Downing Street has said Boris Johnson has “no imminent plans” to reshuffle his Cabinet after rumours spread over the weekend that the prime minister had threatened to move Rishi Sunak to health secretary.
Mr Johnson was warned he risked ending his political career by demoting the chancellor, who is seen as his most likely successor as leader of the Conservatives.
An ally of the Mr Sunak told The Telegraph an attempted move would effectively end Mr Johnson’s political career, saying: “If he demotes him he’s only signing his death warrant. There’s nobody else as good as Rishi.”
Meanwhile, Downing Street has defended spending almost £100,000 on two sets of artwork after Labour criticised the decision to make luxury purchases at a time of public sector pay freezes and cuts to welfare spending.
Canada joins UK in imposing Belarus sanctions
Canada has imposed similar sanctions to Britain on Belarus to protest against what it called the “gross and systematic violations of human rights” under president Alexander Lukashenko.
Marc Garneau, the Canadian foreign minister, said in a statement that Ottawa would target potash and petroleum products along with transferable securities and money market instruments, debt financing, insurance and reinsurance.
He said: “It has been one year since the Belarusian regime demonstrated its blatant disregard for human rights during the fraudulent presidential elections of August 2020.
“Since then, Canada has stood with our international partners in applying pressure on those responsible for continued human rights violations. The measures announced today show that Canada will not relent in ending impunity for human rights abusers.”
Pro-Starmer candidate ‘quietly confident’ of winning leadership of Labour’s biggest union
Gerard Coyne, the candidate who narrowly failed to beat Len McCluskey four years ago, is “quietly confident” of winning the leadership of Unite, Labour’s largest affiliated union, writes John Rentoul.
Mr Coyne, who is Sir Keir Starmer’s favoured candidate in the election, told The Independent in an interview that he would maintain Labour funding and that he wouldn’t “purge” his opponents in the way that Mr McCluskey purged him.
Mr Coyne said he had “snippets of feedback” about the ballot, which closes on 23 August, in which he is competing against two candidates who are more critical of Sir Keir, Steve Turner, an assistant general secretary, and Sharon Graham, head of the union’s organising department.
More on Mr Coyne’s candidacy here:
UK ‘hoarding’ vaccine supplies, say campaigners
The UK has been accused of “hoarding” Covid-19 vaccines by campaigners.
The Global Justice Now organisation said the UK’s unused doses of vaccine could cover the 10 least-vaccinated countries in the world, including Syria, Yemen and South Sudan.
The organisation said that data from life science analytics company Airfinity showed vaccinating all over-16s and providing a third-jab for the most vulnerable would leave the UK with a surplus of 186,578,000 doses.
Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, said: “The UK is offering third doses and vaccinating teenagers while low-and middle-income countries are left fighting for scraps.
“It’s an insult to the thousands dying each day from Covid-19.
“Worse still, this is happening while our government obstructs efforts to enable these countries to manufacture their own vaccines by waiving intellectual property.
UK imposes new economic sanctions on Belarus
The UK has slapped Belarus with new economic sanctions as part of wider efforts to increase pressure on the autocratic regime of Alexander Lukashenko.
The measures, which were announced on Monday, target the country’s profitable potash and petroleum sectors as well as its aviation industry.
The clampdown follows Mr Lukashenko’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, who complain that last August’s election was rigged in favour of the long-serving leader.
More on this from Rory Sullivan here:
No reprieve for Geronimo the condemned alpaca
Downing Street has again stated there can be no reprieve for Geronimo the alpaca after the animal was condemned to death due to testing positive for TB.
As ‘Save Geronimo’ protesters gathered on Whitehall, the prime minister’s official spokesman said: “We know how distressing losing animals to TB is for anyone. That is why the environment secretary has looked at this extremely carefully and interrogated all the evidence.
“The fact remains that Geronimo has sadly tested positive twice using a highly specific and reliable and validated test.
“This is something the environment secretary has looked at very carefully.”
Teacher-assessed grades are better than exams, Ofqual chief says
Teacher assessment of pupils is a better and more “accurate” way of awarding grades than formal exams, the government’s qualification regulator has said.
Simon Lebus, the interim head of Ofqual, said having teachers grade their pupils on work throughout the year would give a more “holistic judgement” rather than the “snapshot” provided by an exam.
Headteachers welcomed the comments, which represent a shift in government thinking, and said ministers had in recent years become “fixated” on assessing students “almost entirely” with final exams.
Full story from Jon Stone, Policy Correspondent, here:
Sharma’s international trips ‘not a good look’, says Labour MP
Wes Streeting, shadow secretary of state for child poverty, said: “We can’t have a ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ mantra”, when asked about Cop26 president Alok Sharma’s international travel.
The Labour MP told Sky News: “Well, it’s not a good look, is it? Climate diplomacy is going to be really important and I really, really want Alok Sharma to succeed as the Cop26 president because his success is vital not just for our country but for the whole of humanity, and, as dramatic and grand as that sounds, that’s how important this year’s summit really is, but I do think, sometimes, it’s a bit like Boris Johnson telling us all to cut down our emissions and then flying down to Cornwall.
“I think we’ve got to take the country with us, we’ve got to take the public with us, and I think they understand, looking at those images coming from Greece, thinking about the flooding we’ve had in the UK in recent years, only weeks ago in my own constituency on the London-Essex border… I think people are beginning to see on their television screens and even in their own communities the early signs of what catastrophic climate breakdown would mean for us.
“They want the government to take action, but we can’t have a ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ mantra, ‘One rule for them, one rule for everyone else’ mantra coming from the government, because we’ve got to take the country with us. We have all got to play our part.”
Boris Johnson was ‘clearly wrong’ to doubt wind farms, says Kwarteng
Boris Johnson was “wrong” to cast doubt on the effectiveness of wind farms in 2013 when he suggested they couldn’t “pull the skin off a rice pudding”, said Kwasi Kwarteng
The business secretary faced questions on Mr Johnson’s controversial remarks as the government unveiled a £260 million public and private sector investment in offshore wind farms – forming part of plans to “eradicate” Britain’s contribution to the climate crisis.
“When he said that eight-nine years ago, clearly what he said was wrong,” Mr Kwarteng told LBC radio. “Wind farms, wind power contributes sometimes upwards of 40 per cent of electricity”.
“I think there’s been a huge change in the last eight years. I remember in 2012, 40 per cent of our electricity then basically derived from coal – today that figure is less than two per cent,” he added.
Details from Ashley Cowburn, Political Correspondent, here:
IPCC report shows ‘deficiency’ of world response to climate crisis, says Sharma
Alok Sharma has described the IPCC report as a “wake-up call for the world”.
The Cop26 president said: “I have to say I think if ever there was going to be a wake-up call for the world when it comes to climate, then it is this report and it does show all too clearly the impact of human activity and, indeed, the deficiency of our response to date and why we need to act now on what the science is telling us.”
He added: “The future, of course, is not yet written and the very worst of climate change is still avoidable, and if we look back to Paris in 2015 world leaders got together and said that they would do everything they could to limit global temperature rises to well below two degrees and aiming for 1.5, and what this report shows, that 1.5 degrees is still achievable, but that it is retreating and it’s retreating fast.
“We do need to follow the science and we need to take action this year and make sure that at Cop26 we are able to credibly say that we have kept 1.5 degrees alive.”
Mr Sharma was speaking during a panel discussion with climate scientists in London on the implications of the IPCC report for Cop26.
Kwarteng opposes pay cut for home-working civil servants
Kwasi Kwarteng rejected a call from an unnamed Cabinet minister to dock the pay of civil servants who refuse to return to the office.
The unnamed minister argued that staff who continued to work from home were receiving a “de facto pay rise” as they were not spending money on commuting, which was “unfair” to those going into the office.
However, Mr Kwarteng, the business secretary, rejected the claim, saying that officials who were home-working were making an important contribution.
“I would never suggest that. I don’t know who it was. I think people working from home are contributing hugely to the workforce,” he told LBC radio.
