Northern Ireland Protocol
Express
LIZ TRUSS will today demand the EU be “pragmatic” and finally drop its stubbornness in Brexit talks on the Northern Ireland Protocol.
The Foreign Secretary is hosting the European Commission’s Maros Sefcovic for two days of talks as she seeks to find a breakthrough in negotiations. It is the first time the pair will have met face to face since Ms Truss took over responsibility for Protocol discussions from Lord Frost.
The Conservative peer quit the Government in December over disagreements with Prime Minister Boris Johnson on taxation and the cost of living crisis.
Taking over the reins, the South West Norfolk MP has set a deadline of the end of this month for a solution to be found.
Ahead of the meeting, Ms Truss said: “There is a deal to be done that protects peace in Northern Ireland, defends our Union, and maintains the integrity of the United Kingdom and EU.
“But it will require a pragmatic approach from the EU.
ITV News
The new Brexit Minister Liz Truss will meet with the Vice President of the European Commission Maroš Šefčovič on Thursday for further negotiations in a bid to break the deadlock over the Northern Ireland Protocol.
It is the first face to face meeting between the pair, with Liz Truss having taken over from Lord Frost last month.
The two will meet at the Foreign Secretary’s country residence Chevening House in Kent.
Speaking ahead of the meeting Liz Truss said: “There is a deal to be done that protects peace in Northern Ireland, defends our Union, and maintains the integrity of the United Kingdom and EU. But it will require a pragmatic approach from the EU.
“I will be putting forward practical, reasonable solutions starting from these fundamental principles, with a view to agreeing a plan for intensive negotiations.
“As fellow believers in liberty and democracy, we should be capable of reaching an agreement that delivers for Northern Ireland and allows us to unleash the full potential of our relationship”.
Telegraph
Liz Truss on Wednesday said “there is a deal to be done” on the Northern Ireland Protocol ahead of her first meeting with the EU’s chief negotiator.
Ms Truss, the Foreign Secretary, will host Maros Sefcovic, the vice-president of the European Commission, at Chevening House in Kent, her official country residence, on Thursday.
“There is a deal to be done that protects peace in Northern Ireland, defends our Union and maintains the integrity of the United Kingdom and EU. But it will require a pragmatic approach from the EU,” she said.
“The EU has a clear responsibility to help fix the myriad problems caused by the protocol and protect the Belfast [Good Friday] Agreement.”
Mail
Liz Truss will launch a charm offensive with Brussels today in a bid to break the Brexit deadlock over Northern Ireland.
The Foreign Secretary will host European Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic for a two-day summit at her official country residence Chevening as she tries to end the border row threatening to destabilise the Province.
Miss Truss will warn Mr Sefcovic that the EU ‘shares responsibility to protect the peace in Northern Ireland’ and remind him that Britain reserves the right to invoke Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol – which would let the UK unilaterally suspend EU checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea.
But the minister will also table ‘pragmatic’ new proposals designed to break the deadlock which has dragged on since the UK left the EU.
And she will stress that resolving the Northern Ireland issue could open the door to better relations between Britain and the EU in a wide range of areas.
BBC News
The UK and EU will resume talks on the Northern Ireland Protocol on Thursday.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss will act as the UK’s lead negotiator for the first time since she replaced Lord Frost.
“There is a deal to be done but it will require a pragmatic approach from the EU,” she said.
The UK is seeking fundamental changes to the operation and oversight of the protocol, while the EU has offered limited changes aimed at reducing the impact on Northern Ireland businesses.
Ahead of the talks, which are being billed as a potential “reset”, Ms Truss said the EU has “a clear responsibility” to fix problems.
She added that she would put forward “practical, reasonable solutions… with a view to agreeing a plan for intensive negotiations”.
Boris
Mail
Boris Johnson could be toppled as Tory leader if enough of his own MPs turn against him.
Under the Conservative Party’s rules, a confidence vote would be triggered if 15 per cent of MPs write letters of no-confidence to the chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee.
That would require 54 of the 360 Tory MPs to send letters to Sir Graham Brady, who would keep the tally secret until the threshold was reached.
A vote of no confidence would be held quickly and Mr Johnson would be ousted if more than 50 per cent of Tory MPs voted against him.
He would then not be allowed to stand in the subsequent leadership contest, in which MPs would whittle down the field of contenders to two before party members had the final say.
The last confidence vote was held in December 2018 when, after months of speculation, enough MPs decided they no longer had confidence in Theresa May’s leadership.
She won the contest 200 votes to 117 – making her immune to another challenge for a year.
Reform UK
Express
NIGEL FARAGE could propel Reform to 15 percent in the polls “in a matter of days”, a prominent political expert has claimed.
Professor Matthew Goodwin, 40, argued ex-MEP and GB News host Nigel Farage, 57, could take Reform UK to double-digits in the polls if he became party leader. If the rebranded Brexit Party were able to reach 15 points in the polls, they could look set to emulate the success of UKIP in the 2015 General Election.
The Eurosceptic party took over 3.9million votes in 2015, making them the third most popular party when David Cameron, 55, pulled off his shock majority victory.
However, the first-past-the-post-system ensured only one UKIP candidate was elected to the House of Commons when Tory defector Douglas Carswell, 50, clung on to the Essex seaside seat of Clacton.
Even Mr Farage, who contested the Kent constituency of South Thanet, was unable to land an electoral blow, finishing 2,812-votes behind Conservative candidate and ex-UKIP treasurer Craig Mackinlay, 55.
Mr Goodwin, who has worked on populist politics throughout his career, made the comments in response to a user sharing YouGov’s recent opinion poll.
YouGov found Labour had opened up a 10-point lead over the Conservative Party.
Covid
iNews
A further 129,587 lab-confirmed Covid-19 cases have been recorded in the UK – a fall of 50,000 on the same day a week ago, and a further sign that the Omicron wave may have peaked.
While infections in the UK climbed to a new record high on 4 January, cases have since fallen in six of the last seven days.
1,038,500 cases were recorded across the last seven days, a week-on-week decline of 19 per cent.
The number of people being treated for Covid in UK hospitals also fell slightly on Wednesday to 19,735.
Meanwhile, Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures suggest an estimated 4.3 million people across the UK had Covid-19 in the seven days to 6 January, up from 3.7 million in the previous week.
All four nations saw a jump in infections, with the prevalence of Covid-19 continuing to be highest in England, where around one in 15 people were estimated to have the virus – the equivalent of 3.7 million people, up from 3.3 million a week earlier.
In the other nations, the prevalence was estimated at one in 20. Wales has seen infections jump week-on-week from around 157,900 people to 169,100, with Scotland up from 238,000 to 297,400, and Northern Ireland up from 72,900 to 99,200.
Sun
DAILY Covid cases fell for a seventh day running as health bosses claim the worst of Omicron is nearly over.
Infections are down by a third — a drop in a week from 194,747 to 129,587.
And the number of desperately ill people needing breathing support in intensive care has dipped to 672, the lowest level since mid-October.
Matthew Taylor, boss of the NHS Confederation, said some areas might still suffer but the country would soon be through the worst. He added: “Unless things change unexpectedly, we are close to the national peak of Covid patients in hospital. This is a significant moment.”
Dr Richard Cree, an intensive care medic in Middlesbrough, said: “Numbers being admitted hasn’t risen as high as I feared.
“It’s looking increasingly likely that we may be able to ride out the Omicron wave.”
Office for National Statistics data showed UK infections rose last week to a record 4.3million.
Mail
Daily Covid cases in the UK have fallen for a week straight and hospital admissions are plateauing, official data revealed today as an NHS leader admitted the health service is past the worst of the Omicron outbreak.
There were 129,587 new positive tests across the country in the last 24 hours, Government dashboard data shows, which marks a fall of a third compared to the figure last Wednesday.
It is the seventh day in a row that infections have fallen week-on-week and the UK looks to be following the same trajectory as South Africa, which became the epicentre and where cases collapsed in little over a month.
It came as MailOnline’s analysis of separate Government data revealed 12million people are now living in areas where Covid cases are already falling. Outbreaks were shrinking in 95 of England’s 315 local authorities by January 6, according to the UK Health Security Agency’s weekly report.
Mirror
The Omicron variant continues to surge throughout the UK – but experts believe it will soon peak with rates already falling in certain areas.
Britain saw a record high of Covid cases on January 4 with 218,724, the worst since the virus reached our shores in early 2020.
And while they still remain high, numbers have been dropping since then, with the likes of London seemingly already having peaked.
Data shows cases are falling fastest among the 18-35 age range but those older than that are continuing to see surges.
ZOE Covid Study app scientist and reader at King’s College London, Dr Claire Steves, says: “It’s good news that the number of daily new cases has slowed for now.
“However, it’s worrying to see cases increasing in the over 75 age group. This is the group we need to protect as they are the most likely to be hospitalised as a result of a Covid infection.”
Telegraph
Lord Frost has accused the Government of “Covid theatre”, as he called on Boris Johnson to scrap mask mandates and warned that the country will look back on lockdowns as a “serious public policy mistake”.
Instead of pursuing “stuff that works” such as antiviral drugs and effective ventilation, Mr Johnson has locked down the country and restricted freedoms unnecessarily, the peer argued, as he called on ministers to rule out any prospect of a new lockdown and to consider a more diverse range of advice when making public health decisions.
Speaking to this week’s episode of The Telegraph’s Planet Normal podcast, which you can listen to using the audio player above, Lord Frost also said that the Government’s controversial net zero agenda had been “rushed”, and that technology receiving taxpayers’ money “may not be the best way forward” but is “increasing costs on individuals”.
Mail
Boris Johnson today confirmed he is ‘certainly looking’ at reducing the coronavirus self-isolation period in England amid reports ministers will agree a move from seven days to five tomorrow.
The Prime Minister told MPs at lunchtime that he hopes to ‘bring you more about that as fast as possible’ in a clear hint that a decision could be imminent.
The Government has reportedly concluded that the benefits of reducing quarantine to get more people back to work outweigh the increased risk of more people leaving self-isolation while still infectious.
The Covid-O committee of senior ministers is likely to sign off on the move to five days tomorrow, according to The Times.
Mr Johnson has faced repeated calls from business leaders and Tory MPs in recent weeks to slash the self-isolation period for positive cases after the surge of infections during the Omicron wave wreaked havoc with the nation’s workforce.
Mirror
The Prime Minister wants to ditch compulsory masks and get everyone back into offices at the end of January – but his optimistic plans may be derailed by low booster jab rates.
Boris Johnson urged Brits to get their third jab with haste, insisting: “We can do it, we can all get boosted now”.
According to the FT, ministers are “increasingly optimistic” that Plan B regulations – which include compulsory masks and WFH guidance in England – will be able to end at their current planned finish date of January 26.
If the PM wanted to extend them beyond January 26, he would have to put it to a vote by MPs.
Social care
ITV News
Social care services are having to turn away new clients and are giving back existing care packages due to the staffing shortages worsened by the spread of the Omicron Covid-19 variant, a survey has found.
Two-thirds of home care providers are turning away new requests for care while a fifth are handing back care packages, according to research by the National Care Forum (NCF).
And 43% of care home providers are closed to new admissions, the research found.
The NCF said those on the front line are describing the situation as “grim, difficult and relentless”.
The organisation, which represents not-for-profit care providers across the UK, surveyed its 159 members between January 5 and 10.
Some 110 members who support more than 130,000 people, provide approximately 5,250 services and employ approximately 98,000 staff, responded.
Members reported an average vacancy rate of 18%, and said 14% of staff were unable to work because of Omicron on average.
Child sexual abuse
Sky News
There was a “three-fold” increase in online child sexual abuse, according to the Internet Watch Foundation.
The online safety group is calling for more support for parents to spot danger signs after it investigated 361,000 reports of suspected criminal material in 2021 – the highest since the group started monitoring online abuse 15 years ago.
IWF, which finds and helps remove abuse content from the internet, said more people, especially school children, spent more time online in 2021 and as a result may have been more vulnerable to cybercriminals.
In its research, the group said it has seen a “three-fold” increase in self-generated imagery showing seven to 10-year-olds as they were increasingly targeted and groomed by internet predators “on an industrial scale”.
It added the material is often made using webcams in a child’s bedroom and then shared online.
Guardian
Internet grooming of children has surged during lockdown, according to new research that found a threefold increase in online sexual abuse imagery featuring seven to 10-year-olds.
The Internet Watch Foundation reported its worst year on record for child sex abuse online in 2021 as it confirmed 252,000 URLs containing images or videos of children being sexually abused, compared with 153,000 in the previous year. The UK-based charity said it had seen a large increase in self-generated material – where children are manipulated into recording their own abuse before it is shared online – with the fastest growing increase in such material occurring among seven to 10-year-olds.
The IWF said the rise in cases could be linked to Covid lockdowns which required people to stay indoors and led to millions spending more time online. It said lockdowns led to younger and younger children being targeted on an “industrial scale” by internet groomers.
“Child safety experts say younger children have been relying more and more on the internet during the pandemic, and that spending longer online may be leaving them more vulnerable to communities of criminals who are looking to find and manipulate children into recording their own sexual abuse on camera. The footage is then shared among other criminals on the open internet,” said the IWF report.
Education
iNews
The schools minister has said that teacher absence in England is “less that we had been projecting” despite 44,000 being off last Thursday (6 January).
Robin Walker said that keeping schools open is the Government’s “absolute priority”, and that ministers would not set an “arbitrary” absence figure at which schools should close.
According to figures published by the Department for Education on Tuesday, 44,000 teachers and school leaders were absent on 6 January. This represents 8.6 per cent of all teachers and leaders, or roughly one in 12.
Among teaching assistants and other school staff, 62,000 – or 8.9 per cent – were absent. There were also 315,000 pupils missing school because of reasons related to Covid-19.
Energy
Breitbart
The British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has sacked a Conservative MP following her vote to cut VAT on energy bills.
The Conservative Party has removed the whip (ejected from the Parliamentary Party) Anne Marie Morris, the Conservative MP for Newton Abbot in Devon, after she voted against the government’s official position to remove the 5 per cent tax on domestic fuel supply on the 11th of January 2022.
Morris was the only Conservative MP to vote against the government and for the opposition bill in the House of Commons, it being defeated by 319 votes to 229.
In a statement on her website, Morris said the removal of her whip was “disappointing”, especially as she said her vote was in “the best interests of my [her] constituents”.
Water
Times
Bosses of water companies that regularly breach permits by discharging raw sewage into rivers and the sea should be stripped of their annual bonuses, MPs will recommend in a report today.
The Commons Environmental Audit Committee will call for an urgent review of the system by which water companies self-monitor their sewage works. It warns that a “chemical cocktail” of sewage, slurry and plastic is polluting England’s rivers and putting public health and nature at risk.
The report calls for much tougher regulation, saying successive governments, water companies and regulators “have grown complacent and seem resigned to maintaining pre-Victorian practices of dumping sewage in rivers”.
Sorry Colin, your taste must not be the same as mine,
In fact I found Steyn the complete opposite of yor assessment, I and my partner agree on this, in that we felt he had carried out ‘lately’ some fantastic lively interviews and we particularly felt ‘he let the person being interviewed talk’in fact I had the feeling that in this format of his following Nigel; Nigel set the picture or parameters of the debate and he followed with a detailed enlargement and thus points made tended to ‘stick’ rather than disappearing after a succession of sound bites.
In my opinion good effective journalism.
Oh my! Quinn was “horrified”, but it seemed it was still fit for service.
Of course it is! I doubt any tank in the second or even the First World War would have been taken out of service or even been re-designed due to a bit or even an excess of shake, rattle and roll..
To be honest all the Minister should be worried about, is does it do what it is designed to do DESTROY the ENEMY.
You mention feminising the services Mary, is ‘majoring’ on comfort a prime example
Our intermediate level establishment in Westminster AKA :- Rat, Tat, Fat cat, Pratt welcomes MS (VPof EUCommission:- top fat cat) ) to discuss how to word REMAIN.
Looked at the betting on PM being ousted from Office this year 2022.
At the beginning of the week, odds were around 5/6 on him going 2022.
Today they started around 5/8 and now at 8.00 p.m. have fallen to around evens.
(Note: with William Hill PM priced at 2/5 for 2022!).
For my money, if Truss invokes the ecj et al, ‘buzz off out of it’ option she will certainly get my vote. Cummings fell foul of wanting to ‘get Brexit done’, and Frosty notched one sacking and one voluntary ‘stick it pm’ due to doing the right thing.
Immigration – you would think that all of P Patel’s relations were safely here in GB by now.
I see Ostria (that produced left wing Adolf H) is going to force / fine and tax anyone not taking a gene modifier. Canada is going the same way. And ‘the powers that be’ wonder why there are riots across you’rope. A relation living in france is quitting his job in three months and getting out of the country.
Anne Marie Morris booted out of cons again. Who would not want to offset some the green tax burden?
So what was decided? There are so many double negatives that are hard to match up with plain text, it is not obvious.
The bill, if I read it correctly, says ‘household energy bills THROUGHOUT WINTER’. No doubt this will translate into ‘here’s 50 pounds – half your normal yearly energy costs’.
The most interesting item, to my mind, is that Lord Frost has criticised B.J.’s policies.
Not over Brexit, where we knew they disagreed but on just about everything else.
I wonder what would happen if there was a vote of no confidence.
MI 5 are saying there is a Chinese spy in Westminster!
I believe its Boris as he’s done his best to destroy Great Britain
That’s a good idea Mike Durrans. If MI5 is half as good as it once was, it could certainly prove he is doing his best to destroy Great Britain.
Indeed Mike.
Using a national and internationally respected and admired figure such as Farage on idiotic interview programs needs not to be frittered away with idiotic media interviewers . Antagonistic or not. He must not be wasted.on little individuals ambitions…
Water: those MPs need to educate themselves and learn how sewage treatment / disposal actually works, or fails to work in some circumstances.
Jack Thomas. I expected yesterday, something about sewage would ‘surface’. Because of that warning about keeping dogs off the beaches in Scarborough.
Some years ago I knew someone who’s dog had died because he took it with him fishing on a beach. So it can happen.
Northern Ireland Protocol:
Why on earth does government continue to do the impossible? i.e. try to negotiate a deal with the EU which will compromise our sovereignty. It seems that government policy under Boris is all about allowing others to exercise control over us, whether that be the EU or the self declared elite of the UN, WEF etc.
If Boris is not forced to quit over his present lies then a great opportunity will have been lost.
Agreed Jack.
It is in fact imperative that Nigel Farage resumes the leadership of Reform UK with immediate effect from Richard Tice, as he is the only person who has the charisma, political nous and knowledge base to lead that party, and lead it to a rise in poll ratings akin to what occurred in UKIP days. Me and several others stepped down as candidates of Reform UK when Farage resigned as leader prior to the May 2021 local elections and most including me another candidate in the same town stood as independents instead. Under the present leadership, Reform UK will never emulate the success of UKIP and will continue to attract a poll ratings of around 5%, which is simply not good enough. The whole point to a political party is to gain representation at council level and in parliament, and id that is not being done it is waste of everybody’s time. If Farage becomes leader of Reform UK again, and develops workable policies and democratises the party so that members have an input, I would certainly rejoin the fold. Until that happens I will sit on the sidelines.
Indeed Colin.
Lizz Truss meeting,
Didn’t see one word about the removal of ECJ as final arbiter in disputes .
We cannot have EU court being judge and jury in its own disputes.
To me, that’s not natural justice and it is also vexatious and I cannot see such decisions reached having much clout in reasonably thinking outside world (perhaps I’m being too ironic ‘they’ don’t do humour)
If our Liz has any ambitions to be party leader and Prime Minister, she’ll make sure the ECJ doesn’t get a look in. If she fails on this, the Cons won’t be elected again.
Seems perfectly clear to me if liz goes any further than make threatening noises to the EU she will have no chance in any leadership election. She needs Rejoin, Remain and all those fake brexiteers MPs to back her. Thats simply how it is.
Roger………..Truss is weak as ditch, just like her master (Johnson) and was a Remainer. Never trust a Remainer, as they will stitch us up so that the European Union still holds sway over what we can and can’t do. Anyway the Conservative Party in its present form is finished. After the present stint in power, they will be out of office for a generation. Johnson has made a total pigs a*se of everything, and has utterly squandered that 80 odd seat majority he had. He could have do so much, but chose instead to do so little. An absolute disaster of a prime minister.
Colin. I’ve a feeling Liz has genuinely changed her mind and now does want Brexit. But Boris presumably could undermine her just as he did Lord Frost.
It is clearly Boris that is the problem on brexit, covid, climate change and probably immigration.
It is interesting that Lord Frost has spoken out criticising him on most of those subjects.
Now if only . . . .. . Lord Frost led the CON party and was therefore PM. !!
Debbie are there no newspapers commenting on defence.?
It all seems strangely quiet to me.
Do you think news and comment is being kept deliberately suppressed.
Didn’t see anything about defence Roger. Perhaps there’s just no defence news, although it’s possible you could be right. I’ll keep my eye out for any defence stories over the next couple of days.
DT business section occasionally. The FT should have but I no longer need to read it.
Roger T: “Do you think news and comment about the Military is being kept deliberately suppressed”. YES! And you won’t hear anything about it in in MSM who are keeping stumm until we wake up one day soon in a full blown EU totalitarian state. The EU Defence Union: quietly, our military is being decimated feminised and under EU Central Control and Command, rather misleadingly called a European Army. Ever since Brexit this process has if anything been accelerated. Behind closed doors, Procurement deals, Procurement being the main tentacle sucking us in? Without military autonomy we won’t have Brexit but all the time TMay was “making Brexit mean Breaxit” she was busy cynically stitching us into this EU Central Command. Plus all our national functions, military security criminal justice health are being fused so will I think be sucked in with it. Paramilitary police forcing jabs on us soon? Some years ago TMay proposed a Security Treaty to suck us into EU criminal justice structures, Europol, EU “justice”system presided over by the EU Public Prosecutor, described as a grappling iron whereby the EPP could grab any of us, the EU Arrest Warrant. We’re still subject to all this I think but the TCA will cement us in ?
Here is just one example of the criminal waste in Army Procurement : https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10316151/Army-brass-knew-failings-Ajax-tanks-three-years.html
There hasn’t been much news coming out of Kazakhstan since the civil unrest started but now bits of news is getting out and it looks horribly violent. See this video of Kazakhstan police getting beaten up.
Violence in Kazakhstan
https://rumble.com/vshgoy-violence-in-kazakhstan.html
I’m beginning to wonder if this is what it’s going to take for us to get our freedom back.
Child sexual abuse. I understand a woman Melanie Shaw now aged about 40, has been in custody, or hounded by the authorities, nearly all her adult life, all because she tried to blow the whistle on abuse in the childrens homes where she grew up.
I understand some fairly high level people involved in the abuse or its cover up. A very murky business. Amazing the lengths to which the authorities will go to protect their own.
Mark Steyn was intimating last night that there is a second NIH-funded gain-of-function research lab in Kazakhstan. I just throw that in.
Phil O’Sophical…….he is an awful radio presenter, and was not a good replacement for Nigel Farage over the Christmas period. He waffles on tripping over his words, and when interviewing people doesn’t ask simple questions and talks over them incessantly….embarrassing.