Politics

July 29, 2020

UK breakup: Apocalypse soon?

The doomsters are having a field day in the troubled United Kingdom. They foresee a conjunction of seismic events, if not now, then shortly. Murray…

July 23, 2020

A sovereignty crisis of a different kind

In Australia the clarion call of ‘Take back control’ has become the war cry of a re-energised republican movement. Brexiters are not amused, writes Geoff…

June 14, 2020

Brexit. Will the UK prime minister have to blink first?

Murray Ritchie poses the question: would Boris Johnson dare to walk away from the EU with no deal? Is all the talk of impending catastrophe…

June 2, 2020

Covid-19: All for one and one for all

In the third of a Chief-Exec.com series on the coronavirus, Dr John Egan looks at the vital role of the epidemiologist – the men and…

April 20, 2020

How the EU confounds its critics

The European Union’s reaction to coronavirus and its economic implications continues to defy the doom merchants. In the face of the usual Eurosceptic predictions of…

March 4, 2020

Nationalists of a very different hue

Competing forms of nationalism are about to change the economic and political world order. And the decisive moment is coming soon when “good” nationalism and…

January 31, 2020

Brexit: Government of the people by the people for the people?

The health of democracy is a matter for growing concern but the responsibility for making it work better lies with the defeated as much as…

January 1, 2020

2020: a year of extreme weather and extreme politics

The climate has turned terrorist against nature, but one dare not mention the words ‘climate change’ or ‘climate emergency’, writes Geoff Kitney I am writing…

December 13, 2019

The Dumb, the Democrat and the Expert

The people have spoken and the “Brexit Election” campaign of the Conservatives in the UK will go down as one of the most successful in…

December 9, 2019

Voters to hold their collective nose and vote tactically

Britain’s current agony will not be ended by the general election, whatever the outcome, far less by Brexit if it ever happens. In all probability…

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Consultancy firms reap the rewards of Brexit
Management consultants have been awarded £180 million to deliver Brexit as a potential “no-deal” looms and ministers turn increasingly to experts from the private sector. The government admitted for the first time that it has already paid £88m for advice from outsiders on Brexit in the past two years. Now it expects to increase that spending. A priority for external help is the “healthcare supply chain”, raising concern that ministers lack confidence that they have secured access to drugs and medical products when the transition period expires on December 31. The government is also asking management consultants to bid for £3.6 billion of public contracts over the next two years, a sharp increase from £2.3bn in the present period. The bonanza for consultancy firms comes amid increasing criticism of the coronavirus response in which they have been key players … The Cabinet Office has announced £30 million each in Brexit contracts with six top consultancies: McKinsey, Bain, Deloitte, KPMG, Accenture and PwC. The Times, October 28

PM faces Brexit bill defeat at pivotal moment
Boris Johnson’s plan to flout international law over Brexit is set to be blocked by the House of Lords next month, throwing up an incendiary early test of relations with Joe Biden if he wins next week’s US election. Mr Biden has warned that Mr Johnson’s UK internal market bill would undermine the Northern Ireland peace process and that he would never sign a trade deal with the UK unless key clauses in the bill were removed. Members of parliament’s upper house are expected to oblige Mr Biden by voting overwhelmingly to throw out six clauses from the bill, which ministers have admitted will breach Britain’s withdrawal treaty, signed last year with the EU. The November 9 vote in the House of Lords will come less than a week after the US presidential election on November 3 and in the midst of what are likely to be the final stages of EU negotiations with the UK on a new trade deal. Financial Times, October 28

CBI chief fires parting shot over slow pace of Brexit negotiations
The head of the UK’s leading employers’ organisation has stepped up pressure on the government to conclude trade talks with the EU so that the country can move on from the “suspended animation” of the past four years. Reflecting on her five years as director general of the CBI, Dame Carolyn Fairbairn said her biggest regret was that the issue had not been resolved earlier and warned ministers that businesses grappling with Covid-19 were unprepared for a hard Brexit. Talks between London and Brussels have intensified in recent days as negotiators grapple with issues such as fishing and state aid. Fairbairn, who steps down next week, said: “The thing that’s painful is that it has taken so long to get to a resolution. I think we will get a deal. The remaining issues look soluble.” The Guardian, October 28

Paris not Heathrow is Europe’s busiest airport
Heathrow says it has been overtaken as Europe’s busiest airport for the first time by Paris Charles de Gaulle because of a slump in demand for air travel. Some 19 million passengers used Heathrow in the first nine months of the year, versus 19.3m who used the airport in the French capital. Heathrow said Amsterdam Schiphol and Frankfurt were “close behind”. It said all three rivals had adopted testing regimes as a way of people reducing or avoiding quarantine. By contrast, Britain had been “too slow to embrace passenger testing” and was “falling behind”. Heathrow reported an 84 per cent fall in passenger numbers for the three months to September as losses for the year to date widened to £1.5bn. “Already in France and Germany, even Canada and Ireland have moved to testing and this is the way to make sure we can protect jobs in the UK as well as protecting people from coronavirus,” Mr Holland Kaye told the BBC. “The government really need to get on and make this happen before the beginning of December if we are going to save people’s jobs.” BBC news, October 28

Self-employed who suffered no loss of income banked extra £1.3bn
Almost half a million self-employed workers have banked an extra £1.3 billion from the taxpayer despite suffering no loss of income during the coronavirus crisis, according to an analysis. In a survey of more than 6,000 people, the Resolution Foundation found that 17 per cent of applicants who applied for the Self-Employed Income Support Scheme did so despite suffering no hit to their incomes. This amounts to 435,000 workers. Under the scheme, self-employed people with annual profits of less than £50,000 were offered a taxable grant worth up to 80 per cent of average profits for a period of three months to October 31, capped at £7,500. The scheme has since been extended to April 2021. The Times, October 28

Apple develops alternative to Google search
Apple is stepping up efforts to develop its own search technology as US antitrust authorities threaten multibillion-dollar payments that Google makes to secure prime placement of its engine on the iPhone. In a little-noticed change to the latest version of the iPhone operating system, iOS 14, Apple has begun to show its own search results and link directly to websites when users type queries from its home screen. That web search capability marks an important advance in Apple’s in-house development and could form the foundation of a fuller attack on Google, according to several people in the industry. The Silicon Valley company is notoriously secretive about its internal projects, but the move adds to growing evidence that it is working to build a rival to Google’s search engine. Financial Times, October 28

Food tsar serves up £1bn meal plan to PM
Boris Johnson’s food tsar said last night that the government had a “moral obligation” to stop disadvantaged children going hungry as he announced plans for a £1.2 billion programme to help those most in need. Henry Dimbleby, co-founder of the Leon restaurant chain and the government’s adviser on food strategy, has sent Downing Street a four-point plan to tackle child hunger and urged ministers to “set aside ideology”. The proposals include a holiday activity and food programme costing £500 million a year, a £100m healthy food voucher scheme and a £670m extension of the free school meals programme. The Times, October 28

Anger towards Macron grows in Muslim world
Rage is growing across the Muslim world at the French president and his perceived attacks on Islam and the prophet Muhammad, leading to calls for boycotts of the French products and security warnings for France’s citizens in majority-Muslim states. The backlash has cut across an extraordinarily diverse Muslim world with a myriad of cultures, sects, political systems and levels of economic development. It has stoked historical and present-day grievances from the markets of Herat in Afghanistan to the upmarket neighbourhoods of Amman and the universities of Islamabad. Tension has simmered since September when the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo republished cartoons of the prophet Muhammad on the eve of a trial of 14 people accused of involvement in a terrorist attack against the publication’s offices in 2015 for publishing the same caricatures. The Guardian, October 28

Scientists discover 500-metre-tall coral reef
Australian scientists have discovered a detached reef more than 500 metres high – taller than the Empire State Building – at the northern end of the Great Barrier Reef. The “blade-like” vertical reef about 130km off Cape York, Australia’s north-eastern tip, was found during a 3D seabed mapping exercise conducted from a ship owned by the Californian non-profit Schmidt Ocean Institute. Tom Bridge, from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University and the expedition’s principal investigator, said the reef was 1.5km wide at its base and rose half a kilometre to within 40 metres of the surface. The Guardian, October 28