“The head of the national sex abuse inquiry suspended its top lawyer last night as the £100 million investigation descended into acrimony… The unexpected move pushed the most ambitious public inquiry in British history into its biggest crisis. In the two years since it was set up by Theresa May, three chairwomen have resigned. The inquiry, which is projected to last a decade, has spent more than £20 million but not yet heard any evidence.” – The Times (£)
>Today: ToryDiary: The child abuse inquiry has become unworkable. The only practical solution is to pull it.
“Theresa May has sufficient support in parliament to drive through the contentious expansion of Heathrow airport if she decides to put it to a vote next month, according to close allies. The government will not make a final decision about how to proceed until an aviation subcommittee – chaired by Mrs May – meets on either October 11 or 18. But according to detailed calculations by ministers, Heathrow would win a vote with a “slam dunk” despite continuing opposition from some senior figures in the Conservative party.” – FT
“Liam Fox has launched a savage assault on the European Union, saying its catastrophic economic policies have taken it to the brink of ‘imploding’. The International Trade Secretary said Europe was engulfed in a migrant crisis, a French economic crisis and a ‘potential’ Italian banking crisis – and that the euro had left a generation of young people out of work. Without Britain, he said, Germany could end up paying for the rest of the continent, becoming what he called the ‘greatest ATM in global history’.” – Daily Mail
More Brexit:
More EU:
Comment:
>Today: Daniel Hannan MEP’s column: My one worry about Brexit – if we mess things up, we could harm relations with Ireland
“Ken Clarke, the former chancellor, said that Theresa May was running a “government with no policies” in the first major Tory assault on the new regime. Mr Clarke, who first entered government in 1988 and left in 2014, claimed that the prime minister had no plan on how to execute Britain’s exit from the European Union. “Nobody in the government has the first idea of what they’re going to do next on the Brexit front,” he told the New Statesman.” – The Times (£)
Comment:
>Yesterday: ToryDiary: The real Brexit choice. Not Hard v Soft, but Open v Closed
“Junior doctors have lost a High Court battle against changes to their contracts, removing the last barrier before the terms are implemented next week. Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, acted within his legal powers, Mr Justice Green ruled. It was reasonable for him to conclude that having more doctors on duty at the weekend would reduce death rates, he said. Doctors have been urged to lobby their hospitals to stick within existing terms after the ruling made clear that they had the legal power to do so. Few hospitals, however, are likely to break ranks because they would lose tens of millions of pounds that training bodies threaten to withhold.” – The Times (£)
“Every Prime Minister, when first appointed, pledges to fight against injustice. Some deliver; most don’t. If Theresa May is serious in her desire to govern for the have-nots as well as just the haves, she must tackle one of the greatest injustices of our our time: Britain’s horrendous, corrosive housing crisis, the one issue which could yet bring a populist, hard-left Corbynite party into power at some point in the 2020s.” – Daily Telegraph
“Jeremy Corbyn promised to fund student grants with higher business taxes and borrow more to build new council houses as he outlined Labour’s offer of “21st-century socialism” if Theresa May calls an election next year. The Labour leader said that he respected voters’ concerns about immigration but suggested that demands for curbs on numbers of new arrivals were “racist” in remarks sure to stoke the row over how the party should respond to the Brexit referendum. In an uncompromising response to appeals by Tom Watson, his deputy, not to “trash” New Labour, Mr Corbyn blamed Europe’s refugee crisis on “repeated military interventions” and said it was right that he had apologised for Tony Blair’s decision to go to war in Iraq.” – The Times (£)
More Labour:
Analysis:
>Yesterday:
“In his conference speech yesterday, Jeremy Corbyn half-acknowledged these uncomfortable truths about our lost voters. He counselled against ‘patronising or lecturing’ those who voted Leave: ‘We have to hear their concerns about jobs, about public services, about wages, about immigration, about a future for their children.’ But ‘hearing’ is one thing. ‘Listening and learning’ is quite another – and tragically for my party, as well as the country, Mr Corbyn showed no sign he is proposing to act on what he has heard.” – Daily Mail
Sketches:
Editorial:
“Newly appointed Labour peer Shami Chakrabarti is in line to become shadow attorney general, it has been reported. The former director of human rights campaign group Liberty ‘wants to do more’ and the ‘gig is a no brainer’, according to the New Statesman. The Labour reshuffle is expected to begin next Wednesday, the day the Tory conference finishes.” – Daily Mail
“Scotland’s Health Minister is under pressure to review a series of cuts and closures to local NHS services after the SNP government lost its first parliamentary vote since May’s Holyrood election. MSPs backed by 64 votes to zero a Labour motion demanding Shona Robison “call in” and review health board plans to downgrade or close services across the country. The 62 SNP MSPs abstained.” – Daily Telegraph
>Yesterday:
“Former Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi donated thousands of pounds to a Welsh independence party to help ‘disrupt the status quo in the West’, according to a new book. Gaddafi allegedly handed £25,000 to a delegation from Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru in the 1970s. The five-figure donation has been revealed for the first time in the autobiography of one of the party’s long-time activists Dr Carl Clowes.” – Daily Mail