearing, she denies excessive force amounting to gross misconduct.
Mr Atkinson died after being tasered and kicked in the head by PC Bettley-Smith's West Mercia Police colleague, and romantic partner, PC Benjamin Monk, who was jailed for Mr Atkinson's manslaughter in 2021.
The panel, sitting in Telford on Thursday, heard how the PCs had responded to a 999 call, arriving to find Mr Atkinson outside his father's Telford home, appearing "in the grip of a psychotic episode".
The hearing was told how PC Bettley-Smith, 33, had initially hit Mr Atkinson three times with her baton.
With Mr Atkinson tasered and kicked by Monk, she struck the former Aston Villa, Ipswich Town and Sheffield Wednesday striker a further three times, telling the panel she was "looking over her right shoulder" to see back-up arriving.
Outlining the case against her, Dijen Basu KC said: "The second set [of blows] were wholly unnecessary, wholly unreasonable, wholly unjustified and above all, to use normal language, it was outrageous to do that in the circumstances.
"The man had just been kicked in the head, having been tasered, and dropped to the floor, and with other officers arriving."
PC Benjamin Monk was found guilty of the manslaughter of Dalian Atkinson but cleared of his murder
PC Bettley-Smith told the panel during her evidence on Wednesday: "I just remember what I perceived to be a really aggressive, hostile, growling [person] and just thought we had antagonised him even more by tasering him.
"I perceived him to be trying to propel himself to get up and proceeded to strike Mr Atkinson to the fleshy areas of his body to try and get him down and under control."
But the hearing previously heard that at least three different residents, watching from their windows, described how Mr Atkinson did not move once felled by the taser.
A joint medical report summary recorded Mr Atkinson probably hit his head on the road as he was grounded by a 33-second-long taser burst, and this was "likely to have caused concussion, exacerbated by any kick or kicks to the head" which would possibly have "deepened any loss of consciousness".
The report concluded it was "possible... he was too exhausted to move once the taser was turned off".
Dalian Atkinson died after being tasered by PC Bettley-Smith's partner, Benjamin Monk
In his closing arguments, Patrick Gibbs, Bettley-Smith's barrister, said: "To state the very obvious, this is a short incident, takes place in the dark, it was unexpected, violent.
"Although we examine it in calm and peaceful circumstances, unless you have ever been threatened with violence and had to face it, it may be it is hard to appreciate fully what it's like.
"There's a huge difference between reading about it, and being there."
The panel is set to deliver its finding on Friday, with PC Bettley-Smith facing the sack if the hearing finds against her.
Mr Atkinson started his football career at Ipswich Town, before moving to Sheffield Wednesday, Real Sociedad, Aston Villa and Fenerbahçe in the 1990s.
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The NHS pay dispute could soon be over but we are not there yet - BBC News
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2023-03-17
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Union members are yet to back the deal, and the government still needs to pay for it, says Chris Mason.
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UK Politics
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The reality of any negotiation is that the potential sweet spot for agreement lies in the place where both sides can claim a victory and argue that their course of action all along was pragmatic, sensible and justifiable.
After months of argument and weeks of serious talks, that is where many of the health unions and the government each find themselves in many of the disputes in the NHS in England.
For ages, the government said it wouldn't reopen pay discussions for this financial year, which runs until the end of the month.
And now, to all intents and purposes, it has, offering a one-off lump sum payment.
For ages, trades unions made various pay demands, often well in excess of 5%, which the leaderships of many unions are now saying is acceptable for the next financial year.
Both sides have budged, both sides have compromised.
This has been in the offing for a while: both the potential for compromise, and even the figure arrived at.
Just before Christmas I reported that one-off payments were being discussed within government and within trades unions.
In early January there was a marked change in tone in the talks between the government and many of the health unions in England.
The mood did then appear to sour before Downing Street decided it was time to attempt to bring disputes to a close, if unions were willing to suspend strikes during talks.
Just over a month ago, a path to potential settlement became clear, as did the likelihood that an offer around 5% might be where agreement could be found.
So how will this be paid for?
The Treasury have said for some time that 3.5% in the next financial year was affordable and accounted for. Which leaves a 1.5 percentage point gap and the cost of that lump sum.
Across government, there is an ongoing review looking for efficiencies and savings. It is expected that part of the gap will be filled by finding areas of underspend or savings from administration costs.
Government sources insist there won't be any impact on "front line services".
But precisely what is a "front line service" and how much can be saved from other functions without having an impact on the sort of thing we might notice as patients?
And the other part of the gap will be additional money from the Treasury.
The weight each of these factors bears will depend on the outcome of the review and a discussion prior to the Autumn Statement - the mini-Budget before Christmas - between the Department of Health and the Treasury.
Crucially, the money will be found: the government has committed to that.
This isn't the end of the matter, though, for two reasons.
There is the ongoing dispute involving junior doctors in England, who are demanding a 35% pay rise.
The government is exasperated by this, with some senior figures initially assuming the demand was a typo, that there was a decimal point missing and it should read 3.5%.
But no, their demand is much, much higher, because they argue they have been underpaid for years and years and years.
And, remember, while most union leaderships have recommended their members back this agreement, it is up to those members to decide whether they will.
So while the prevailing wind points towards the potential for sorting these disputes out, we are not there yet.
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Gary Lineker revolt becomes a test of BBC's values - BBC News
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2023-03-13
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The broadcaster is facing a test of its fundamental values and mission following a day of tumult.
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UK
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When the BBC's director general, Tim Davie, took over in 2020, he declared his founding principle to be "impartiality".
Three years later, a row over that principle and how it applies across the corporation has created a crisis that has quite clearly caught managers by surprise.
Familiar, fixed points in the weekly TV schedule unexpectedly falling off air in quick succession is proof of a crisis that has become something much bigger than a row about some tweets.
The Gary Lineker issue is more than an argument about the opinions of a highly paid sports presenter - it is a test of the BBC's fundamental values and the current director general's core mission.
The passions provoked by Lineker's political tweets and the decision to keep him off air until he and the BBC resolve this issue has poured petrol on a fire that was already well alight - the debate about the BBC's role in British politics and perceptions of bias both to the left and the right.
But first, let's look at the immediate issue.
It's worth noting that complaints about Lineker's politically charged tweets are not new.
In 2016 and 2018 the BBC defended comments made by the Match of the Day presenter about child migrants and Brexit by saying he was a freelance presenter, it was a private Twitter account and the stringent rules for journalists did not apply equally to sports presenters.
The guidelines at the time said the risk to compromising the BBC's impartiality "is lower where an individual is expressing views publicly on an unrelated area, for example, a sports or science presenter expressing views on politics or the arts".
Since then rules have been tightened. New guidelines on social media demanded an "extra responsibility" for presenters with a "high profile". Some described the new rule as the "Lineker clause".
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: BBC boss Tim Davie asked if he bowed to government pressure
The question is whether that rule is being fairly applied. Twitter is awash with examples of what some people think are presenters who have gone too far over recent years. Names frequently raised include Alan Sugar, Chris Packham and Andrew Neil.
In response, Mr Davie said on Saturday evening that he was in "listening mode" and suggested there might be an escape route by re-examining those guidelines.
There is good reason for him to want to bring this to a conclusion. Impartiality is hugely important but so too is providing a service that people pay for through their licence fee.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. WATCH: How the Match of the Day row played out on Saturday... in 60 seconds
Match of the Day went ahead on BBC One on Saturday night - but was reduced to a 20-minute edition that did not have a presenter, pundits or any commentary - while other football coverage was dropped.
Every cancelled programme is a source of further complaint from licence payers who may not care what Lineker says on Twitter but care deeply about their favourite programmes staying on air on a Saturday night.
There is also the wider context of a government that has in recent years been critical of the BBC and its perceived liberal bias.
Greg Dyke, a former director general, who left the BBC over a clash with the Labour Government in 2004, says the decision to pull Gary Lineker from Match of the Day looks like a corporation bowing to political pressure from a Tory government.
All of which leads to another issue that asks questions of the BBC's impartiality, the BBC's chairman, Richard Sharp, a former donor to the Conservative party who is the subject of an ongoing inquiry looking in to his appointment and what he did or did not disclose about his part in the arrangement of an £800,000 loan guarantee to the former prime minister, Boris Johnson. He has denied any involvement in arranging the loan.
Lineker has become a lightning rod for a much bigger debate and the BBC would like to resolve the issue as quickly as possible to stop a very public row turning into a monumental crisis. However, with the corporation saying it wants Lineker, with his 8.7 million Twitter followers, to stop the political tweets while he shows no sign of agreeing to be silenced, it's hard to see quite how this will resolve itself.
For the BBC this is about impartiality but to many others it is about free speech. Indeed, there is a statue outside the BBC's headquarters in London of the author of 1984, George Orwell, a former BBC talks producer. Inscribed on the wall behind the Orwell statue are these words: "If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
Eighty years after Orwell left the BBC, the corporation finds itself in a deepening crisis. That thought from Orwell and the questions it raises for the BBC are at the very heart of the Lineker debate.
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Daniel White strangled and slit wife's throat in their home - BBC News
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2023-03-25
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Daniel White kicked open his wife's locked door, strangled her and then cut her throat.
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Wales
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Angie White was strangled and her throat was slit
Alexa recordings were used to piece together how a domestic abuser murdered his wife.
Daniel White, 36, kicked open Angie White's locked bedroom door, strangled her and cut her throat.
He then fled the house in Swansea in his wife's car before phoning police to confess in October 2022.
White, from Idris Terrace, Plasmarl, was given a life sentence of at least 20 years and 10 months at Swansea Crown Court after admitting murder.
Officers went to their home where they found the front door unlocked and the body of Mrs White, 45, in her bedroom.
Swansea Crown Court heard labourer White had a long history of domestic violence, including against Mrs White.
At the time of the murder, he was on licence from prison after receiving a 10-year extended sentence for rape and assault.
Fearful of her husband, Mrs White had installed a mortice lock on her bedroom door, which White kicked in after an argument started on WhatsApp.
Neighbours heard banging, shouting and screaming at about 03:00 GMT on 22 October last year before hearing a car drive away.
Shortly before 06:00, White called police, telling a call handler: "I've strangled her and cut her throat. She's dead.
"We argued and she locked the door and said she wanted me out.
"All I wanted to do was take my stuff and leave. I just shut her up.
"I strangled her, I ran downstairs, and I cut her throat to make sure she was dead."
The court heard the couple had an Amazon Alexa, which can control household electrical items when activated by a voice prompt.
Detectives discovered voice commands made by White and his wife at the time of the murder had been saved.
Prosecutor William Hughes said: "Police have been able to discover that at 3.03am Angie in her bedroom said, 'Alexa, volume three'.
"At 3.16am Daniel White's voice can be heard saying, 'Alexa stop'.
"He then goes back downstairs into the living room and says, 'Turn on - Alexa' but what can also be heard is that he is out of breath and these appear to be the moments when, the Crown say, he has gone to get the knife.
"He then returns to the bedroom at 3.18am when he says 'Alexa, turn on the electric light', and at 3.19am he says, 'Alexa, turn off the TV'.
"So, the Crown's reasonable interpretation is after 3.03am and before 3.16am Daniel White had burst through the door and initially strangled Angie, then went downstairs to get the knife, and thereafter cut her throat."
The court heard the couple had begun arguing on WhatsApp. The last message they exchanged was at 03:11.
A pathologist found Mrs White died from knife wounds to her neck. But there was also evidence she had been strangled.
Mrs White's family said nothing would be able to bring her back
White previously admitted murder but refused to attend court for sentencing.
Defence barrister Peter Rouch said the marriage was effectively over and what happened was "a spontaneous act of violence".
He said: "I am not suggesting that is justification, but Your Honour has asked what led to it, and it would seem by putting the picture together as best one can, from the messages and the timings, that seems (to be) what has taken place."
"He does not have the courage to face the family and friends of the woman whose life he so brutally ended," he said.
"You have a disgraceful history of assaulting women who have had the great misfortune to be in a relationship with you."
He said: "When you entered the bedroom you strangled her, probably rendering her unconscious.
"When she was face to face with you, with your hands around her throat, she must have been absolutely terrified.
"After she probably lost consciousness, you didn't seek help for her, you went downstairs and got a knife.
"You took it into her bedroom in order to kill her, to finish her off."
The judge said he had a "cowardly desire to dominate her".
He added: "You did just that - you savagely slit her throat knowing that would kill her."
Speaking afterwards, Mrs White's family said: "Angie was a much-loved daughter, sister, mother, grandmother, and auntie.
"Nothing can bring our beloved Angie back. We shall miss that silly giggle for evermore.
"Daniel White admitted his guilt but continued to use his manipulative behaviour to delay the outcome.
"He deliberately absences himself in what we see as his continuing attempts to control this situation and his cowardliness in avoiding facing us and justice for what he did to Angie."
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said a review was underway.
"This was a horrific crime and our sympathies are with the family and friends of Angie White. As with all serious further offences a review is now underway and it would be inappropriate for us to comment further at this stage," he said.
"Serious further offences are rare but we are investing £155m more every year into the Probation Service to improve the supervision of offenders and recruit thousands more staff to keep the public safe."
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UK economy: When are you going to feel better off? - BBC News
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2023-03-25
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How politicians answer that will set the terms for the next election, writes Laura Kuenssberg.
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UK Politics
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When are you going to feel better off?
How politicians answer that big question sets the terms for the next election. The response is certainly not this week.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak might have told MPs "we are halving inflation" but repeating that political slogan in the Commons doesn't make it true. In fact he was wrong - just as economic sages were mistaken.
Prices went up faster in February than in January - which came as a surprise to the experts. Interest rates edged up too and will make rent, mortgages and credit more expensive.
The message to workers, firms and families this week is bleak - your costs are going up but don't ask for a pay rise and don't put your prices up if you're a business.
There is no shortage of evidence of how hard it is for millions of families to pay the bills. By the Treasury's admission inflation "strangles growth and erodes family budgets".
And its effects can be long-lasting. As one German economist said: "Inflation is like toothpaste. Once it's out, you can hardly get it back in again."
As an aside, even that essential item has gone up significantly, with one famous brand hiking prices of a tube from £3 to £4.
What the government hopes is that next month, and the month after that, and the month after that, the number crunchers are correct and inflation will drop pretty sharply by the end of the year and the toothpaste does, after all, go back in the tube.
But inflation slowing down doesn't mean prices will drop. What politicians and the public have to confront is that there could be many years where voters feel hard up.
For this week's show we asked Richard Hughes - the country's number cruncher in chief who runs the independent Office for Budget Responsibility - how he would answer that big question. If you're squeamish about your finances you might want to look away now.
He told me we're in the middle of "the biggest squeeze on living standards we've faced in this country on record" - but also it might be five or even six years before people start feeling more prosperous again.
As he put it: "People's real spending power doesn't get back to the level it was before the pandemic even after five years, even by the time we get to the late 2020s." Gulp.
There is also a separate and tricky conversation to be had about the influence of his organisation, the OBR.
Their work, famously ignored by Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng when they were in charge, tells governments how much they can spend and borrow if they want to stick to their own rules about when they will balance the country's books.
The idea is that with an independent body publicly checking ministers' arithmetic the public can have confidence in what's being done.
But their forecasts, as Mr Hughes happily admits, often turn out to be wrong, and change every six months. Yet they can have enormous influence over what politicians decide.
For example, several sources told me the government only decided to expand childcare in the recent Budget because the OBR told them more than half of the cost would be covered by the benefit of getting some parents back to work.
You can, as many politicians do, believe in the merits of having an independent expert cast their eye over the figures, but also have quiet concerns about how the OBR can draw the limits of political conversations when its forecasts - through no fault of its own - change dramatically.
Whether you are asking an economist, a politician, or just looking at your own bank balance, the broad assessment is not likely to shift - times are tough for the foreseeable future.
Inflation - the politicians' nightmare - is likely to drop by the end of the year, but Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are going to have to tempt you to the ballot box in 2024 when the country still feels hard up.
We can already see the outlines of the Conservatives' script. With inflation (they fervently hope) down and the economy (fingers crossed) avoiding recession there will, ministers believe, be signs the country's fortunes have turned and they can persuade hard-up voters to stick with them.
As one minister says: "The argument we want to make is 'I'm just starting to feel better off, don't risk it'."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: So we just have to accept life will be even harder, chancellor?
We've lived through unprecedented hard times, they'll argue, and things are getting better so don't take a chance on something new.
The aspiration is also that ministers will be able to start cutting taxes again - perhaps in the autumn of this year or more likely next spring.
One former cabinet minister says voters will start to feel better off once a Conservative government is re-elected because they hope they'll be able to say during the campaign that "inflation is lower, wages outstripping inflation" and they have a "clear plan for the economy".
Even if Rishi Sunak becomes an expert in political gymnastics it's unlikely the Conservatives will avoid taking any flak for the hammering incomes have taken while they've been in charge.
But you can expect in the next few months for ministers to emphasise more regularly the help that's already on offer - whether that's cheaper bus fares or the hugely expensive energy price guarantee.
If you ask Labour politicians when the country will feel better off the answer is also far in the future.
One shadow minister says the decline in living standards has been "brutal" while another says "people are not going to feel better off for a very long time".
Even if inflation does start to slow, if you believe the polls that show Labour way ahead the tough economic reality for many families gives them a political advantage.
However strongly the Conservatives argue they've had to deal with unprecedented pressures, hard-up voters do not tend to reward those in charge. But wise Labour heads are all too aware that successful oppositions don't just say "we're not the other guys".
That's why we're seeing the leadership put so much time and effort into trying to create a sense they would spend taxpayers' money wisely and talk repeatedly about how they would get the economy to grow.
The shadow minister believes Labour tends to win when it offers "hope after years when the Tories look a bit clapped out".
So when we ask "when are you going to start feeling better off?" the answer is "not much, if at all, before the next election".
It's likely that vote will happen when there is not much cash in our own pockets or the public purse.
And we face a conversation where the Conservatives seize on any signs of progress to claim a change is not worth the risk while Labour highlights the hard times we have been living through and says it's time for something else.
Just like economic forecasts, political predictions can turn out to be miles off. And of course, how we make a living and how the country pays its way is not the only factor determining how people vote.
But after years of hardship you'll be asked in the general election who you believe will help you be better off.
The answer millions of voters give will likely determine who takes No 10.
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Boris Johnson clashes with MPs over Partygate denials - BBC News
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2023-03-22
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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The former PM repeatedly insists he did not deliberately lie to Parliament in a marathon grilling.
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UK Politics
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Boris Johnson has repeatedly insisted he did not intentionally mislead Parliament over Partygate in a heated grilling by MPs.
The former prime minister began the marathon three-hour session with a Bible in his hands, as he swore: "Hand on heart, I did not lie to the House."
He admitted social distancing had not been "perfect" at gatherings in Downing Street during Covid lockdowns.
But he said they were "essential" work events, which he claimed were allowed.
He insisted the guidelines - as he understood them - were followed at all times.
But MPs challenged his assertions, with the committee head, Labour's Harriet Harman, at one point describing them as "flimsy", and saying they "did not amount to much at all".
He also clashed repeatedly with Conservative MP Sir Bernard Jenkin, angrily telling the senior Tory he was talking "complete nonsense" by suggesting he had relied too much on what political advisers were telling him.
The Privileges Committee is investigating statements Mr Johnson made to Parliament, after details of booze-fuelled parties and other gatherings in Downing Street emerged in the media from the end of 2021 onwards.
If he is found by MPs to have deliberately or recklessly misled Parliament, he faces suspension from the Commons - a move that might trigger a by-election in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency.
Mr Johnson, with a legal adviser at his side, and supporters including former cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg sat behind him, was in a combative mood as he took MPs' questions for the long-awaited session.
The main thrust of his argument was that boozy gatherings in Downing Street and staff leaving dos had been "essential" work events, which he believed had been in line with the Covid guidelines in place at the time.
He insisted statements he gave to the Commons - including when he told MPs in December 2021 that Covid rules and guidance were followed "at all times" - were made "on the basis of what I honestly knew and believed at the time".
Shown a picture of himself surrounded by colleagues and drinks during a leaving do, Mr Johnson argued No 10 staff cannot have an "invisible electrified fence around them".
"They will occasionally drift into each other's orbit," he said, accepting that "perfect social distancing is not being observed" in the image but denying it was in breach of the guidance.
"I believe it was absolutely essential for work purposes," he said of the event for outgoing communications director Lee Cain in November 2020.
"We were following the guidance to the best of our ability - which was what the guidance provided."
He said when he told MPs on 1 December 2021 that the guidance had been followed at all times, he was recalling the "huge" amount of effort to try and stop Covid spreading within No 10.
He gave examples of measures in place such as keeping windows open, working outdoors where possible, limiting the number of people in rooms and testing, which "helped mitigate the difficulties we had in maintaining perfect social distancing".
Sir Bernard replied: "I'm bound to say that if you said all that at the time to the House of Commons, we probably wouldn't be sitting here. But you didn't."
Asked later in the session by Conservative MP Andy Carter if he should have made these arguments at the time, he said: "Perhaps if I had elucidated more clearly what I meant - and what I felt and believed about following the guidance - that would have helped."
Questioned on what he would have told other organisations, if asked at a government pandemic press conference, whether they could hold "unsocially distanced farewell gatherings", Mr Johnson said: "I would have said it is up to organisations, as the guidance says, to decide how they are going to implement the guidance amongst them."
Boris Johnson says gatherings at Downing Street - including this leaving do on 13 November 2020 for a special adviser - were work events
He also insisted his birthday gathering, in June 2020 at the height of the pandemic, for which he was fined by police, had been "reasonably necessary for work purposes".
And he defended the presence of luxury interior designer Lulu Lytle - who was revamping the Johnsons' Downing Street flat - because she was a "contractor" working in No 10.
He said then Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who was also present, would have been "just as surprised as I was" about the fines they received.
"I thought it was a completely innocent event," Mr Johnson said. "It did not strike me as anything other than an ordinary common or garden workplace event."
In another tetchy exchange with Sir Bernard, Mr Johnson was asked about his comments that it was "no great vice" to rely on political advisers for assurances before making statements to the House of Commons.
Sir Bernard expressed surprise that Mr Johnson, if there was even "the thinnest scintilla of doubt" about whether rules were followed, would not have sought advice from civil servants or government lawyers.
"If I was accused of law-breaking and I had to give undertakings to Parliament... I would want the advice of a lawyer," Sir Bernard told him.
A clearly annoyed Mr Johnson told the senior Tory: "This is complete nonsense, I mean, complete nonsense.
"I asked the relevant people. They were senior people. They had been working very hard."
The committee will deliver its verdict on Mr Johnson by the summer.
The full House of Commons would vote on any sanction it recommends. Mr Sunak has agreed to give Tory MPs a free vote on their conscience over Mr Johnson's fate.
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Andrew Tate: Brothers' custody in Romania extended by another month - BBC News
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2023-03-22
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The controversial social media influencer and his brother have both been detained since December.
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Europe
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Under Romanian law Andrew and Tristan Tate can be held for up to six months in detention
Controversial influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan will remain in custody in Romania for a fourth consecutive month, a court has ruled.
The brothers have been detained since December and are being investigated on allegations of rape, people trafficking and forming an organised crime group. Both have denied wrongdoing.
Mr Tate's lawyers say he will be held until the end of April.
British investigators are also helping Romanian police with information from the UK side, the BBC has learned.
The brothers' lawyers said that prosecutors had brought no new evidence to Wednesday's hearing.
They also suggested their clients' notoriety was contributing to the decision to keep them in custody.
Mateea Petrescu, spokeswoman for the Tates, said that - for the first time - the judge had asked the brothers to respond directly to prosecution arguments that they were a flight risk and a risk to public order.
Andrew Tate, 36 and his brother Tristan, 34, were arrested in late December 2022.
Despite what was described as a "dynamic exchange", the judge eventually ruled the two men should be kept in preventative custody for another 30 days, until the end of April.
Ms Petrescu said the team was "speechless" at the court's decision.
She said the continued detention had "irreparably harmed" the brothers' image and that it would "take years to rebuild their reputation".
A lawyer acting for the Tates in the US recently contacted one of the alleged victims in the case, threatening to sue her and her family for $300m (£244m) for defamation unless she retracted her claims.
Judges have consistently justified their decision to keep them in custody, on grounds that they might pressure witnesses or interfere with evidence.
At previous hearings, investigators have reportedly presented evidence from phone calls recorded during the brothers' detention.
Under Romanian law, suspects can be kept in detention for up to six months without trial, with the agreement of the courts.
Another lawyer, Eugen Vidineac, told the BBC: "In all the volumes of the file, you never find one piece of paper with pornographic content to sustain the theory that [the women] were obliged to post pornographic content".
But leaked court documents, seen by the BBC last month, outlined testimony from alleged victims claiming to be forced to earn €10,000 (£8,800) a month on social media platforms, under the alleged threat of physical violence.
Court papers also described debts being used as "a form of psychological coercion".
Since investigations began here last April, six women have been identified by prosecutors as victims.
Four of them are believed to have given testimony against the Tates.
Two others have said they do not consider themselves as victims, but are reportedly still being treated as such by investigators, on the grounds some victims retain a strong emotional bond to their traffickers.
One expert in human trafficking law said, in any future trial, it is crucial prosecutors present hard evidence rather than rely solely on victim testimony.
Romanian-American University's Silvia Tabusca told the BBC: "What's different [in the Tate investigation] is the way the prosecutor has started to build the case."
Silvia Tabusca is a Romanian organised crime expert from the European Center for Legal Education and Research
"Usually, most of the cases in Romania are built on the testimony of the victim, but in this case, I see that a lot is based on other types of evidence, mainly wire-tapping and information from their computers and programmes."
She says there is a legal overlap in Romania between human trafficking - which implies force or coercion; and pimping - which implies a victim's consent.
"There is huge public pressure on victims," she said.
"We've learned that after two or three years, victims are not willing to cooperate with the court. So if the trial is built mainly on the testimony of the victim, the [defence] lawyers can easily change the charge from human trafficking to pimping."
There are also legal loopholes around online exploitation - something the European Union is currently trying to tighten.
"The means and tools that traffickers use have changed," said Malin Björk, the European Parliament's rapporteur on the issue.
She's heading discussions on a new EU directive which "makes clear that crimes conducted online are just as criminal as those off-line".
It is expected to be voted on by the European Parliament this summer.
Investigators in Romania have now begun looking into financial records, with a new focus on possible money-laundering.
Daniel Ticau, a former prosecutor with the organised crime unit leading the Tate investigation, said this case could shine a spotlight on Romania's capacity to carry out these kinds of probes.
"From my point of view, there is a serious lack of political will to develop this capacity to properly handle the parallel financial investigations in organised crime, and in particular in human trafficking, drug trafficking and other serious crimes," he said.
Ms Tabusca added that Romania faces a striking lack of resources more generally.
"At present, there are more than 800 ongoing cases of human trafficking, many of them international cases and very complicated cases," she explained.
"For these 800 cases, we have seven prosecutors and 48 police officers."
As well as investigating ongoing cases of alleged human trafficking, she said, they also have to constantly monitor the phenomenon among a population of more than 20 million people.
It can take months or years to put together an indictment in a human trafficking case.
With three months left before Andrew and Tristan Tate must be either released from custody or brought to trial, the spotlight is on Romania to show it can handle the pressure.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65041668
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Ex-spy says MI5 did not want Real IRA leader arrested - BBC News
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2023-03-22
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US trucker David Rupert infiltrated the innermost circles of the group behind the 1998 Omagh bomb attack.
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Northern Ireland
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. David Rupert said the Real IRA's leader Michael McKevitt wanted an American on its army council.
A US trucker who spied on a dissident Irish republican group says the security service MI5 did not want its leader arrested.
David Rupert infiltrated the Real IRA, the group behind the 1998 Omagh bomb atrocity, for the FBI and MI5.
His undercover evidence was used in 2003 to prosecute Michael McKevitt, the leader of the Real IRA, for directing terrorism.
Mr Rupert told BBC Spotlight that MI5 wanted to keep gathering intelligence.
The programme put this to MI5 but they did not respond.
The recent shooting of a top police officer in Northern Ireland shows the threat from dissident republicans has not gone away.
Dissident republicans have not signed up to the peace process and remain committed to using violence to try to bring about a united Ireland.
Mr Rupert, who ran a trucking company in Chicago, first visited Ireland in 1992.
His ongoing trips and friendship with Joe O'Neill, a hard-line Irish republican who ran a pub in Bundoran, County Donegal, coincided with a critical point in Northern Ireland's peace process.
When an FBI agent arrived at his Chicago office in the summer of 1994, Rupert at first thought he had come to talk about the trucking business, but the agent raised the subject of Ireland and O'Neill.
"I wouldn't have done anything really illegal but the grey area was my specialty. So we went back and forth.
"'Would you come to work for us?' he asked. I said, 'No man, I don't need to get on the bad side of a foreign terrorist organisation'."
The first IRA ceasefire of 1994 meant someone like Rupert would be a valuable asset to the FBI.
With US President Bill Clinton heavily invested in the peace process, the White House needed to know from their own spies on the ground if breakaway republicans, like Joe O'Neill who was aligned to a group known as the Continuity IRA, would fill the vacuum.
The FBI agent returned to Rupert's office with a new proposition - the FBI would pay for his trips to Ireland in return for information.
The flights-for-information agreement worked out and eventually led to the US trucker and his wife Maureen moving to Ireland to run a pub in County Leitrim, financed by the FBI.
"The value was it allowed me to become ingrained in the IRA population and to become accepted," said Rupert.
Watch Spotlight - I Spy on iPlayer or on BBC One Northern Ireland on Tuesday 21 March at 22.40 GMT.
By early 1997, the couple was no longer running the pub but the FBI's investment in the trucker turned spy had paid off.
He had become trusted by O'Neill's Continuity IRA group, and he had also positioned himself as the bagman for their US fundraising effort, regularly delivering thousands of dollars from Chicago to O'Neill's group in Ireland.
In the wake of a second IRA ceasefire in 1997, the danger posed by dissident republicans was even higher.
The FBI already had a US spy embedded within the Continuity IRA.
MI5 then made their move and by the summer of 1997, Rupert was working for the FBI and MI5.
"We used an encryption system when I sent an email it went to both handlers," he said.
That year, a dangerous split within the republican movement would radically change Rupert's spy operations against dissident republicans opposed to the peace process.
The Real IRA was formed in 1997 by Michael McKevitt, who left the Provisional IRA in fury over the direction of the peace process.
David Rupert gave his first television interview to BBC NI Spotlight reporter Jennifer O'Leary
McKevitt, the man who had been in charge of the Provisional IRA's arsenal for decades, saw peace talks as a sell-out and was determined to continue the war against the British.
In 1999, McKevitt not only brought Rupert into his secret army to help him fund his terror, he spoke in detail during what was only their second meeting about his plans to bomb Britain.
"Their first hit is going to be directed specifically at something like troops or London centre financial district," Rupert wrote as part of an email to his MI5 handler.
"To make a big enough splash to overshadow anything that could have happened at Omagh."
The 1998 Omagh bomb atrocity killed 29 people including a woman pregnant with twins, which the Real IRA claimed responsibility for.
Rupert's infiltration of the Real IRA put him in a different league of danger - McKevitt lived by a militant Irish republican code that demanded spies be executed.
Yet, despite the risks Rupert maintained his facade and was appointed to the top table of the Real IRA, its army council.
The development prompted elation from his MI5 handler, said Rupert.
"MI5 were wonderful to work with," he said.
"I would call them on my way to a meeting with McKevitt and they would tell me that he's probably going to ask you this or that and when he does, here's what we want you to tell him, and they were pretty accurate."
However, Rupert's spy masters seemingly had different priorities.
The FBI is primarily an evidence-gathering organisation, versus MI5 whose focus is on intelligence gathering.
"MI5 wanted to keep it going forever," said Rupert.
"The FBI won. I mean they won the argument. It was more important to MI5 to have a thumb on the pulse than it is to go arrest a couple of people and prosecute them."
In early 2001, in a top-secret meeting in Dublin, Rupert made a detailed statement to Irish police who were building a case to prosecute McKevitt, who lived in the Irish Republic.
His day of reckoning came on 29 March 2001, when police knocked on his door.
Rupert went on to face the Real IRA leader in a Dublin court and in August 2003, McKevitt was sentenced to 20 years in prison for directing the activities of the Real IRA.
"I was just doing a job," said Rupert.
"And doing a job that I viewed as doing for good to stop them from killing people."
• None Who are the dissident republicans?
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Olivia Pratt-Korbel murder-accused was 'high-level' drug dealer - BBC News
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2023-03-22
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Thomas Cashman tells a jury he was making between £3,000 and £5,000 a week selling cannabis.
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Liverpool
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The man accused of murdering Olivia Pratt-Korbel was a "high-level cannabis dealer", he has told a court.
Thomas Cashman is accused of killing the nine-year-old and injuring her mother after chasing Joseph Nee into their house in Liverpool on 22 August.
He has started giving evidence at the trial at Manchester Crown Court.
The 34-year-old told the jury he was making between £3,000 and £5,000 a week selling 5kg - 10kg (11 - 22lb) of cannabis.
He said: "I would buy cars, bikes, save some, go on holidays and just spend it on stuff that I enjoyed basically."
He said he left school at the age of 13 or 14 and by the time he was about 16 and working at a fair in Wales he was smoking cannabis every day.
Mr Cashman, who has two children with "childhood sweetheart" Kaylee Sweeney, said he started selling cannabis when he was about 18 on a "small scale".
He said: "I was basically smoking my profit."
But by 2021, when he and the family moved to a home in Grenadier Drive, Liverpool, he was selling at a "high level", he told the court.
He said: "I only ever sold it in my area where I've been brought up, so everyone I sold it to was everyone I knew."
Olivia was shot when a man burst into her house and opened fire
John Cooper KC, defending, said: "You became a cannabis dealer, didn't you?"
Mr Cooper then asked: "Were you a high-level cannabis dealer?"
To which the defendant answered: "Yes."
He said his "catchment area" was around the Finch Lane area of Dovecot in Liverpool and he would often get the drugs dropped at his sister's house in Mab Lane.
From there he said he would take them to whoever had asked for them, or to his friend's house, which he said was used as a "stash house".
But there were issues with him using his sister's house, he told the court.
He said: "My sister's boyfriend is an ex-police officer.
"He didn't like it and he got on [at] my sister over it and they were having arguments between each other about me always being there."
He said on the day of the shooting his sister had told him to stop having people round to the house because of the arguments.
The defendant told the jury he knew Mr Nee, who he is alleged to have targeted in the shooting, and never had any problems with him or his brothers.
He claimed the day before Olivia was shot he was at the Nee family home to look at his brother's new Audi A6 car.
Asked about the suggestion he was "scoping things out" the day before the shooting, he said: "That is untrue, I wasn't."
Thomas Cashman told the jury he was making between £3,000 and £5,000 a week selling cannabis
He denied making any "confession" after the shooting to a key prosecution witness, a woman Mr Cashman was said to be having a "fling" with.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, claims Mr Cashman came to her house after the shooting where he changed his clothing and she overheard him say he had "done Joey".
Mr Cashman said he dealt drugs to the woman's boyfriend, who owed him £25,000, and said she threatened to tell his partner they were having a relationship because he refused to go to Marbella to start a new life with her.
Earlier the court heard the intended target of the shooting that killed Olivia was a convicted drug dealer with "enemies".
The jury was told the shooting was not the first Mr Nee had been involved in with David McLachlan KC, prosecuting, saying he and members of his immediate family "had their enemies".
He said Mr Nee was shot at by someone in March 2018, though the prosecution did not suggest Mr Cashman was responsible for or involved in the incident.
The jury was also told Mr Nee had convictions for conspiracy to supply controlled drugs, possession with intent to supply controlled drugs, possession of controlled drugs, burglary and theft, aggravated vehicle taking, theft of or from vehicles, associated motoring offences and a public order offence.
Mr Cashman denies the murder of Olivia, the attempted murder of Mr Nee, wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm to Olivia's mother Cheryl Korbel, and two counts of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life.
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SNP leadership: The battle raging for the party's soul - BBC News
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2023-03-14
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The leadership contest has opened up a heated debate about economics, independence and social issues.
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Scotland politics
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BBC Scotland is set to host the latest debate between the three candidates to lead the SNP. Kate Forbes, Ash Regan and Humza Yousaf will answer audience questions in Edinburgh, in a race which has exposed old divisions.
It was an occasion of real political drama, a moment when it seemed the Scottish National Party might tear itself apart.
"Those of us who put Scotland and the party above narrow personal or political obsessions cannot and will not tolerate behaviour which is divisive and harmful," thundered the SNP leader in a fiery speech.
Immediately, a group of rebel SNP members strode out of the hall in protest; raucous jeers, cheers and applause ringing in their ears.
This is not a description of the latest leadership hustings but of the SNP's 1982 conference in Ayr.
The leader was Gordon Wilson; the rebels subsequently expelled from the party included a young Alex Salmond; and their demand was for the SNP to embrace a vision of Scotland as a socialist republic.
Now, four decades later, old fissures are opening up again, with heated debate about the party's direction of travel on economics, independence and social issues.
All this is unfolding in a very different political landscape.
Having run Scotland's devolved government since 2007, the SNP of today is vastly bigger, slicker, and more successful than it was when it had only two MPs in the early '80s.
The group of rebel SNP members strode out of the party's 1982 conference in Ayr
A new generation of nationalist politicians - Kate Forbes, Ash Regan and Humza Yousaf - are not only competing for the party crown, but also to become the sixth first minister of Scotland since powers over health, education and other domestic issues were devolved from London to Edinburgh in 1999.
Neither Ms Forbes nor Mr Yousaf were born at the time of the Ayr affair. Ms Regan was at primary school.
For much of their adult lives, their party has been known for its extraordinary public unity and iron political discipline, first under Mr Salmond and then, following Scotland's rejection of independence in the 2014 referendum, under Nicola Sturgeon.
But trouble was brewing well before Ms Sturgeon announced her shock resignation last month, triggering the leadership contest.
Her ministry had been under pressure on economics from both left and right; on independence from frustrated members of both the SNP and Mr Salmond's breakaway Alba Party; and on gender reform from critics led by the Harry Potter author JK Rowling.
The SNP has been known for its public unity and political discipline
First, the economics. Since bringing the Scottish Green Party into government two years ago to support her minority administration, the first minister had been accused of indulging an anti-growth agenda.
This was allegedly exemplified by her rejection of new drilling for oil and gas, the imposition on business of an unpopular bottle recycling scheme, and plans to curb alcohol advertising.
Despite raising taxes on the richest Scots, the SNP leader was also accused by the left of cosying up to capitalists.
Jonathon Shafi, the author of a pro-independence newsletter called Independence Captured, argues that the SNP has been "captured by corporate lobbyists".
He accuses the Scottish government of embracing neoliberal economic policies which prioritise capital over labour by, for example, flogging off national green energy resources on the cheap, and forming an alliance with the Conservatives to create freeports, which he derides as "tax havens".
Ms Sturgeon rejects such criticism but economic issues have been a key part of the campaign so far.
A special edition of the Debate Night programme will air at 20:00 on BBC One Scotland. The candidates will face questions from an audience of voters from across the political spectrum in Edinburgh.
The debate, hosted Stephen Jardine, will also be streamed live on the BBC News website and on BBC iPlayer.
Kate Forbes, currently on maternity leave from her role as finance secretary, is often described as the most business-friendly contender, although she stresses that she champions growth for a purpose: to secure independence and end poverty.
Ms Forbes has described the bottle return scheme as having the potential to cause "economic carnage". She argues that after Covid, Brexit, and energy price hikes, firms should be given "a bit of breathing space".
Mr Yousaf and Ms Regan have also expressed reservations about the scheme, and all three candidates have raised concerns about the potential impact of a proposed advertising ban on Scotland's £5.5bn whisky industry.
If either Ms Forbes or Ms Regan is victorious, the power-sharing deal with the Greens would appear to be in jeopardy while Mr Yousaf is generally seen as the continuity candidate, a position which has opened him up to the kind of attacks rarely seen since the intra-party warfare of the 1980s.
When Ms Forbes used a debate televised by STV to trash Mr Yousaf's record as transport minister, justice secretary and health secretary, it felt like a lid had blown off a simmering pot.
"More of the same is not a manifesto," said Ms Forbes, "it's an acceptance of mediocrity."
In the next debate, hosted by Channel 4 News, Mr Yousaf hit back, accusing his rival of being the Conservatives' favoured candidate.
The Scottish Tories, he claimed, were "rooting for you to win".
Labour senses an opportunity here, both for Sir Keir Starmer's attempts to win the keys to 10 Downing Street in London and for Anas Sarwar's ambition to one day move into the first minister's official residence, Bute House in Edinburgh.
In Monday's Sky News debate all three candidates said that in the event of a hung parliament at Westminster they would, in theory, prop up a minority Labour government in return for the formal transfer to Holyrood of the power to hold a second referendum on independence, a deal which Sir Keir has repeatedly insisted he would not strike under any circumstances.
And in an attempt to win back voters Labour have lost to the SNP, the party's sole MP in Scotland, Ian Murray, who represents Edinburgh South, has resurrected the old "Tartan Tory" label which was often applied to the SNP under Gordon Wilson.
Sir Keir Starmer with Anas Sarwar on a visit to Glasgow last week
He has accused Ms Forbes of right-wing economics, even though her plan to grow the economy to invest in public services has distinct echoes of New Labour.
What, though, of the national question? Here too there is division and discord, as well as potential opportunity.
"As Albert Camus said: 'Freedom is nothing but a chance to do better'," said Steve Norris, convener of the SNP's Kirkcudbright and District branch in the south west of Scotland.
He regards this leadership election as probably the most important in the party's history.
He is impressed with Ms Forbes, describing her as "honest, straight, true and brimful of integrity".
Mr Norris is also complimentary about Ms Regan, saying: "She's got her own ideas about how we achieve our march towards independence and that has attracted a lot of members...to her side."
Steve Norris is convener of the SNP's Kirkcudbright and District branch
Crucially, those ideas do not involve holding another referendum on leaving the UK.
Instead Ms Regan would treat all future Westminster and Holyrood elections as referendums in all but name. If at any point pro-independence parties polled more than 50% of the vote, Ms Regan says this would constitute a mandate to open negotiations with London.
"The ballot box is the gold standard of democracy," she says - insisting that if the UK government at first refused to enter talks, international outrage would force it to climb down, a claim rejected by both Labour and the Tories.
In the meantime, the MSP for Edinburgh Eastern says that as first minister she would focus on running the Scottish government, with work on preparing for secession devolved to an Independence Convention and an Independence Commission.
At a hustings in Fife, Ms Regan suggested that voters could be alerted to the moment "we've solved" all of the problems standing in the way of independence by means of a public installation in Glasgow or Edinburgh to be known as a Readiness Thermometer.
The current temperature of the thermometer is unclear, although by Ms Regan's own logic it is presumably not yet hot enough for independence.
Ash Regan resigned as community safety minister over the gender reforms
Ms Forbes' approach to the issue is at once fast and slow.
Fast because she has pledged to, somehow, obtain the power from Westminster to hold a referendum within three months of winning a majority at the next Westminster election.
Slow because she says independence will only be secured by winning over undecided voters through a strategy of patient competence.
"We maximise that support through good governance; a growing, thriving economy; a mission to eradicate poverty; and demonstrating that Scotland's better days are ahead with independence," says the MSP for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch.
Mr Yousaf's message is not dissimilar. "Don't get bogged down in process," he argues. Focus on making the case for independence, and the path will become clear.
He has distanced himself from the controversial policy, which appears to have contributed to Ms Sturgeon's downfall, of turning the next general election into a de facto referendum on independence, stating over and over that he's "not wedded to it".
Humza Yousaf has been portrayed as the continuity candidate
The MSP for Glasgow Pollok is dismissive of the notion that Westminster would agree to begin independence negotiations in the event of pro-independence parties winning more than 50% of the vote in a general election.
"When we need to get them on a phone call they don't even bloody come on the phone, right, let alone telling them to come up the road and demanding that they take part in negotiations," he said.
Mr Yousaf has a similarly blunt assessment of Westminster on the other big issue which has split the SNP - gender.
"There's a fundamental principle here about our democracy which is under attack," he told me on the day of his campaign launch.
To recap, briefly: in December, after a lengthy and fractious process, the Scottish Parliament approved legislation which would have lowered from 18 to 16 the age at which someone could change the sex on their birth certificate, as well as removing medical and administrative hurdles to doing so.
Ms Regan had resigned on principle as community safety minister rather than vote for the law, which she opposed.
Kate Forbes said she would have voted against gay marriage
Then, arguing that the Scottish bill contravened Britain's Equality Act by making it harder to exclude people born biologically male from women-only spaces, the UK government took the unprecedented step of blocking it from receiving royal assent.
Ms Forbes - who told me that she too would have voted against the law, had she not been on maternity leave at the time - said she was "loath" to challenge Rishi Sunak's government on the matter in court, instead suggesting that the conflict could be solved by Holyrood amending the legislation.
Ms Regan is not convinced that is possible. She proposes dropping the bill and sending the issue of gender to a citizens' assembly for consideration.
Mr Yousaf diverges dramatically from the other two candidates on this point though, insisting it is vital to take the case to court.
"There's a fundamental principle here about our democracy which is under attack," he told me. This argument is rejected by the UK government, which insists it is acting entirely properly within the structures of the Scotland Act which established devolution.
This is not the only social issue roiling the campaign.
Ms Forbes, a member of the Calvinist Free Church of Scotland, has attracted strong criticism for saying she would have voted against gay marriage had she been a politician at the time it became law in 2014.
Her stance has also attracted some praise.
"I actually really commend her for her honesty," says Alec Ross, an SNP member who owns an agricultural business in Stranraer.
Mr Yousaf, who is a Muslim, has denied that he dodged the final vote on the subject in 2014 for religious reasons.
Despite Kate Forbes insisting that she would defend the hard-won rights of any minority, including gay people, a slew of SNP parliamentarians deserted her campaign, leaving Mr Yousaf heavily favoured by the party establishment, including the key figure of Deputy First Minister John Swinney.
This has led supporters of the two women in the race to cry foul, claiming that the hierarchy is doing all it can to stitch up the contest for Mr Yousaf.
They point to the case of South of Scotland MSP Emma Harper, who broke the rules by using her party email address to campaign for the health secretary.
Màiri McAllan, the environment, biodiversity and land reform minister who is often tipped as a future SNP leader herself, and who is backing Mr Yousaf, denies any foul play, pointing out that Ms Harper's email privileges were suspended as a result.
"I think the fact that the parliamentary group has largely supported Humza is much more about his record and what his vision is for the party and for Scotland than anything to do with any conspiracies," she told me.
To distinguish the party from Labour and the Conservatives, she adds: "It's more important than ever that the SNP is that centre-left, socially democratic progressive party."
Forty-one years after the stushie in Ayr the battle continues to rage for the SNP's cultural, political, and economic soul.
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Gary Lineker says he will 'keep speaking for those with no voice' after asylum row - BBC News
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2023-03-10
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The Match of the Day host was criticised for tweets he posted about the government's new asylum plan.
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UK
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Gary Lineker has said he will try to keep speaking up for people with "no voice", after criticism of his tweets on the government's asylum policy.
The Match of the Day host had said the language setting out the plan was "not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s".
Home Secretary Suella Braverman said she was disappointed by the remarks.
The BBC said it was having a "frank conversation" with Lineker about the BBC's need to remain impartial.
On Tuesday, the government outlined its plans to ban people arriving in the UK illegally from ever claiming asylum, in a bid to address a rise in the number of people crossing the Channel in small boats.
Opposition MPs and humanitarian organisations have strongly criticised the proposals to detain and swiftly remove adults regardless of their asylum claim - but the PM and home secretary have defended the plan, saying stopping the crossings is a priority for the British people.
The presenter described it on Twitter as an "immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s".
His remarks were criticised widely by Conservative MPs and ministers, including Ms Braverman and Downing Street.
The furore surrounding Lineker's latest remarks puts pressure on the BBC, with director general Tim Davie having made impartiality a cornerstone of his leadership.
Responding to some of the criticism on Wednesday, Lineker tweeted: "Great to see the freedom of speech champions out in force this morning demanding silence from those with whom they disagree."
He followed up shortly after with: "I have never known such love and support in my life than I'm getting this morning (England World Cup goals aside, possibly). I want to thank each and every one of you. It means a lot.
"I'll continue to try and speak up for those poor souls that have no voice."
Earlier, Ms Braverman told BBC One's Breakfast she was "disappointed, obviously" in his comments.
"I think it's unhelpful to compare our measures, which are lawful, proportionate and - indeed - compassionate, to 1930s Germany.
"I also think that we are on the side of the British people here."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Suella Braverman says she is "disappointed" by Gary Lineker's tweet
Downing Street later said Lineker's criticism of the new asylum policy was "not acceptable".
The prime minister's press secretary told reporters: "It's obviously disappointing to see someone whose salary is funded by hard-working British (licence fee) payers using that kind of rhetoric and seemingly dismissing their legitimate concerns that they have about small boats crossings and illegal migration."
But beyond that, they added, "it's up to the BBC" and they would not comment further.
A spokesman for Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said comparisons with Germany in the 1930s "aren't always the best way to make" an argument.
Lineker, who has presented Match of the Day since 1999, is the BBC's highest paid star, having earned about £1.35m in 2020-21.
He has in the past been vocal about migrants' rights and has taken refugees into his home. He has also been critical of successive Conservative governments over issues including Brexit.
In October, the BBC's complaints unit found Lineker had broken impartiality rules in a tweet asking whether the Conservative Party planned to "hand back their donations from Russian donors".
The comment came after the then Foreign Secretary Liz Truss urged Premier League teams to boycott the Champions League final in Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.
Mr Davie said in 2020 he was prepared to sack people to protect the BBC's reputation for impartiality.
He issued new social media guidelines and said he was willing to "take people off Twitter" - a comment which Lineker responded to at the time by saying "I think only Twitter can take people off Twitter".
The presenter's frequent outspoken online posts have been viewed by some as a test of the BBC's ability to balance its impartiality duty with its ability to attract top talent in the era of social media.
Earlier on Wednesday, when asked about how many "strikes" the presenter has had over social media posts, Mr Davie said he wasn't going to speak specifically about individuals.
He added: "I think the BBC absolutely puts the highest value on impartiality and that's clearly important to us."
In a series of tweets on Wednesday, Lineker indicated he had no intention of retracting his comment or steering clear of politics outside of his work for the BBC.
Richard Sambrook, the BBC's former director of global news, said the controversy highlighted the need for the broadcaster to clarify how impartiality rules apply to its sport staff and freelancers.
He told Radio 4's PM programme similar cases would "corrode trust" in the BBC unless the position was made clearer.
The Lineker row also comes amid scrutiny of the circumstances surrounding the appointment of BBC chairman Richard Sharp and his relationship with Boris Johnson.
A committee of MPs said last month Mr Sharp had committed "significant errors of judgement" by not disclosing his involvement in the then-prime minister's financial affairs while seeking the senior BBC post. Mr Sharp insists he got the job on merit.
The broadcaster's editorial guidelines state the organisation is "committed to achieving due impartiality in all its output" and that "public comments, for example on social media, of staff [or] presenters... can affect perceptions of the BBC's impartiality".
A spokesperson for the corporation said: "The BBC has social media guidance, which is published.
"Individuals who work for us are aware of their responsibilities relating to social media.
"We have appropriate internal processes in place if required.
"We would expect Gary to be spoken to and reminded of his responsibilities."
The corporation has also responded to previous criticism of Lineker by highlighting that he is not involved in its news or political output and is a freelance broadcaster, not a member of staff.
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Laura Kuenssberg: Rishi Sunak struggles to escape Tories' horror show past - BBC News
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2023-03-04
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Old problems have resurfaced, and none of them were in the prime minister's carefully designed script.
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UK Politics
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"There are still shockwaves from seismic events," says a former cabinet minister - "that's what we're living through now." Boris Johnson might not have stitched prawns into the hems of his expensive curtains in No 10, but as we've seen over the past couple of days, the leftovers from his time in office can still cause a nasty stink.
We've been reminded of the early scramble over Covid, illustrated by former Health Secretary Matt Hancock's trove of WhatsApp chats - distressing for those who lost relatives, no doubt, and deeply embarrassing for those who pressed send.
There has also been more evidence of how No 10 struggled to get its story straight as the public reeled from revelations that there was booze and get-togethers in Downing Street during lockdown.
And there have been fresh conversations in the Conservative Party about the manner of Mr Johnson's exit. Labour's decision to hire the Whitehall sleaze-buster, Sue Gray, is catnip for his old allies who want to claim that he was stitched up.
Reminders of the pandemic, Partygate, and more howls of protest about how the former PM was treated. None of that was in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's carefully designed script.
First off, the spectacle - for that truly is what it is - of the former health secretary's WhatsApp messages being carefully dropped day by day in the Telegraph newspaper. His colleagues are less than impressed.
"It's an eyeroll," says one Tory MP. "How much of a moron was he?" asks another. "Spectacularly bad judgement," remarks one of his former cabinet colleagues.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Isabel Oakeshott reveals why she leaked the messages
Much of the media has done what it does best - talk feverishly to itself about the rights and wrongs of the way the story emerged after Isabel Oakeshott, the journalist who co-wrote Mr Hancock's book, passed thousands of his messages to a newspaper without his permission.
The chats have illustrated, in sometimes toe-curling levels of detail, the way in which government figures communicate - described as "teenage with LOLS" by one Tory MP. They include sweary messages about Dominic Cummings, who was Mr Johnson's chief adviser, and reveal a love-hate relationship between Mr Hancock and his then-Cabinet colleague Michael Gove.
And it's given colour and context to the arguments that were raging at the top of government in 2020, during the first few scrambled months of the pandemic.
There is intriguing and seemingly perplexing detail in Saturday's information dump, where Mr Hancock seems to suggest the government was covering up rises in Covid cases as a result of then-Chancellor Mr Sunak's "Eat Out To Help Out" scheme. It was reported in October 2020 - after the scheme was up and running - that it could have contributed to the second wave.
As Health Secretary, Matt Hancock gave regular Downing St media briefings during the pandemic
The opposition is already asking pointedly what the government knew at the time.
Given that the scheme had Mr Sunak's signature on it, those questions could prove awkward for the current administration - even though broadly, so far, the Telegraph's set of stories has not sparked a huge reckoning over whether lockdown was the right thing to do.
But the effects of the pandemic are still being felt in so many profound ways - these stories, the lasting effect on the economy, and the Covid inquiry that is likely to run for many, many months and is only just getting off the ground.
The latest findings from officialdom on Partygate have "revived the embers" too, according to a former cabinet minister. A committee of MPs has pinpointed several occasions when they believe Mr Johnson might not have told the truth in Parliament.
In Westminster, that's the sin of all sins - one that's punishable with an MP potentially having to fight for their seat again.
Let's spell this out. If this committee concludes the former prime minister knew he was not being straight, he might be suspended as an MP - and then possibly face a by-election.
The midway report from the Privileges Committee also contains gobbets of exasperation from Mr Johnson's staff as they struggled to contain the Partygate story that was crashing down all around them.
Mr Johnson used the publication of yesterday's report to claim it vindicated what he has said all along, that he never held Parliament in contempt, and that he never knowingly misled anyone.
To be crystal clear - that is not, not yet, what the committee of MPs says. This report does not provide that or any conclusions, as committee members have not yet finished their work. They will question Mr Johnson himself in a couple of weeks.
Even some Conservatives reckon the committee is likely to take a very dim view of what the PM did. "If he thinks he'll get a clean bill of health, he can think again," one says.
Reviving memories of Partygate, and the public upset and outrage that came alongside it, is hardly helpful for the Conservatives.
Mr Sunak was never painted as one of the dastardly villains of the saga - but having also received a fine for attending Mr Johnson's birthday in the Cabinet room, it's easy for the opposition to paint him as part of the mess too.
One Tory MP says that "the danger is that Partygate and privileges and everything - it just all damages us".
And there's been an unexpected and fraught added dimension to all this too.
The government, and Whitehall, were shocked when news broke that civil service enforcer, Sue Gray, was leaving government to work for the Labour Party. There was genuine shock, even among some of her former colleagues, that she would take that step. That's because it is vital that civil servants are, and are seen to be, totally fair and neutral.
Labour reckon it's a coup to have a "grown up person preparing for a grown up government", according to one source. There is no doubt Ms Gray is a hugely experienced operator.
Over the years, I've spoken to many people who have worked with her and I've heard almost universal praise. Nor is it unheard of for officials to leave, then go on to work for politicians. Both Tony Blair and David Cameron's chiefs of staff were both employed in Whitehall before moving into politics.
But the manner of Ms Gray's departure, and her reputation for holding all SW1's secrets, has caused uproar. Not just because, as one Conservative MP says simply, "it seems unfair" to many of their colleagues - but also because you might know Ms Gray's name, because she is the person who investigated Partygate.
Conservative MPs have expressed anger that Sue Gray has been offered a job as Sir Keir Starmer's chief of staff
The fact that she carried out the Whitehall investigation into what happened in No 10, and now is leaving for opposition, gave immediate ammunition to Mr Johnson's supporters to cry foul, to claim that he was the victim of some kind of stitch up after all.
It is worth noting that Ms Gray's report did not, in fact, throw the book at the former PM personally. Mr Johnson's eventual resignation came some months later.
But - as another Tory MP, no fan of Mr Johnson, suggests - Ms Gray's decision fuels a sense of conspiracy heard among some constituents. "It makes Boris a victim, and fuels some of the stuff about Westminster stitch ups we see online."
There is a risk here for Labour, that they are presented as part of some kind of establishment plot. And by preparing for government like this, are they, as one former minister snipes, "measuring the bloody curtains"?
Whether it's the spat over the hiring of Ms Gray or the furore over his views on the new Northern Ireland deal, "the shadow of Boris Johnson looms", says the MP. It "defies logic", they claim, that a "disgraced former PM" still occupies so much of his party's bandwidth.
But the hangover from a once in a generation politician does not fade fast, even though there have been not just one, but two people who have moved into No 10 since he left. We've seen again this week - there are parts of the Conservative Party still preoccupied with his legacy, who still relish an argument about what went on.
The events of the past few years have been so intense, shaken things so fundamentally, that a clean break is extremely hard to achieve.
Mr Sunak wants to mark progress on Brexit, crack on with trying to solve the problem of small boats that cross the Channel (expect a tricky debate on that this week with the likely publication of more draft laws), pull off a smooth meeting with the French president, and look ahead to the Budget in 10 days' time.
The Brexit deal, which still hasn't been approved by the DUP, does show that his head-down, no-drama approach can bear fruit.
One Tory MP says that while "we won't get electoral credit, it does show he's competent, you can't see the foundations of a house, but you have to build them".
But the past few days have shown that the forces that have been at work in recent years still have the power to disrupt.
One Whitehall insider jokes, "who had 'strong and stable' in the sweepstake under Rishi?" - with the massive events of the recent past, that doesn't look like a safe bet.
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Echoes of Hillsborough for Manchester Arena families - BBC News
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2023-03-04
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The more I heard at the Arena inquiry, the more it reminded me of Hillsborough - writes Judith Moritz
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UK
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The 22 victims of the Manchester Arena bombing
The Manchester Arena Inquiry was a mammoth undertaking. Evidence was heard over 196 days, presented and pored over by 18 legal teams, and culminating in three reports running into hundreds of pages.
I went to many of the hearings and, while much of what I heard did cast fresh light on the May 2017 bombing, I listened to a lot of the evidence with a sinking heart and a sense of familiarity and deja vu.
As the BBC's North of England Correspondent, I've also spent many years covering the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster in Sheffield - sitting through two years of inquest hearings, and three criminal trials.
The more I heard at the Arena inquiry, the more it reminded me of Hillsborough.
And I wasn't the only one. Several Hillsborough families told me that they had an uncomfortable sense of history repeating itself.
Margaret Aspinall has been a prominent spokesperson for Hillsborough families - pictured in 2016
Margaret Aspinall's son, James, died in the April 1989 disaster - one of 97 Liverpool supporters to have lost their lives. She says seeing what happened at Manchester Arena brought back painful memories. "You saw people were left again without getting CPR. The main thing is… lessons have not been learnt."
I started to keep a record of the ways the two tragedies seemed to overlap - and quickly realised the seeds of disaster had been sown well before each fateful day.
At both Hillsborough and Manchester Arena, joint working between the organisations responsible for crowd safety failed. The Hillsborough Inquests found that in the years before the disaster, Sheffield Wednesday FC had not agreed any meaningful contingency plan with South Yorkshire Police - and the club had not been part of a working party, whose other members included South Yorkshire Police, the fire service and local councils.
At Hillsborough, the club's safety certificate was 10 years old, and hadn't been updated despite changes to the ground which had impacted on capacity and stewarding. A document called The Green Guide was relied on by the club. It was a voluntary code with no legal force and open to interpretation.
In Manchester - British Transport Police (BTP), Greater Manchester Police, North West Ambulance Service and Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service were supposed to work together on a joint planned response to an emergency through a local "resilience forum", with meetings every six months.
The Arena inquiry heard that in the two years leading up to the attack, officers from BTP were only present at a third of those meetings, and those who had attended weren't senior enough.
For 5 Minutes On, Judith Moritz looks at the many parallels between the Hillsborough and Manchester Arena tragedies - and asks whether history is repeating itself.
The Manchester inquiry also found the venue's operator SMG UK, and its security contractor Showsec, both had inadequate risk assessments. It also ruled that a breach of the Arena's premises licence - a failure to agree a minimum number of stewards - may have contributed to the fact the attack wasn't prevented.
Companies working at the Arena were also meant to comply with a document called The Purple Guide, which provides important guidance about health and safety at music and other events. The Manchester inquiry found the Arena's private medical provider ETUK "fell a long way short of the guidance provided by the Purple Guide".
Bosses admitted "policing got it badly wrong" in the aftermath of the 1989 stadium disaster
At Hillsborough, ambulances lined up outside the ground, but only one South Yorkshire Metropolitan Ambulance Service (SYMAS) vehicle was allowed onto the pitch with only one paramedic at the Leppings Lane end.
At Manchester Arena, only one paramedic was inside the foyer for the first 40 minutes. Ambulances arrived outside, but a casualty clearing station was set up away from the area where the bomb went off, and the injured had to be lifted there, rather than being offered help inside the Arena.
At both Hillsborough and Manchester, important life-saving help was given by members of the public.
One of the most enduring images of the Hillsborough disaster is that of Liverpool fans carrying the dead and injured on advertising hoardings used as improvised stretchers, in the absence of the real thing.
The same thing happened at Manchester - with graphic testimony at the public inquiry about what happened to one of the fatalities, 28-year-old John Atkinson, who nearly slid off an advertising board and was then carried out on a section of metal railings.
John Atkinson was carried from Manchester Arena on a makeshift stretcher
Pete Weatherby KC is a barrister who has represented both Hillsborough and Arena families. He told me some of the similarities were "pretty shocking".
"Something as basic as stretchers in both Hillsborough and the Arena. People who were very, very severely injured and in some cases died, were carried out on advertising hoardings in both cases, 30 years apart. There has to be a rethink here".
At Hillsborough, the police radio systems failed and officers outside the ground could not hear instructions or communicate. There was a failure to get through to the police control room.
The Manchester inquiry heard evidence that not all stewards had radios, and there was confusion about the functionality of the radios issued to some Showsec staff. Their training in how to use the radios was not adequate.
Andrew Roussos and his son outside Manchester Arena following the bomb attack
At Hillsborough, families desperate for information struggled to get through on jammed phone lines. Many drove to Sheffield to search for loved ones. But on arrival, it was equally impossible to locate relatives - and the way they were treated, added to their trauma.
Barry Devonside was at the match, but not on the Leppings Lane terraces where his son, Christopher, was crushed. Mr Devonside went to the temporary mortuary to look for the 18 year old, but police sent him away. He spent seven hours checking at hospitals and a reception centre before being sent back to the mortuary where his son's body had been lying all along. He then had to look at Polaroid photos of all the deceased in order to identify Christopher.
Twenty-eight years later, the story of Andrew Roussos at Manchester Arena bears a horrible resemblance to that of Barry Devonside. Andrew's wife Lisa - and their children Ashlee, 26, and Saffie-Rose, 8 - had been on a "girls night" at the arena to watch pop star Ariana Grande.
When the bomb exploded at the end of the concert, the three of them were in the arena's foyer. Andrew and his son Xander had been waiting outside nearby to collect them - and were quickly at the scene. But although they found Ashlee straight away, they couldn't find Lisa or Saffie.
The pair walked round and round the perimeter of the arena, leaving their details with police officers and asking for help. They didn't know that they were yards from Lisa, who was lying inside on the foyer floor - or that Saffie had been carried out of a nearby exit and put into an ambulance.
They were sent from pillar to post, travelling between three hospitals, until they finally found Lisa in the early hours of the next morning. But Saffie remained missing for 14 hours, until they were finally told that she'd died in the explosion. At the public inquiry, they learned that she was alive when she was taken out of the arena, and had actually died at hospital.
In 2012, the Hillsborough Independent Panel published a report which found that 41 of the victims had the potential to have survived, if the emergency response had been different. Barry Devonside's son Christopher was amongst them. Inquests later found he may have lived for two hours after the match was stopped.
This year, the Manchester Arena Inquiry established that 20 of the 22 people killed in the bombing had died from unsurvivable injuries - but it ruled that it was likely that emergency services' inadequacies had prevented John Atkinson's survival. Inquiry Chairman Sir John Saunders also said he could not rule out the possibility that Saffie-Rose Roussos could have been saved with better treatment.
In his "pen portrait" of Saffie-Rose at the Manchester inquiry, Andrew Roussos said his daughter had "melted people's hearts"
The Hillsborough families have endured the double tragedy of the disaster itself, and also a three-decade-long legal aftermath which has included a public inquiry, two sets of inquests and four trials.
The Manchester Arena bombing has generated several reviews and reports, and a public inquiry which lasted two years. The Arena inquiry included learning which came directly from Hillsborough. After the first set of Hillsborough Inquests in 1990, which referred to the victims by number, there was a determined effort to put the victims at the heart of the process second time around.
That's why, in 2014, the new Hillsborough inquests in Warrington began with a "pen portraits" process - with every bereaved family invited to speak in court about their loved ones' lives and characters. The experience was seen as positive, and has since been used elsewhere, including at the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
The Manchester Arena Inquiry also began with individual pen portrait family tributes to each of the 22 victims - an approach welcomed by the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, who has also worked with Hillsborough families for many years.
"I think the experience of the Arena families at the inquiry was better than it would have been had it not been for what was revealed about what was so wrong with the original Hillsborough inquests - and how impersonal that was."
However, not every step of the legal process has been positive for survivors and relatives.
At both the Hillsborough inquests, and the Manchester Arena Inquiry, survivors applied to be given "core participant" status, which would have afforded them legal representation. In both cases, they were denied.
Anne Eyre survived the crush at Hillsborough and it changed her life forever. She went on to become a consultant in emergency planning and disaster management. She established a peer support programme for people affected by the Manchester bombing.
She says using her lived experiences to help others, who aren't legally core participants, is her way of "paying it forward".
"Regardless of your legal status, it's a constant thing of trying to make sense of an experience where some people around you have died, and you have lived. The randomness of it never leaves you".
The Glade of Light memorial in Manchester bears the names of all those killed in the Arena attack
Those affected by both tragedies also speak of their experience of enduring months of courtroom argument, as organisations involved at both Hillsborough and Manchester Arena sought to blame each other.
"We see a repeat of this tendency of public bodies not to feel able to tell the truth at the first time of asking," says Andy Burnham, "and sadly, that has repeated, not to the same degree, but to some degree with the Manchester Arena Inquiry."
The Greater Manchester mayor is one of those leading the campaign for a "Hillsborough Law" - which would give families bereaved through public tragedies financial support for legal representation at inquiries.
"It's something we need very urgently. People know that mistakes get made - that's life. What people won't forgive is the covering up of those mistakes.
"And then the pushing of people, already traumatised by their loss, into a wilderness where they're left just trying to fight for change, truth, and answers for years and years to come."
This week, the Government announced the creation of a new role - that of Independent Public Advocate. It's part of an effort to improve care of survivors and families of people killed in major disasters, including by supporting them through the inquiries that follow.
But it stops short of the full package of measures which some would like to see.
"The obvious problem with inquiries and inquests is that very often you get a fantastic report and great recommendations - but then it sits on a shelf," says Pete Weatherby KC.
Both Hillsborough and Manchester Arena have resulted in multiple inquiry reports. One thing that everyone involved in both disasters has in common is the hope that they'll be used as the basis for real change - so no-one else has to go through similar suffering in future.
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Where next for Scotland as the Nicola Sturgeon era ends? - BBC News
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2023-03-26
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The first minister's resignation triggered a divisive leadership campaign - but what could happen now?
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Scotland politics
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Nicola Sturgeon is standing down after eight years as first minister
If Nicola Sturgeon had prevailed, Scotland would be going to the polls again this autumn to consider dissolving the 316-year-old union with England.
Last summer, the outgoing first minister proposed 19 October 2023 as the date when, for the second time in nine years, voters would be asked "Should Scotland be an independent country?"
The plan she set out in Edinburgh was thwarted by politicians and judges in London.
The Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson refused to recognise a pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament - the accepted trigger for the first referendum in 2014 - as a mandate for a second vote.
Then, in November, the UK Supreme Court ruled that the Scottish Parliament did not have the power to organise its own referendum without Westminster's approval.
The Supreme Court issued its ruling on the indyref2 case in November 2022
The judgment laid bare the true nature of the 1707 union which created the state of Great Britain. While theoretically a marriage of equals, one partner, it seemed, could not leave without the other's consent.
Ms Sturgeon had run out of road and she knew it.
After briefly flirting with the idea of treating the next general election as a referendum in all but name, she announced her resignation less than three months after the court ruling.
Her departure marks the end of a remarkable career as a political campaigner.
"Eight election victories in eight years as first minister, that's the verdict that matters to me," said Ms Sturgeon in her 286th and final session of First Minister's Question Time on Thursday.
Triumphs in three general elections, two Holyrood elections, two local government elections, and a European parliamentary election are impressive for sure - but, unusually for a political party, winning elections to enact policies in government is not actually the central mission of the SNP.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Nicola Sturgeon addresses the Holyrood chamber for the last time as first minister
On the binary measure of independence, Ms Sturgeon, like Alex Salmond before her, leaves office as a failure. Scotland remains in the United Kingdom.
She began campaigning for independence as a teenager in 1980s Ayrshire and was just 21 when she first stood for election, unsuccessfully challenging Labour in the working class Glasgow Shettleston constituency under the SNP slogan "Free by '93".
Thirty years on, the SNP has made great strides towards its goal but Ms Sturgeon's resignation implicitly acknowledges that Scotland will not be "free" by '23, or any time soon after.
The abrupt announcement of her departure set in train a damaging and divisive leadership contest, with splits emerging on economic and social issues as well as on electoral and constitutional strategy.
Discipline, for which the SNP had been famed, began to crumble.
Even contenders for Ms Sturgeon's crown publicly criticised the lack of progress on independence during her eight years in office.
Humza Yousaf, Kate Forbes and Ash Regan are competing to become the next SNP leader
"For too many years, we've become the party of referendums rather than the party of independence," said Finance Secretary Kate Forbes, who promises to "turn a divided nation into a settled majority" for leaving the UK.
According to former minister Ash Regan: "The SNP has lost its way. There's been no progress on independence in the last few years, despite the worst UK governments of all time."
"I think what we are now hearing publicly is what many people have been saying privately for a long time," says James Mitchell, professor of public policy at Edinburgh University.
The SNP's looming crisis deepened when the party admitted that it had covered up a dramatic fall in its membership, prompting the resignations of director of communications, Murray Foote, and chief executive Peter Murrell, who is married to Ms Sturgeon.
Also following his wife out of government are two of her most trusted lieutenants, senior adviser Liz Lloyd and Deputy First Minister John Swinney.
It has been a chaotic and painful few weeks for the SNP and yet the final days of the first minister's tenure have been characterised by boosterism and denial.
"The SNP's not in a mess," Ms Sturgeon insisted on ITV's Loose Women. "It's going through, how can I put this, some growing pains right now."
Then there was her denial that SNP president Mike Russell had said the party was in a mess.
Mr Russell had answered the question "Is your party in turmoil?" with the words: "Well, I think it's fair to say that there's a tremendous mess and we have to clear it up."
Ms Sturgeon also insisted that her party had not lied to journalists about its plummeting membership figures despite evidence to the contrary, not least the resignations of Mr Foote and Mr Murrell.
The whole membership affair was, leadership contender and Health Secretary Humza Yousaf told Tuesday's Times Radio debate, a "total own goal".
So, is Nicola Sturgeon's dream of a sovereign Scottish state, standing tall on the world stage, dead and buried?
History says don't be so sure.
On the day the Hollywood epic Braveheart had its American premiere in Seattle, a more peaceful political drama was playing out on the streets of the old country.
The death of the Conservative MP for Perth and Kinross had triggered a by-election, and the SNP candidate Roseanna Cunningham was on the march - and under attack.
A senior Tory accused Ms Cunningham - caricatured as Republican Rose because she opposed the monarchy - of fighting a campaign "against Queen and country".
At 18 years old, I was easily the least experienced journalist on the by-election trail - but even I could see that the Tories were in trouble in territory which they had dominated for decades.
Their candidate, a gaffe-prone merchant banker, was keen to talk about one topic above all others, campaigning (literally) under the banner: "A Strong Union".
You could understand why. The spoils of Empire; the unifying experience of defying Hitler's Germany; and the creation of the welfare state had all bound Scotland tightly into the union.
Roseanna Cunningham (centre) put independence at the heart of her by-election campaign in 1995
Margaret Thatcher's response, as Conservative prime minister during the 1980s, was to fight and win a war abroad while hastening a profound economic shift at home.
Her vision of a modern British economy meant moving away from state subsidy of heavy industry; weakening the trade unions; and encouraging the creation of wealth through private enterprise.
For many in Scotland, where culture, tradition and pride were intertwined with coal, steel and textiles, the pace of change was bewildering.
A lack of direct and obvious benefit from the vast quantities of oil being sucked out of the North Sea also contributed to a rise in nationalist sentiment.
By the time of the Perth and Kinross by-election, Scotland was rediscovering an old identity.
When it premiered in Stirling that autumn, Braveheart's romanticisation of the wars of independence from England in the 13th and 14th Centuries seemed in tune with the mood of the moment.
Having placed independence front and centre in her campaign, Ms Cunningham won handsomely, further reducing Tory Prime Minister John Major's slender majority in the House of Commons.
"Scotland is waking from its slumber," proclaimed the victorious new MP during a feisty and raucous declaration in the city hall.
Was it though? The SNP had scored spectacular by-election successes before — Motherwell in 1945; Hamilton in 1967; and Glasgow Govan in 1973 and 1988 — only to lose each seat at the subsequent general election.
This time was different. Perth remains SNP territory to this day.
The party may be in trouble now but, with large majorities of younger voters telling pollsters that they support independence, the constitutional question which hangs over Scottish politics is not going away.
It is a question which Labour, a party forged in the din of Scotland's industrial revolution, has tussled with since its creation.
The Scottish Labour Party was founded in 1888 by two extraordinary but very different men, the miner and trade unionist Keir Hardie, and the aristocratic adventurer RB Cunninghame Graham.
Hardie went on to become the first leader of the UK Labour Party in 1906; Cunninghame Grahame the first president of the Scottish National Party in 1934.
The most fundamental change to Scottish governance in the democratic era was delivered by Labour when the Scottish Parliament took charge of domestic affairs such as health and education in 1999.
But it was the SNP which benefited most, gradually capturing almost all of the post-industrial seats which Labour had held for decades and, from 2007, taking charge of the Scottish government.
Labour's Donald Dewar was the first first minister of Scotland when the Scottish Parliament opened in 1999
Nearly a quarter of a century later, Labour is led by Keir Hardie's namesake, Sir Keir Starmer, who spies an opportunity in the SNP's travails.
On Friday I accompanied Sir Keir, Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar and shadow climate change and net zero secretary, Ed Miliband on a trip to SSE's Beatrice wind farm off the east coast of Caithness.
The leader of the opposition at Westminster was in buoyant form, and no wonder.
His party sees the departure of multiple election winner Nicola Sturgeon — whom he calls a "giant in Scottish politics" — as great news.
"The SNP is imploding," he told me on the harbour side at Wick. "I think everybody can see that."
The party, he added, "has run out of road when it comes to the case for independence and that's shone a light on their record".
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With a large and sustained polling lead across the UK, and signs of improvement in Scotland, Labour may be in a positive place but the path to Downing Street is not straight and clear, running through mixed terrain.
First, there is the cosmopolitan and multicultural domain of London and other big English cities.
Then there are the more socially conservative, Brexit-inclined "red wall" seats, in the Midlands and the north of England, which switched from Labour to Boris Johnson's Conservatives at the last general election.
Finally there is the party's old Scots fiefdom, stretching from Ayrshire in the west through the central belt to Fife in the east, where the SNP have dominated with a pro-independence, pro-European message since 2015.
The SNP hold 45 of the Scottish 59 seats at Westminster (two more have defected to Alex Salmond's Alba Party since the last general election) but Labour strategists now reckon at least 15 of those would be competitive based on current polling, particularly in Glasgow, Fife, Midlothian and East Lothian.
With that in mind, on this trip Sir Keir appears to have adopted the doctor's maxim: first, do no harm. In our interview he uses the word "humility" a lot.
"I think Labour lost its way and got too far from voters here in Scotland and that's why I've spent a lot of time in Scotland listening, engaging, talking about the future," he says.
Precisely what he means by getting too far from the voters is not terribly clear.
Sir Keir Starmer, Ed Miliband and Anas Sarwar travelled to the Beatrice wind farm off Caithness on Friday
How would he respect the democratic will of the Scottish people to remain in the European Union, and the pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament?
The real answer to both questions is, he won't. But that would sound harsh so he adopts softer language.
On Brexit he says: "If you want a closer relationship with the EU, I hear you, I agree with you and we will set about ensuring that we do have that close relationship."
On independence he rejects "breaking up the United Kingdom," while recognising that there is a "desire for change".
Labour's attempt to defuse independence as an issue is to acknowledge an asymmetry in political and economic power between the prosperous south east of England and other parts of the UK, which it proposes to tackle by embracing some of the recommendations in Gordon Brown's recent commission on the UK's future, while considering whether to adopt others.
Already on Labour's agenda are House of Lords reform; decentralisation of economic power to the nations and regions of the UK; and improved intergovernmental working between the various administrations of these islands.
"Decisions should be made by people most closely affected by those decisions," says Sir Keir.
Isn't that an argument for independence?
No, he insists, it's an argument for local decision-making within the UK framework.
"The people in the Highlands can make decisions in partnership with the Labour government about the future living standards here, the future jobs, the skills we're talking about this morning," he explains.
Aware of this looming Labour threat, the SNP is keen to conflate Sir Keir's party with Rishi Sunak's, reminding voters that Labour and Tories joined together in the Better Together campaign against independence in 2014.
Labour politicians joined Conservative and Liberal Democrat counterparts to campaign for the union ahead of the 2014 referendum
Sir Keir's decision to approvingly quote Margaret Thatcher in a speech on crime while in Stoke this week makes the SNP's job easier while underlining the Labour leader's difficulty in assembling such a diverse electoral coalition.
Still, he can take comfort that his opponents here also face immense challenges.
The new SNP leader will have to tackle deep-rooted problems in Scotland's public services which are costing and blighting lives.
He or she will also be under pressure to set out a credible route map towards — and a credible plan for — independence.
And the winner must also reunite a divided party in time for a general election expected to be held next year in which, it is now clearer than ever, Scotland will be a key battleground.
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UK economy: When are you going to feel better off? - BBC News
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2023-03-26
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How politicians answer that will set the terms for the next election, writes Laura Kuenssberg.
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UK Politics
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When are you going to feel better off?
How politicians answer that big question sets the terms for the next election. The response is certainly not this week.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak might have told MPs "we are halving inflation" but repeating that political slogan in the Commons doesn't make it true. In fact he was wrong - just as economic sages were mistaken.
Prices went up faster in February than in January - which came as a surprise to the experts. Interest rates edged up too and will make rent, mortgages and credit more expensive.
The message to workers, firms and families this week is bleak - your costs are going up but don't ask for a pay rise and don't put your prices up if you're a business.
There is no shortage of evidence of how hard it is for millions of families to pay the bills. By the Treasury's admission inflation "strangles growth and erodes family budgets".
And its effects can be long-lasting. As one German economist said: "Inflation is like toothpaste. Once it's out, you can hardly get it back in again."
As an aside, even that essential item has gone up significantly, with one famous brand hiking prices of a tube from £3 to £4.
What the government hopes is that next month, and the month after that, and the month after that, the number crunchers are correct and inflation will drop pretty sharply by the end of the year and the toothpaste does, after all, go back in the tube.
But inflation slowing down doesn't mean prices will drop. What politicians and the public have to confront is that there could be many years where voters feel hard up.
For this week's show we asked Richard Hughes - the country's number cruncher in chief who runs the independent Office for Budget Responsibility - how he would answer that big question. If you're squeamish about your finances you might want to look away now.
He told me we're in the middle of "the biggest squeeze on living standards we've faced in this country on record" - but also it might be five or even six years before people start feeling more prosperous again.
As he put it: "People's real spending power doesn't get back to the level it was before the pandemic even after five years, even by the time we get to the late 2020s." Gulp.
There is also a separate and tricky conversation to be had about the influence of his organisation, the OBR.
Their work, famously ignored by Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng when they were in charge, tells governments how much they can spend and borrow if they want to stick to their own rules about when they will balance the country's books.
The idea is that with an independent body publicly checking ministers' arithmetic the public can have confidence in what's being done.
But their forecasts, as Mr Hughes happily admits, often turn out to be wrong, and change every six months. Yet they can have enormous influence over what politicians decide.
For example, several sources told me the government only decided to expand childcare in the recent Budget because the OBR told them more than half of the cost would be covered by the benefit of getting some parents back to work.
You can, as many politicians do, believe in the merits of having an independent expert cast their eye over the figures, but also have quiet concerns about how the OBR can draw the limits of political conversations when its forecasts - through no fault of its own - change dramatically.
Whether you are asking an economist, a politician, or just looking at your own bank balance, the broad assessment is not likely to shift - times are tough for the foreseeable future.
Inflation - the politicians' nightmare - is likely to drop by the end of the year, but Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are going to have to tempt you to the ballot box in 2024 when the country still feels hard up.
We can already see the outlines of the Conservatives' script. With inflation (they fervently hope) down and the economy (fingers crossed) avoiding recession there will, ministers believe, be signs the country's fortunes have turned and they can persuade hard-up voters to stick with them.
As one minister says: "The argument we want to make is 'I'm just starting to feel better off, don't risk it'."
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We've lived through unprecedented hard times, they'll argue, and things are getting better so don't take a chance on something new.
The aspiration is also that ministers will be able to start cutting taxes again - perhaps in the autumn of this year or more likely next spring.
One former cabinet minister says voters will start to feel better off once a Conservative government is re-elected because they hope they'll be able to say during the campaign that "inflation is lower, wages outstripping inflation" and they have a "clear plan for the economy".
Even if Rishi Sunak becomes an expert in political gymnastics it's unlikely the Conservatives will avoid taking any flak for the hammering incomes have taken while they've been in charge.
But you can expect in the next few months for ministers to emphasise more regularly the help that's already on offer - whether that's cheaper bus fares or the hugely expensive energy price guarantee.
If you ask Labour politicians when the country will feel better off the answer is also far in the future.
One shadow minister says the decline in living standards has been "brutal" while another says "people are not going to feel better off for a very long time".
Even if inflation does start to slow, if you believe the polls that show Labour way ahead the tough economic reality for many families gives them a political advantage.
However strongly the Conservatives argue they've had to deal with unprecedented pressures, hard-up voters do not tend to reward those in charge. But wise Labour heads are all too aware that successful oppositions don't just say "we're not the other guys".
That's why we're seeing the leadership put so much time and effort into trying to create a sense they would spend taxpayers' money wisely and talk repeatedly about how they would get the economy to grow.
The shadow minister believes Labour tends to win when it offers "hope after years when the Tories look a bit clapped out".
So when we ask "when are you going to start feeling better off?" the answer is "not much, if at all, before the next election".
It's likely that vote will happen when there is not much cash in our own pockets or the public purse.
And we face a conversation where the Conservatives seize on any signs of progress to claim a change is not worth the risk while Labour highlights the hard times we have been living through and says it's time for something else.
Just like economic forecasts, political predictions can turn out to be miles off. And of course, how we make a living and how the country pays its way is not the only factor determining how people vote.
But after years of hardship you'll be asked in the general election who you believe will help you be better off.
The answer millions of voters give will likely determine who takes No 10.
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Boris Johnson: Ex-PM to reveal evidence in his defence over Partygate - BBC News
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2023-03-18
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Boris Johnson faces a marathon televised hearing this week to convince MPs he did not mislead Parliament.
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UK Politics
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Boris Johnson will publish evidence in his defence ahead of a grilling by MPs over whether he misled Parliament about Covid rule-breaking parties.
The former prime minister faces a crucial televised evidence session in front of the Commons Privileges Committee on Wednesday.
The committee is yet to publish its final verdict - but its initial update earlier this month said Mr Johnson may have misled Parliament multiple times.
Wednesday's session, which could last up to five hours, will be a key chance for Mr Johnson to persuade the seven cross-party MPs who make up the committee that he did not mislead MPs in December 2021.
That would include when he told the Commons that he had "been repeatedly assured since these allegations emerged that there was no party and that no Covid rules were broken".
Sources close to Mr Johnson say he will publish a "compelling dossier" that will provide evidence and arguments that he did not knowingly mislead parliament.
If he fails to convince the committee and is found guilty, he could be suspended from the Commons, and even faces a recall petition, which would trigger a by-election, if that suspension is for more than 10 days.
Crucially, though, MPs would have to approve any sanction on Mr Johnson.
In May last year, an inquiry by senior civil servant Sue Gray found widespread rule-breaking had taken place, and Mr Johnson was among 83 people fined by police for attending law-breaking events.
The Sunday Times, Observer and Sunday Telegraph report that Mr Johnson's "dossier" will include advice he claims he was given at the time by No 10 aides, advising him that Covid rules were not broken.
The Sunday Times quotes one source saying the messages show "in black and white" that what Mr Johnson told Parliament was what he had been advised to say by officials and his No 10 team, claiming he was forced to rely on advice because he was not at some of the events.
Cabinet minister Oliver Dowden - who served in Mr Johnson's government - told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday programme he expected the former prime minister to "put forward a robust defence of his conduct".
The newspapers also report that Mr Johnson's defence may repeat allegations of bias levelled at the former top civil servant Sue Gray, whose inquiry found widespread rule-breaking had taken place in Whitehall during Covid.
Sue Gray produced a highly critical report into lockdown parties under Boris Johnson that contributed to his downfall as PM
Sue Gray has since resigned and has been offered a job as Sir Keir Starmer's chief of staff, which caused anger among allies of Boris Johnson including his former cabinet colleagues Jacob Rees-Mogg MP and Nadine Dorries MP.
The Labour Party has said it will give all the information related to its approach to her to the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) - the government's appointments watchdog.
But minister Jeremy Quin has said her proposed move may have breached Whitehall's rules, as approval must be obtained prior to a job offer being announced.
Downing Street sources say any sanctions against Mr Johnson would be a matter for the House of Commons and MPs will therefore be given a free vote - meaning they will not be "whipped" to vote a certain way.
That means Tory MPs would not be asked to vote one way or another, as they were over the proposed suspension of Owen Paterson in November 2021, when Mr Johnson was still prime minister.
The government tried to block Mr Paterson's suspension from the Commons but, after a backlash, was later forced to U-turn. He then resigned as an MP.
At the time, Mr Johnson came in for criticism from many of his own MPs about being told to back Mr Paterson, amid Labour accusations of "sleaze". The first Partygate stories broke only a few weeks later.
The Paterson row was the beginning of the end for Mr Johnson's time as prime minister, and Mr Johnson later admitted he "crashed the car" in his handling of the case.
A spokesman for Mr Johnson said: "The Privileges Committee will vindicate Boris Johnson's position.
"The evidence will show that Boris Johnson did not knowingly mislead parliament."
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Gary Lineker says he will 'keep speaking for those with no voice' after asylum row - BBC News
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2023-03-08
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The Match of the Day host was criticised for tweets he posted about the government's new asylum plan.
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UK
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Gary Lineker has said he will try to keep speaking up for people with "no voice", after criticism of his tweets on the government's asylum policy.
The Match of the Day host had said the language setting out the plan was "not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s".
Home Secretary Suella Braverman said she was disappointed by the remarks.
The BBC said it was having a "frank conversation" with Lineker about the BBC's need to remain impartial.
On Tuesday, the government outlined its plans to ban people arriving in the UK illegally from ever claiming asylum, in a bid to address a rise in the number of people crossing the Channel in small boats.
Opposition MPs and humanitarian organisations have strongly criticised the proposals to detain and swiftly remove adults regardless of their asylum claim - but the PM and home secretary have defended the plan, saying stopping the crossings is a priority for the British people.
The presenter described it on Twitter as an "immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s".
His remarks were criticised widely by Conservative MPs and ministers, including Ms Braverman and Downing Street.
The furore surrounding Lineker's latest remarks puts pressure on the BBC, with director general Tim Davie having made impartiality a cornerstone of his leadership.
Responding to some of the criticism on Wednesday, Lineker tweeted: "Great to see the freedom of speech champions out in force this morning demanding silence from those with whom they disagree."
He followed up shortly after with: "I have never known such love and support in my life than I'm getting this morning (England World Cup goals aside, possibly). I want to thank each and every one of you. It means a lot.
"I'll continue to try and speak up for those poor souls that have no voice."
Earlier, Ms Braverman told BBC One's Breakfast she was "disappointed, obviously" in his comments.
"I think it's unhelpful to compare our measures, which are lawful, proportionate and - indeed - compassionate, to 1930s Germany.
"I also think that we are on the side of the British people here."
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Downing Street later said Lineker's criticism of the new asylum policy was "not acceptable".
The prime minister's press secretary told reporters: "It's obviously disappointing to see someone whose salary is funded by hard-working British (licence fee) payers using that kind of rhetoric and seemingly dismissing their legitimate concerns that they have about small boats crossings and illegal migration."
But beyond that, they added, "it's up to the BBC" and they would not comment further.
A spokesman for Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said comparisons with Germany in the 1930s "aren't always the best way to make" an argument.
Lineker, who has presented Match of the Day since 1999, is the BBC's highest paid star, having earned about £1.35m in 2020-21.
He has in the past been vocal about migrants' rights and has taken refugees into his home. He has also been critical of successive Conservative governments over issues including Brexit.
In October, the BBC's complaints unit found Lineker had broken impartiality rules in a tweet asking whether the Conservative Party planned to "hand back their donations from Russian donors".
The comment came after the then Foreign Secretary Liz Truss urged Premier League teams to boycott the Champions League final in Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.
Mr Davie said in 2020 he was prepared to sack people to protect the BBC's reputation for impartiality.
He issued new social media guidelines and said he was willing to "take people off Twitter" - a comment which Lineker responded to at the time by saying "I think only Twitter can take people off Twitter".
The presenter's frequent outspoken online posts have been viewed by some as a test of the BBC's ability to balance its impartiality duty with its ability to attract top talent in the era of social media.
Earlier on Wednesday, when asked about how many "strikes" the presenter has had over social media posts, Mr Davie said he wasn't going to speak specifically about individuals.
He added: "I think the BBC absolutely puts the highest value on impartiality and that's clearly important to us."
In a series of tweets on Wednesday, Lineker indicated he had no intention of retracting his comment or steering clear of politics outside of his work for the BBC.
Richard Sambrook, the BBC's former director of global news, said the controversy highlighted the need for the broadcaster to clarify how impartiality rules apply to its sport staff and freelancers.
He told Radio 4's PM programme similar cases would "corrode trust" in the BBC unless the position was made clearer.
The Lineker row also comes amid scrutiny of the circumstances surrounding the appointment of BBC chairman Richard Sharp and his relationship with Boris Johnson.
A committee of MPs said last month Mr Sharp had committed "significant errors of judgement" by not disclosing his involvement in the then-prime minister's financial affairs while seeking the senior BBC post. Mr Sharp insists he got the job on merit.
The broadcaster's editorial guidelines state the organisation is "committed to achieving due impartiality in all its output" and that "public comments, for example on social media, of staff [or] presenters... can affect perceptions of the BBC's impartiality".
A spokesperson for the corporation said: "The BBC has social media guidance, which is published.
"Individuals who work for us are aware of their responsibilities relating to social media.
"We have appropriate internal processes in place if required.
"We would expect Gary to be spoken to and reminded of his responsibilities."
The corporation has also responded to previous criticism of Lineker by highlighting that he is not involved in its news or political output and is a freelance broadcaster, not a member of staff.
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Heathrow told to cut passenger charges again - BBC News
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2023-03-08
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The regulator has told the airport it needs to lower charges due to passenger numbers recovering.
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Business
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Heathrow Airport has been told to cut passenger charges for airlines next year, in a move that should feed through to ticket prices.
The Civil Aviation Authority decided lower charges were required due to passenger numbers recovering quicker after the height of the pandemic.
Passenger charges are paid by airlines and go towards costs for terminals runways, baggage systems and security.
The average charge per passenger at Heathrow for 2023 is £31.57.
But the regulator said this will fall to £25.43 in 2024 and "remain broadly flat" until the end of 2026.
Although, the charges are paid by airlines, they can impact flight prices if companies decide to pass on some costs onto passengers via airfares.
It is understood bosses at Heathrow wanted charges to actually increase to more than £40, while airlines proposed they should be no more than around £18.50.
In response to the decision, the airport said the CAA's decision made "no sense" and warned it would "do nothing for consumers".
"The CAA has chosen to cut airport charges to their lowest real terms level in a decade at a time when airlines are making massive profits and Heathrow remains loss-making because of fewer passengers and higher financing costs," Heathrow said.
The airport said the regulator should be "incentivising investment" to rebuild aviation services following the heavy blows dealt to the industry during Covid.
But the CAA said its decision to introduce lower charges from 2024 recognised that passenger numbers were expected to return to pre-pandemic levels.
It said as well as benefitting travellers in terms of lower costs, the charges would also allow the airport to continue investing in its operations, including planned upgrades to its security scanners and a new baggage system in Terminal 2.
"Our priority in making this decision today is to ensure the travelling public can expect great value for money from using Heathrow in terms of having a consistently good quality of service, whilst paying no more than is needed for it," said Richard Moriarty, chief executive of the CAA.
In 2021, Heathrow was given permission to raise the passenger charge for airlines from £19.60 to £30.19 for the summer of 2022. The aim was to help it get through the pandemic.
But British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, two of Heathrow's largest airlines, have long complained that fees at the airport, the busiest airport in western Europe, are the highest in the world.
Shai Weiss, chief executive of Virgin Atlantic, said the the regulator had "not gone far enough" in lowering passenger charges or ensuring that a "monopolistic Heathrow" was fulfilling its statutory duty to protect consumers.
"Heathrow has abused its power throughout this process, peddling false narratives and flawed passenger forecasts in an attempt to win an economic argument," he added.
Luis Gallego, chief executive of IAG, the parent company of British Airways, said "high charges" were "designed to reward shareholders at the expense of customers" and risked undermining the competitiveness of Heathrow.
Willie Walsh, director-general of the International Air Transport Association, which represents airlines, said the regulator was "hostage to Heathrow's pessimistic passenger outlook", and added the decision still meant airlines and passengers would "continue to pay one of the highest airport charges in the world".
"Given that Heathrow have succeeded in securing this generous settlement, we'll be watching their performance this summer and beyond very closely. Any repeat of the failures we have seen over the past few years would be totally unacceptable," he added.
Luggage piled up on some days last summer at Heathrow
Last summer, many airports across the UK struggled to cope with demand for international travel returning, with flights delayed and cancelled due to staff shortages. Many workers in the travel industry lost their jobs at the start the of the pandemic.
Mr Moriarty said the CAA had "considered the sharply differing views" from Heathrow and the airlines about the level of fees.
"Understandably, their respective shareholder interests led the airport to argue for higher charges and the airlines to argue for lower charges," he added.
Both airlines and the airport have six weeks to appeal the decision.
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Laura Kuenssberg: Rishi Sunak struggles to escape Tories' horror show past - BBC News
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2023-03-05
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Old problems have resurfaced, and none of them were in the prime minister's carefully designed script.
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UK Politics
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"There are still shockwaves from seismic events," says a former cabinet minister - "that's what we're living through now." Boris Johnson might not have stitched prawns into the hems of his expensive curtains in No 10, but as we've seen over the past couple of days, the leftovers from his time in office can still cause a nasty stink.
We've been reminded of the early scramble over Covid, illustrated by former Health Secretary Matt Hancock's trove of WhatsApp chats - distressing for those who lost relatives, no doubt, and deeply embarrassing for those who pressed send.
There has also been more evidence of how No 10 struggled to get its story straight as the public reeled from revelations that there was booze and get-togethers in Downing Street during lockdown.
And there have been fresh conversations in the Conservative Party about the manner of Mr Johnson's exit. Labour's decision to hire the Whitehall sleaze-buster, Sue Gray, is catnip for his old allies who want to claim that he was stitched up.
Reminders of the pandemic, Partygate, and more howls of protest about how the former PM was treated. None of that was in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's carefully designed script.
First off, the spectacle - for that truly is what it is - of the former health secretary's WhatsApp messages being carefully dropped day by day in the Telegraph newspaper. His colleagues are less than impressed.
"It's an eyeroll," says one Tory MP. "How much of a moron was he?" asks another. "Spectacularly bad judgement," remarks one of his former cabinet colleagues.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Isabel Oakeshott reveals why she leaked the messages
Much of the media has done what it does best - talk feverishly to itself about the rights and wrongs of the way the story emerged after Isabel Oakeshott, the journalist who co-wrote Mr Hancock's book, passed thousands of his messages to a newspaper without his permission.
The chats have illustrated, in sometimes toe-curling levels of detail, the way in which government figures communicate - described as "teenage with LOLS" by one Tory MP. They include sweary messages about Dominic Cummings, who was Mr Johnson's chief adviser, and reveal a love-hate relationship between Mr Hancock and his then-Cabinet colleague Michael Gove.
And it's given colour and context to the arguments that were raging at the top of government in 2020, during the first few scrambled months of the pandemic.
There is intriguing and seemingly perplexing detail in Saturday's information dump, where Mr Hancock seems to suggest the government was covering up rises in Covid cases as a result of then-Chancellor Mr Sunak's "Eat Out To Help Out" scheme. It was reported in October 2020 - after the scheme was up and running - that it could have contributed to the second wave.
As Health Secretary, Matt Hancock gave regular Downing St media briefings during the pandemic
The opposition is already asking pointedly what the government knew at the time.
Given that the scheme had Mr Sunak's signature on it, those questions could prove awkward for the current administration - even though broadly, so far, the Telegraph's set of stories has not sparked a huge reckoning over whether lockdown was the right thing to do.
But the effects of the pandemic are still being felt in so many profound ways - these stories, the lasting effect on the economy, and the Covid inquiry that is likely to run for many, many months and is only just getting off the ground.
The latest findings from officialdom on Partygate have "revived the embers" too, according to a former cabinet minister. A committee of MPs has pinpointed several occasions when they believe Mr Johnson might not have told the truth in Parliament.
In Westminster, that's the sin of all sins - one that's punishable with an MP potentially having to fight for their seat again.
Let's spell this out. If this committee concludes the former prime minister knew he was not being straight, he might be suspended as an MP - and then possibly face a by-election.
The midway report from the Privileges Committee also contains gobbets of exasperation from Mr Johnson's staff as they struggled to contain the Partygate story that was crashing down all around them.
Mr Johnson used the publication of yesterday's report to claim it vindicated what he has said all along, that he never held Parliament in contempt, and that he never knowingly misled anyone.
To be crystal clear - that is not, not yet, what the committee of MPs says. This report does not provide that or any conclusions, as committee members have not yet finished their work. They will question Mr Johnson himself in a couple of weeks.
Even some Conservatives reckon the committee is likely to take a very dim view of what the PM did. "If he thinks he'll get a clean bill of health, he can think again," one says.
Reviving memories of Partygate, and the public upset and outrage that came alongside it, is hardly helpful for the Conservatives.
Mr Sunak was never painted as one of the dastardly villains of the saga - but having also received a fine for attending Mr Johnson's birthday in the Cabinet room, it's easy for the opposition to paint him as part of the mess too.
One Tory MP says that "the danger is that Partygate and privileges and everything - it just all damages us".
And there's been an unexpected and fraught added dimension to all this too.
The government, and Whitehall, were shocked when news broke that civil service enforcer, Sue Gray, was leaving government to work for the Labour Party. There was genuine shock, even among some of her former colleagues, that she would take that step. That's because it is vital that civil servants are, and are seen to be, totally fair and neutral.
Labour reckon it's a coup to have a "grown up person preparing for a grown up government", according to one source. There is no doubt Ms Gray is a hugely experienced operator.
Over the years, I've spoken to many people who have worked with her and I've heard almost universal praise. Nor is it unheard of for officials to leave, then go on to work for politicians. Both Tony Blair and David Cameron's chiefs of staff were both employed in Whitehall before moving into politics.
But the manner of Ms Gray's departure, and her reputation for holding all SW1's secrets, has caused uproar. Not just because, as one Conservative MP says simply, "it seems unfair" to many of their colleagues - but also because you might know Ms Gray's name, because she is the person who investigated Partygate.
Conservative MPs have expressed anger that Sue Gray has been offered a job as Sir Keir Starmer's chief of staff
The fact that she carried out the Whitehall investigation into what happened in No 10, and now is leaving for opposition, gave immediate ammunition to Mr Johnson's supporters to cry foul, to claim that he was the victim of some kind of stitch up after all.
It is worth noting that Ms Gray's report did not, in fact, throw the book at the former PM personally. Mr Johnson's eventual resignation came some months later.
But - as another Tory MP, no fan of Mr Johnson, suggests - Ms Gray's decision fuels a sense of conspiracy heard among some constituents. "It makes Boris a victim, and fuels some of the stuff about Westminster stitch ups we see online."
There is a risk here for Labour, that they are presented as part of some kind of establishment plot. And by preparing for government like this, are they, as one former minister snipes, "measuring the bloody curtains"?
Whether it's the spat over the hiring of Ms Gray or the furore over his views on the new Northern Ireland deal, "the shadow of Boris Johnson looms", says the MP. It "defies logic", they claim, that a "disgraced former PM" still occupies so much of his party's bandwidth.
But the hangover from a once in a generation politician does not fade fast, even though there have been not just one, but two people who have moved into No 10 since he left. We've seen again this week - there are parts of the Conservative Party still preoccupied with his legacy, who still relish an argument about what went on.
The events of the past few years have been so intense, shaken things so fundamentally, that a clean break is extremely hard to achieve.
Mr Sunak wants to mark progress on Brexit, crack on with trying to solve the problem of small boats that cross the Channel (expect a tricky debate on that this week with the likely publication of more draft laws), pull off a smooth meeting with the French president, and look ahead to the Budget in 10 days' time.
The Brexit deal, which still hasn't been approved by the DUP, does show that his head-down, no-drama approach can bear fruit.
One Tory MP says that while "we won't get electoral credit, it does show he's competent, you can't see the foundations of a house, but you have to build them".
But the past few days have shown that the forces that have been at work in recent years still have the power to disrupt.
One Whitehall insider jokes, "who had 'strong and stable' in the sweepstake under Rishi?" - with the massive events of the recent past, that doesn't look like a safe bet.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64835929
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Where next for Scotland as the Nicola Sturgeon era ends? - BBC News
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2023-03-27
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The first minister's resignation triggered a divisive leadership campaign - but what could happen now?
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Scotland politics
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Nicola Sturgeon is standing down after eight years as first minister
If Nicola Sturgeon had prevailed, Scotland would be going to the polls again this autumn to consider dissolving the 316-year-old union with England.
Last summer, the outgoing first minister proposed 19 October 2023 as the date when, for the second time in nine years, voters would be asked "Should Scotland be an independent country?"
The plan she set out in Edinburgh was thwarted by politicians and judges in London.
The Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson refused to recognise a pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament - the accepted trigger for the first referendum in 2014 - as a mandate for a second vote.
Then, in November, the UK Supreme Court ruled that the Scottish Parliament did not have the power to organise its own referendum without Westminster's approval.
The Supreme Court issued its ruling on the indyref2 case in November 2022
The judgment laid bare the true nature of the 1707 union which created the state of Great Britain. While theoretically a marriage of equals, one partner, it seemed, could not leave without the other's consent.
Ms Sturgeon had run out of road and she knew it.
After briefly flirting with the idea of treating the next general election as a referendum in all but name, she announced her resignation less than three months after the court ruling.
Her departure marks the end of a remarkable career as a political campaigner.
"Eight election victories in eight years as first minister, that's the verdict that matters to me," said Ms Sturgeon in her 286th and final session of First Minister's Question Time on Thursday.
Triumphs in three general elections, two Holyrood elections, two local government elections, and a European parliamentary election are impressive for sure - but, unusually for a political party, winning elections to enact policies in government is not actually the central mission of the SNP.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Nicola Sturgeon addresses the Holyrood chamber for the last time as first minister
On the binary measure of independence, Ms Sturgeon, like Alex Salmond before her, leaves office as a failure. Scotland remains in the United Kingdom.
She began campaigning for independence as a teenager in 1980s Ayrshire and was just 21 when she first stood for election, unsuccessfully challenging Labour in the working class Glasgow Shettleston constituency under the SNP slogan "Free by '93".
Thirty years on, the SNP has made great strides towards its goal but Ms Sturgeon's resignation implicitly acknowledges that Scotland will not be "free" by '23, or any time soon after.
The abrupt announcement of her departure set in train a damaging and divisive leadership contest, with splits emerging on economic and social issues as well as on electoral and constitutional strategy.
Discipline, for which the SNP had been famed, began to crumble.
Even contenders for Ms Sturgeon's crown publicly criticised the lack of progress on independence during her eight years in office.
Humza Yousaf, Kate Forbes and Ash Regan are competing to become the next SNP leader
"For too many years, we've become the party of referendums rather than the party of independence," said Finance Secretary Kate Forbes, who promises to "turn a divided nation into a settled majority" for leaving the UK.
According to former minister Ash Regan: "The SNP has lost its way. There's been no progress on independence in the last few years, despite the worst UK governments of all time."
"I think what we are now hearing publicly is what many people have been saying privately for a long time," says James Mitchell, professor of public policy at Edinburgh University.
The SNP's looming crisis deepened when the party admitted that it had covered up a dramatic fall in its membership, prompting the resignations of director of communications, Murray Foote, and chief executive Peter Murrell, who is married to Ms Sturgeon.
Also following his wife out of government are two of her most trusted lieutenants, senior adviser Liz Lloyd and Deputy First Minister John Swinney.
It has been a chaotic and painful few weeks for the SNP and yet the final days of the first minister's tenure have been characterised by boosterism and denial.
"The SNP's not in a mess," Ms Sturgeon insisted on ITV's Loose Women. "It's going through, how can I put this, some growing pains right now."
Then there was her denial that SNP president Mike Russell had said the party was in a mess.
Mr Russell had answered the question "Is your party in turmoil?" with the words: "Well, I think it's fair to say that there's a tremendous mess and we have to clear it up."
Ms Sturgeon also insisted that her party had not lied to journalists about its plummeting membership figures despite evidence to the contrary, not least the resignations of Mr Foote and Mr Murrell.
The whole membership affair was, leadership contender and Health Secretary Humza Yousaf told Tuesday's Times Radio debate, a "total own goal".
So, is Nicola Sturgeon's dream of a sovereign Scottish state, standing tall on the world stage, dead and buried?
History says don't be so sure.
On the day the Hollywood epic Braveheart had its American premiere in Seattle, a more peaceful political drama was playing out on the streets of the old country.
The death of the Conservative MP for Perth and Kinross had triggered a by-election, and the SNP candidate Roseanna Cunningham was on the march - and under attack.
A senior Tory accused Ms Cunningham - caricatured as Republican Rose because she opposed the monarchy - of fighting a campaign "against Queen and country".
At 18 years old, I was easily the least experienced journalist on the by-election trail - but even I could see that the Tories were in trouble in territory which they had dominated for decades.
Their candidate, a gaffe-prone merchant banker, was keen to talk about one topic above all others, campaigning (literally) under the banner: "A Strong Union".
You could understand why. The spoils of Empire; the unifying experience of defying Hitler's Germany; and the creation of the welfare state had all bound Scotland tightly into the union.
Roseanna Cunningham (centre) put independence at the heart of her by-election campaign in 1995
Margaret Thatcher's response, as Conservative prime minister during the 1980s, was to fight and win a war abroad while hastening a profound economic shift at home.
Her vision of a modern British economy meant moving away from state subsidy of heavy industry; weakening the trade unions; and encouraging the creation of wealth through private enterprise.
For many in Scotland, where culture, tradition and pride were intertwined with coal, steel and textiles, the pace of change was bewildering.
A lack of direct and obvious benefit from the vast quantities of oil being sucked out of the North Sea also contributed to a rise in nationalist sentiment.
By the time of the Perth and Kinross by-election, Scotland was rediscovering an old identity.
When it premiered in Stirling that autumn, Braveheart's romanticisation of the wars of independence from England in the 13th and 14th Centuries seemed in tune with the mood of the moment.
Having placed independence front and centre in her campaign, Ms Cunningham won handsomely, further reducing Tory Prime Minister John Major's slender majority in the House of Commons.
"Scotland is waking from its slumber," proclaimed the victorious new MP during a feisty and raucous declaration in the city hall.
Was it though? The SNP had scored spectacular by-election successes before — Motherwell in 1945; Hamilton in 1967; and Glasgow Govan in 1973 and 1988 — only to lose each seat at the subsequent general election.
This time was different. Perth remains SNP territory to this day.
The party may be in trouble now but, with large majorities of younger voters telling pollsters that they support independence, the constitutional question which hangs over Scottish politics is not going away.
It is a question which Labour, a party forged in the din of Scotland's industrial revolution, has tussled with since its creation.
The Scottish Labour Party was founded in 1888 by two extraordinary but very different men, the miner and trade unionist Keir Hardie, and the aristocratic adventurer RB Cunninghame Graham.
Hardie went on to become the first leader of the UK Labour Party in 1906; Cunninghame Grahame the first president of the Scottish National Party in 1934.
The most fundamental change to Scottish governance in the democratic era was delivered by Labour when the Scottish Parliament took charge of domestic affairs such as health and education in 1999.
But it was the SNP which benefited most, gradually capturing almost all of the post-industrial seats which Labour had held for decades and, from 2007, taking charge of the Scottish government.
Labour's Donald Dewar was the first first minister of Scotland when the Scottish Parliament opened in 1999
Nearly a quarter of a century later, Labour is led by Keir Hardie's namesake, Sir Keir Starmer, who spies an opportunity in the SNP's travails.
On Friday I accompanied Sir Keir, Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar and shadow climate change and net zero secretary, Ed Miliband on a trip to SSE's Beatrice wind farm off the east coast of Caithness.
The leader of the opposition at Westminster was in buoyant form, and no wonder.
His party sees the departure of multiple election winner Nicola Sturgeon — whom he calls a "giant in Scottish politics" — as great news.
"The SNP is imploding," he told me on the harbour side at Wick. "I think everybody can see that."
The party, he added, "has run out of road when it comes to the case for independence and that's shone a light on their record".
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With a large and sustained polling lead across the UK, and signs of improvement in Scotland, Labour may be in a positive place but the path to Downing Street is not straight and clear, running through mixed terrain.
First, there is the cosmopolitan and multicultural domain of London and other big English cities.
Then there are the more socially conservative, Brexit-inclined "red wall" seats, in the Midlands and the north of England, which switched from Labour to Boris Johnson's Conservatives at the last general election.
Finally there is the party's old Scots fiefdom, stretching from Ayrshire in the west through the central belt to Fife in the east, where the SNP have dominated with a pro-independence, pro-European message since 2015.
The SNP hold 45 of the Scottish 59 seats at Westminster (two more have defected to Alex Salmond's Alba Party since the last general election) but Labour strategists now reckon at least 15 of those would be competitive based on current polling, particularly in Glasgow, Fife, Midlothian and East Lothian.
With that in mind, on this trip Sir Keir appears to have adopted the doctor's maxim: first, do no harm. In our interview he uses the word "humility" a lot.
"I think Labour lost its way and got too far from voters here in Scotland and that's why I've spent a lot of time in Scotland listening, engaging, talking about the future," he says.
Precisely what he means by getting too far from the voters is not terribly clear.
Sir Keir Starmer, Ed Miliband and Anas Sarwar travelled to the Beatrice wind farm off Caithness on Friday
How would he respect the democratic will of the Scottish people to remain in the European Union, and the pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament?
The real answer to both questions is, he won't. But that would sound harsh so he adopts softer language.
On Brexit he says: "If you want a closer relationship with the EU, I hear you, I agree with you and we will set about ensuring that we do have that close relationship."
On independence he rejects "breaking up the United Kingdom," while recognising that there is a "desire for change".
Labour's attempt to defuse independence as an issue is to acknowledge an asymmetry in political and economic power between the prosperous south east of England and other parts of the UK, which it proposes to tackle by embracing some of the recommendations in Gordon Brown's recent commission on the UK's future, while considering whether to adopt others.
Already on Labour's agenda are House of Lords reform; decentralisation of economic power to the nations and regions of the UK; and improved intergovernmental working between the various administrations of these islands.
"Decisions should be made by people most closely affected by those decisions," says Sir Keir.
Isn't that an argument for independence?
No, he insists, it's an argument for local decision-making within the UK framework.
"The people in the Highlands can make decisions in partnership with the Labour government about the future living standards here, the future jobs, the skills we're talking about this morning," he explains.
Aware of this looming Labour threat, the SNP is keen to conflate Sir Keir's party with Rishi Sunak's, reminding voters that Labour and Tories joined together in the Better Together campaign against independence in 2014.
Labour politicians joined Conservative and Liberal Democrat counterparts to campaign for the union ahead of the 2014 referendum
Sir Keir's decision to approvingly quote Margaret Thatcher in a speech on crime while in Stoke this week makes the SNP's job easier while underlining the Labour leader's difficulty in assembling such a diverse electoral coalition.
Still, he can take comfort that his opponents here also face immense challenges.
The new SNP leader will have to tackle deep-rooted problems in Scotland's public services which are costing and blighting lives.
He or she will also be under pressure to set out a credible route map towards — and a credible plan for — independence.
And the winner must also reunite a divided party in time for a general election expected to be held next year in which, it is now clearer than ever, Scotland will be a key battleground.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-65063944
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PM looks forward to working with SNP leader Yousaf - BBC News
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2023-03-27
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Rishi Sunak congratulates Nicola Sturgeon's successor, saying they should both focus on "issues that matter".
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Scotland
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Victory by 52% to 48% is not the ringing endorsement Humza Yousaf would have wanted from the party membership, but a win is a win and it was accepted by all three candidates.
It is a massive personal moment for Mr Yousaf, but very quickly he will no longer be able to bask in the glory because he will be immersed in the detail and challenges that come with this big responsibility.
Under Alex Salmond and then Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP was a fairly united party and able to keep everybody on pretty much the same page, but underlying tensions have bubbled to the surface during this campaign.
Mr Yousaf has called for the party to come together and those signals in the days ahead will be important - will he try to bring in Kate Forbes and Ash Regan?
But some arguments will continue because they were pretty fundamental – the direction to take on independence, whether to challenge the UK government on its decision to block the gender reform legislation passed by Holyrood.
We now know Mr Yousaf's position is pretty secure, with the Greens - who share power – deciding they want to continue that agreement and backing him as first minister.
So he will easily see off the challenge from other parties in tomorrow's vote, but it is straight down to work because there are enormous challenges facing the Scottish government – trying to bring down huge NHS waiting lists, levels of poverty and drug-related deaths.
He now also carries the torch for the SNP’s ultimate goal of independence. It is clear he will continue to pursue that goal, as well as use Holyrood’s devolved powers to tackle some of the big challenges of the day, including the cost of living crisis.
There is always a tension in that. His rivals say every time he talks about independence, he is prolonging division in the country, whereas Humza Yousaf himself says he wants to govern for all the people of Scotland.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-scotland-65086830
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Prince Harry and Elton John appear at High Court in Associated Newspapers hearing - BBC News
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2023-03-27
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The Duke of Sussex has accused the publisher of the Daily Mail of unlawful information gathering.
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Entertainment & Arts
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The Duke of Sussex unexpectedly appeared at the High Court as legal proceedings began over alleged phone-tapping and other breaches of privacy.
Prince Harry, who is one of those suing Associated Newspapers, the publisher of the Daily Mail, was joined in the court room by singer Sir Elton John.
The duke claims "suspicion and paranoia" were caused by Associated's publication of some articles.
The publisher "vigorously denies" all the claims against it.
Prince Harry arrived at the High Court on Monday morning, while Sir Elton, who is also involved in the legal proceedings, joined proceedings at lunchtime.
Sir Elton John arrived at the High Court on Monday lunchtime
The pair, along with actresses Sadie Frost and Liz Hurley, are among the individuals who allege unlawful information gathering by the company, which also publishes the Mail on Sunday.
Others taking part in the legal action include Sir Elton's husband David Furnish, and Baroness Doreen Lawrence, the mother of Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered in a racist attack in 1993.
The four-day preliminary hearing in London is considering legal arguments and a judge will decide whether the case will go any further. Associated Newspapers (ANL) wants to end the claims without trial.
David Sherborne, the lawyer for the group of prominent individuals, said: "The claimants each claim that in different ways they were the victim of numerous unlawful acts carried out by the defendant, or by those acting on the instructions of its newspapers, the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday."
He said the alleged unlawful activity included "illegally intercepting voicemail messages; listening into live landline calls; obtaining private information, such as itemised phone bills or medical records, by deception or 'blagging'".
The activity also allegedly included "using private investigators to commit these unlawful information gathering acts on their behalf and even commissioning the breaking and entry into private property".
He added: "They range through a period from 1993 to 2011, even continuing beyond until 2018."
Actress Sadie Frost also appeared on Monday, and sat two seats away from Harry in the courtroom
In a document filed on Prince Harry's behalf, Mr Sherborne said the duke was "troubled that, through Associated's unlawful acts, he was largely deprived of important aspects of his teenage years".
In particular, he said, the prince had "suspicion and paranoia" caused by the publication of articles by ANL using unlawfully gathered information.
The barrister said: "Friends were lost or cut off as a result and everyone became a 'suspect' since he was misled by the way that the articles were written into believing that those close to him were the source of this information being provided to Associated's newspapers."
He added: "The claimant regards Associated's unlawful acts to amount to a major betrayal given promises made by the media to improve its conduct following the tragic and untimely death of his mother, Princess Diana, in 1997."
Sir Elton's lawyer said the singer and his husband were "appalled" by ANL's alleged conduct
The High Court was told Sir Elton and Mr Furnish's landline at their home in Windsor was tapped by a private investigator on the instructions of Associated Newspapers Limited.
Mr Sherborne said they were "mortified to consider all their conversations, some of which were very personal indeed, were tapped, taped, packaged and consumed as a commercial product for journalists and unknown others to pick over regardless of whether or not they were published".
The High Court heard Sir Elton and Mr Furnish had not seen a copy of their first child's birth certificate before it was unlawfully obtained by ANL.
Baroness Doreen Lawrence, whose son Stephen was murdered in a racist attack, also attended court on Monday
Mr Sherborne also told the court a private investigator acting on behalf of ANL hacked Hurley's phone and placed a "sticky window mini-microphone" outside her home.
He added her ex-boyfriend Hugh Grant's car was bugged to unlawfully obtain information about her finances, travel plans and medicals during her pregnancy.
He also told the court ANL paid a private investigator to unlawfully find the address of a man it believed was the male lover of Liberal Democrat politician Sir Simon Hughes.
Baroness Lawrence's bank accounts were monitored to check whether she was receiving any money from other newspapers during the Daily Mail's Justice for Stephen Lawrence Campaign, Mr Sherborne alleged.
"She finds it hard to believe the level of duplicity and manipulation that was clearly at play, knowing now as she does that the Daily Mail's outward support for her fight to bring Stephen's killers to justice was hollow and, worse, entirely false," he said.
ANL has said it categorically denies the serious claims made in the litigation and will vigorously defend them if necessary.
The group launched the legal action last year. ANL's lawyer Adrian Beltrami KC said, in written submissions, that the legal actions had been brought too late, were "stale" and the claims were "largely inferential".
The barrister said the individuals had to prove they did not know earlier, or could not have discovered earlier, they might have had a claim against ANL for alleged misuse of their private information.
He said none of the group said they believe they continued to be targeted by unlawful information-gathering after 2015.
In a statement after Monday's hearing, it added: "A private investigator whose 'confessions' form a key element of a privacy case being brought against Associated Newspapers by Prince Harry, Baroness Doreen Lawrence, Elton John and others has denied their allegations that he acted illegally against them on behalf of the Daily Mail or Mail on Sunday."
It said while the Mail's "admiration of Baroness Lawrence remained undimmed", we are "profoundly saddened that she has been persuaded to bring this case".
It added: "The Mail remains hugely proud of its pivotal role in campaigning for justice for Stephen Lawrence. Its famous 'Murderers' front page triggered the Macpherson report."
The Duke of Sussex was last seen in the UK at the late Queen's funeral
The duke's appearance on Monday is believed to be the first time he has been back in the UK since the late Queen's funeral in September.
His surprise return comes nearly three months after he publicised his troubled relationship with his father the King and brother the Prince of Wales in his controversial autobiography Spare.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex also released a Netflix documentary in December, titled Harry & Meghan.
The King was due to be away on Monday on the first official state visit of his reign, but the trip to France was cancelled due to rioting over pension reforms.
He is due to leave for a state visit to Germany on Wednesday morning.
Buckingham Palace said he was not in Windsor or London on Monday.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been asked to vacate their UK home, Frogmore Cottage on the Windsor estate, in a move sanctioned by the King.
The duke is also taking legal action against the Home Office over security arrangements when he is in the UK, raising questions about his own security provisions during this visit.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-65087072
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Kuenssberg: The Budget cannot mask big changes to our economy - BBC News
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2023-03-11
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Both main parties are under pressure to make the country and its people richer, writes Laura Kuenssberg.
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UK Politics
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In normal times (remember them?) there would be a frenzy this weekend about what's coming up in next week's Budget.
If it feels a bit muted so far, that isn't just because of a bit of a media frenzy over something else (what could that be?) but because Jeremy Hunt was employed as a "calm down" chancellor - called in like a soothing manager of many years' experience in a sensible bank to sort things out after some crazy young guns spent all the loot.
Given how he got his job and his political character he's not going to wake up on Wednesday morning and spring a red box full of massive shocks on an unsuspecting public.
One senior Conservative MP is hopeful of a few "pleasant surprises" but notes the Downing Street neighbours' priority is to "hold on to their reputation for caution and prudence".
Expect headlines about the country being less in the red than expected, a possible giveaway on pension savings and some goodies to help working families with the soaraway costs of childcare - you can read Faisal's primer here.
But when we sit down on our programme this Sunday with Jeremy Hunt and Labour's Rachel Reeves - who hopes to fill his job - there's so much more than the specifics of what's coming on Wednesday to talk about.
No one Budget can mask some big shifts in how the economy works - or perhaps doesn't work for many voters. Long-term changes to wealth and wages feed into how we all vote.
Statistics in the last few days suggest the economy is not in such dire straits as predicted a few months ago, but what's happened over the past few years and is possibly coming next isn't pretty.
Bluntly, the economy has failed to grow persuasively for a long time, and no strong surge is coming soon. In fact, the Bank of England reckons growth will be measly in the coming years too, only getting back to the levels it was at before Covid in 2026.
Politicians aren't short of explanations for what's gone wrong - some self-inflicted, some out of their control.
There has been the Ukraine war, the pandemic and the disruption of Brexit. We've also seen years of political strife, the markets' disastrous reaction to Liz Truss' decisions, the effects of a spending squeeze during the 2010s and even the long-lasting hangover from the 2008 financial crisis. Remember experts brandishing "L-shaped" graphs during that time - warning that it would take years for the economy to climb back to anything with vigour?
Those political and economic dramas have had real-life consequences, presenting huge challenges to what, years ago, politicians presented to voters as normal, achievable aspirations - the hope and expectation that each generation would do better than the last. Perhaps that's shaky now.
Take for example this statistic from the Institute for Fiscal Studies: in 1997 more than 60% of people on middle incomes between the ages of 25 and 35 owned their own homes. Twenty years later, that figure had slumped to just over 20%.
Think about that for a moment - it is a profound change. There is a blizzard of statistics of course, and each year, every Budget, there are moves up and down. Think how much impact Kwasi Kwarteng's short time with the No 11 Downing Street red box had.
But let's look at the big changes that have been in the works over a longer period.
For years, wages have been sluggish and growing more slowly than wealth. Paul Johnson, economist and director of the IFS, says a "significant fraction" of people in their 20s and 30s are earning less than their parents at the same stage of life.
It's harder to buy a house. It's more expensive to rent one if you can't afford to buy. For decades, what your parents passed on was becoming less important to your chances of prosperity. That seems to have gone into reverse and could have huge consequences for our political choices.
It's given Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer ammunition to suggest that under the Conservatives that pact - that "social contract" with the public that you get back what you put in - has frayed.
"Hard-working families" - the nebulous group so beloved by successive generations of politicians whose votes might swing if only the right solutions could be dangled in front of them - are likely to be working harder and feel life's harder too.
You can add to this the pressures of an ageing population: fewer people in the workforce paying tax, happily living longer but requiring more cash for health and care.
The two main political parties share a desire to get the economy growing strongly. It's not abstract - if the economy doesn't grow and the government needs more money for health or defence for example, ministers have either to borrow, increase taxes or cut spending. Those aren't ideas parties like to put on the front of leaflets, lecterns or Facebook ads.
Rachel Reeves and Sir Keir Starmer have been at pains not to push businesses away
The trouble for the Conservatives is that even inside the party they disagree over how to do it. Former Prime Minister Liz Truss's verdict was to slash taxes, borrowing to do so, which ended in disaster.
Even though Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak promised radical tax cuts when they were vying to be Tory leader, neither of them says now is the right time. There will probably be hints on Wednesday and promises of tax cuts to come, but they're unlikely to cave to backbench pressure to cut now.
We'll hear more from Rachel Reeves on Sunday's programme about how Labour would spend billions to try to create thousands of jobs and get growth going through supporting green industries. But there's perhaps a tension too for Labour, promising massive state intervention in industry while vowing to watch every single penny.
Rishi Sunak has soothed nervous Tory brows in the last few weeks with a frenzy of activity, fewer leaks from cabinet, and pointers the economy might not be in such dire straits as previously thought. His calm down chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, did reassure the manic financial markets when he took over. But Labour's been solidly ahead in the polls for months and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has carefully been building its reputation for credibility and making nice with business.
What happens to our wallets makes a huge difference to what happens at the ballot box. There is huge pressure on both main parties to address the big shifts in how we make our livings as individuals and as a country.
That's not just about what happens this Wednesday but about who wins much bigger arguments that affect us all in the months and years ahead.
We'll be asking Mr Hunt and Ms Reeves about those big questions in the morning, and perhaps, talking a little about what's going on at the BBC too.
Remember, we love to get your questions - you can email me kuenssberg@bbc.co.uk.
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Gary Lineker revolt becomes a test of BBC's values - BBC News
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2023-03-11
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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The broadcaster is facing a test of its fundamental values and mission following a day of tumult.
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UK
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When the BBC's director general, Tim Davie, took over in 2020, he declared his founding principle to be "impartiality".
Three years later, a row over that principle and how it applies across the corporation has created a crisis that has quite clearly caught managers by surprise.
Familiar, fixed points in the weekly TV schedule unexpectedly falling off air in quick succession is proof of a crisis that has become something much bigger than a row about some tweets.
The Gary Lineker issue is more than an argument about the opinions of a highly paid sports presenter - it is a test of the BBC's fundamental values and the current director general's core mission.
The passions provoked by Lineker's political tweets and the decision to keep him off air until he and the BBC resolve this issue has poured petrol on a fire that was already well alight - the debate about the BBC's role in British politics and perceptions of bias both to the left and the right.
But first, let's look at the immediate issue.
It's worth noting that complaints about Lineker's politically charged tweets are not new.
In 2016 and 2018 the BBC defended comments made by the Match of the Day presenter about child migrants and Brexit by saying he was a freelance presenter, it was a private Twitter account and the stringent rules for journalists did not apply equally to sports presenters.
The guidelines at the time said the risk to compromising the BBC's impartiality "is lower where an individual is expressing views publicly on an unrelated area, for example, a sports or science presenter expressing views on politics or the arts".
Since then rules have been tightened. New guidelines on social media demanded an "extra responsibility" for presenters with a "high profile". Some described the new rule as the "Lineker clause".
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: BBC boss Tim Davie asked if he bowed to government pressure
The question is whether that rule is being fairly applied. Twitter is awash with examples of what some people think are presenters who have gone too far over recent years. Names frequently raised include Alan Sugar, Chris Packham and Andrew Neil.
In response, Mr Davie said on Saturday evening that he was in "listening mode" and suggested there might be an escape route by re-examining those guidelines.
There is good reason for him to want to bring this to a conclusion. Impartiality is hugely important but so too is providing a service that people pay for through their licence fee.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. WATCH: How the Match of the Day row played out on Saturday... in 60 seconds
Match of the Day went ahead on BBC One on Saturday night - but was reduced to a 20-minute edition that did not have a presenter, pundits or any commentary - while other football coverage was dropped.
Every cancelled programme is a source of further complaint from licence payers who may not care what Lineker says on Twitter but care deeply about their favourite programmes staying on air on a Saturday night.
There is also the wider context of a government that has in recent years been critical of the BBC and its perceived liberal bias.
Greg Dyke, a former director general, who left the BBC over a clash with the Labour Government in 2004, says the decision to pull Gary Lineker from Match of the Day looks like a corporation bowing to political pressure from a Tory government.
All of which leads to another issue that asks questions of the BBC's impartiality, the BBC's chairman, Richard Sharp, a former donor to the Conservative party who is the subject of an ongoing inquiry looking in to his appointment and what he did or did not disclose about his part in the arrangement of an £800,000 loan guarantee to the former prime minister, Boris Johnson. He has denied any involvement in arranging the loan.
Lineker has become a lightning rod for a much bigger debate and the BBC would like to resolve the issue as quickly as possible to stop a very public row turning into a monumental crisis. However, with the corporation saying it wants Lineker, with his 8.7 million Twitter followers, to stop the political tweets while he shows no sign of agreeing to be silenced, it's hard to see quite how this will resolve itself.
For the BBC this is about impartiality but to many others it is about free speech. Indeed, there is a statue outside the BBC's headquarters in London of the author of 1984, George Orwell, a former BBC talks producer. Inscribed on the wall behind the Orwell statue are these words: "If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
Eighty years after Orwell left the BBC, the corporation finds itself in a deepening crisis. That thought from Orwell and the questions it raises for the BBC are at the very heart of the Lineker debate.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64929269
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BBC and Gary Lineker: Tweets decision comes at high price for BBC - BBC News
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2023-03-11
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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One of the BBC's best loved presenters has been taken off air due to an impartiality row.
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Entertainment & Arts
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It can't have been what the BBC intended.
One of its most famous and best loved presenters has been taken off air - and it appears to be in the midst of a stand-off with no clear exit strategy for either side.
Sticking to its guns on impartiality has come at a high price for the corporation and opened up new faultlines in the process.
First up, Match of the Day, which saw its star-studded presenting and commentating cast of sport royalty drop out in quick succession or assert that they would not appear on set - in solidarity with Gary Lineker.
In scenes more reminiscent of the 1960s epic film Spartacus than a football highlights show, presenters and pundits are standing with Gary Lineker, effectively declaring "I'm Spartacus".
Ian Wright and Alan Shearer began the exodus from the show this weekend, with Jermaine Jenas and Micah Richards also posting that, if they'd been due to be on the show, they too would have said no.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. WATCH: How the Match of the Day row played out on Saturday... in 60 seconds
Alex Scott has also tweeted, heavily implying she would not present the programme in Gary Lineker's place.
Now, MOTD have said it will broadcast a show focused on highlights - and without the characteristic punditry. It's an unenviable position to be in.
Who could have predicted that the government's asylum policies and the language around them, so robustly criticised by Gary Lineker in his tweets, would end up reducing the BBC's most popular football show to this?
Impartiality is at the heart of Director General Tim Davie's strategy for the corporation, as he has declared many times.
Alan Shearer and Ian Wright began the exodus from the show this weekend
Some argue that was a reaction to pressure from the Conservative government.
But there is no doubt Mr Davie has always insisted he genuinely believes in impartiality as a way to ensure the BBC, funded by licence fee payers, is for everyone.
Staff and on-air talent are asked to leave their opinions at the front door. But there is some nuance in that.
In its statement on Friday, the BBC said: "We've never said Gary should be an opinion free zone."
Tim Davie has said impartiality should be at the heart of the BBC
Gary Lineker is a sports presenter not a political presenter or news journalist. But the BBC's Executive Complaints Unit has previously ruled that, although the star is not required to uphold the same impartiality standards as BBC journalists, he has an "additional responsibility" because of his profile.
"We expect these individuals to avoid taking sides on party political issues or political controversies and to take care when addressing public policy matters," the ruling said.
By deciding Gary Lineker's "recent social media activity to be a breach of our guidelines" and deciding to take him off air, the BBC has, though, opened itself up to criticisms that it's on the wrong side of free speech arguments.
So on top of the fate of Match of the Day, that's another headache.
Are we really saying, argue the critics, that somebody who isn't a news journalist but appears on the BBC in another capacity, can't tweet their views about politics in a personal capacity? Where will it end, they ask?
Can a gameshow host not have an opinion on a government policy? Or an actor who's closely linked to a high profile BBC drama? A comedian?
Even more ominously, they ask is this actually only about people whose views diverge from those of the government of the day?
And while the BBC's free speech credentials are under scrutiny, the BBC is also being accused of double standards, of caving in to political pressure at a time when its own Conservative-linked chairman remains in post.
Richard Sharp has been under pressure for his role in facilitating a loan agreement for Boris Johnson when he was prime minister and not declaring it as a potential conflict of interest in the appointment process when he was under consideration to be chairman of the BBC.
Mr Sharp has previously admitted the affair had embarrassed the BBC but insisted he had "acted in good faith to ensure that the rules were followed".
The Shadow Culture Secretary Lucy Powell has specifically linked the two cases saying "the same cries of impartiality were totally absent when the BBC Chair failed to disclose aspects of his close friendship with the then PM".
The BBC is justified in arguing that it has no say in the case of the BBC chair. Mr Sharp is a political appointment, and his appointment is now being investigated by the commissioner for public appointments.
But perceptions matter. And the BBC is accused by one side of coming down heavily on Gary Lineker for his anti-government rhetoric, while apparently having a chair in post who is mired in a row and has given money to the Conservatives in the past.
One counter argument is that Richard Sharp, as a Board member, isn't involved in editorial matters.
Plenty would say, though, neither is Gary Lineker. He has no editorial say on air about politics. Sport is his thing - and as a sports presenter, the BBC today called him "second to none".
But no longer - this weekend anyway - for the BBC.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64922674
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news_entertainment-arts-64922674
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