“David Cameron will stay on as prime minister to negotiate Britain’s exit from the EU if he loses his European referendum this year, according to Tory cabinet minister Chris Grayling. Mr Grayling, the Eurosceptic leader of the House of Commons, is expected to campaign for a Brexit but suggested Mr Cameron would have a duty to stay on in Number 10 if the country voted to leave” – Financial Times
>Today:
“Britain will announce additional military assistance for Poland today, weeks after the country’s foreign minister suggested that it could drop its opposition to a ban on migrants benefits in return for a beefed-up Nato presence. Warships and 1,000 troops will be sent to Poland this year… A Foreign and Commonwealth Office source denied that there was any link with the EU deal: ‘We’ve been steadily increasing our support for Poland and this is part of that’” – The Times (£)
“Brussels is to scrap rules that make the first country a refugee enters responsible for any asylum claim, revolutionizing the bloc’s migration policy and shifting the burden from its southern flank to its wealthier northern members. The ‘first-country’ requirement is the linchpin of the EU refugee system. But it has become politically toxic for EU leaders as Germany and other states criticise frontier countries such as Greece and Italy” – Financial Times
“Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, will call on Wednesday for a shift in coalition strategy against Isis, with a new focus on ‘tightening the noose’ around the extremist group’s stronghold in Raqqa… The new strategy will focus on more elusive Isis targets and could bring the risk of higher civilian casualties, but Mr Fallon told the Financial Times the time was right to bring more pressure to bear on ‘the head of the snake’” – Financial Times
“Over the past few years, I have been watching the disturbing growth of an insidious enemy, an enemy that represents a very real danger to the fighting capability and morale of our Armed Forces… an enemy that carries neither bombs nor bullets — but bundles. These bundles consist of legal documents and supposed evidence gathered by an army of ambulance-chasing lawyers… Just yesterday, we learned of a new and particularly fatuous example of this vile and unpatriotic witch-hunt” – Nicholas Soames, Daily Mail
“Jeremy Hunt has promised an extra £2billion a year for GPs in a desperate attempt to stave off a revolt. The Health Secretary is also pledging to reduce doctors’ paperwork, ease their workload and potentially even scale back surgery inspections. His announcement came days before a crisis meeting of senior GPs who will demand an end to carrying out routine home visits” – Daily Mail
“Nicky Morgan has waded into the row over Oxford’s Cecil Rhodes statue, warning students campaigning to have it removed that they should not ‘shut down debate’. The Education Secretary is the most senior public figure to become involved in the dispute after the university’s chancellor Lord Patten said students who weren’t prepared to engage with controversial moments in history should ‘think about being educated elsewhere’” – Daily Mail
“A secret apartheid policy brands hundreds of asylum seekers in Middlesbrough by housing them in properties with red front doors, it can be revealed. The doors make asylum homes easy to identify and are blamed for numerous attacks in which people were victims of harassment and abuse… James Brokenshire, the immigration minister, said that he was deeply concerned by the Times investigation and announced an urgent audit of asylum-seeker housing in the northeast” – The Times (£)
“Senior Tories are warning George Osborne that he faces a backbench revolt if he goes ahead with sweeping plans for a stealth raid on the pension pots of higher-income taxpayers to help pay off the deficit. Under proposals being drawn up in the Treasury, ahead of the Budget in March, all workers paying into a pension would receive a flat rate of tax relief of between 20 and 30 per cent” – Independent
>Today:
“Britain may still be sitting close to the top of the international growth table for advanced economies, but in a speech on Tuesday Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, was clear the economy is too weak for him to contemplate raising interest rates from crisis-era lows. The discrepancy is a reminder that even seven years on from the crash, there is still a long way to go before normal service is resumed” – Financial Times
“If I’m Mayor, I will set a simple rule that any homes built on mayoral land – as many as 30,000 – will only be sold to Londoners – people who have lived or worked in London for at least three years and don’t already own a home. My ‘Londoners First’ rule will be in force for the entire first year that the houses are on sale. It can be delivered because on mayoral land the Mayor sets the rules” – Zac Goldsmith, Daily Telegraph
“Ed Miliband has ducked most of the responsibility for Labour’s crushing election defeat in an official report that instead blames the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, Scottish nationalists and the media. The party’s long-awaited review, overseen by Dame Margaret Beckett, said that Mr Miliband performed well during the campaign, and put his lack of credibility with voters down to a concerted attempt by the press ‘to destroy him’” – The Times (£)
“Scotland’s most senior civil servant has warned the First Minister’s spin doctors against issuing offensive comments to the media after a senior figure in the SNP administration briefed that a school cadet scheme provides ‘cannon fodder’ for the Armed Forces. The Telegraph can disclose that Leslie Evans, the Scottish Government’s Permanent Secretary, has reminded “all those who speak on ministers’ behalf” that they not permitted to make over-the-top remarks that misrepresent Nicola Sturgeon’s views” – Daily Telegraph