A brief look at today’s news:

Brexit

Express
LORD Frost has blasted the EU and its political allies in Britain for undermining peace in Northern Ireland as a means of trying to reverse Brexit.
The former Brexit minister, who negotiated Britain’s departure from the EU, has used a speech to call on Boris Johnson to unilaterally ditch the controversial Northern Ireland protocol and put UK interests first. It comes after revelations that Boris Johnson plans new legislation to end the protocol. Speaking at a Policy Exchange event, Lord Frost said: “Our relations with the EU cannot endlessly be bound up with Northern Ireland.
“The inability to reach a durable Protocol settlement means that a huge, indeed an unbearable, amount of weight has been put on Northern Ireland’s fragile politics as a result.”
He said that the Prime Minister should use the Article 16 provision to suspend the controversial protocol as he warned that the Belfast Agreement which maintains peace in the province is “on life support.
He pointed out that the Northern Ireland Protocol was “designed to be temporary” and can be ditched with a vote in Ulster in 2024.
With elections to the Northern Ireland Stormont Assembly expected to make Sinn Fein the biggest party, he added: “Those politics may now be reaching breaking point and making the current arrangements unworkable.

Guardian
The UK government is set to announce a fourth delay to physical checks on fresh food imported from the EU amid industry reports that neither technology nor infrastructure resources were ready for the July start of the next phase of Brexit.
The Brexit opportunities minister, Jacob Rees-Mogg, is expected to frame the move as use of the UK’s newfound independent powers to control the trade border since the departure from the EU and the single market.
He is also expected to say it is a response to supply chain fears in a trading environment already hit by the Ukraine war and cost of living crisis.
The delays could push back the full implementation of Brexit controls until 2023, sources said, with physical checks removed and a potential relaxation on the requirement for import of products, animals, food and feed system (IPAFFS) paperwork.
Earlier this month an outage in a key post-Brexit IT system, the Goods Vehicle Movement Service (GVMS), combined with the halting of P&O ferry routes, led to long delays for freight traffic trying to cross the Channel.
Industry sources said small suppliers in the EU were not prepared for physical border checks or capable of getting the veterinary certificates that would be required on fresh food ranging from artisan cheese to olive oil and dried meats from countries such as Spain and Italy.
“EU suppliers are going to be hit in exactly the same way as British fish and food suppliers were last year. The difference here is that the UK has no way of helping the EU suppliers,” said one industry representative.

Ukraine

Express
RUSSIA has suffered a major setback in its invasion efforts in Ukraine after experts exposed a major tank design flaw which had posed problems for Vladimir Putin’s troops.
According to military experts, images taken from the battlefield in Ukraine appear to show Russian tanks suffering from a defect which Western militaries refer to as the “jack-in-the-box” effect. The fault relates to how the tank stores ammunition and comes after Russia opted to carry multiple shells within the turrets of its armoured combat vehicles.
It is thought this leaves them very vulnerable as an indirect hit could lead to a chain reaction.
The chain reaction could even see the entire ammunition store explode, which could include up to 40 shells.
A resulting shockwave might even lead to the tank’s turret to blast as high as a two-story building, according to US news network CNN.

Telegraph
Vladimir Putin could seek to consolidate Russia’s territorial gains in Ukraine and dig in like a “cancerous growth”, Ben Wallace has warned.
“You can see in his current statements he is, in almost desperation, trying to broaden this either with threats or indeed, with potential false flags or attacks,” the Defence Secretary told Sky News.
“I think it’s certainly the case that Putin, having failed in nearly all his objectives, may seek to consolidate what he’s got, sort of fortify and dig in as he did in 2014.
“Just be a sort of cancerous growth within the country in Ukraine and make it very hard for people to move them out of those fortified positions.”
Mr Wallace’s comments came after the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson was rocked by a series of explosions on Wednesday night.
Missiles and rockets were fired into the city by Ukrainian forces, Russian media reported.

Times
The foreign secretary believes that the war in Ukraine could last for years and fears President Putin could deploy weapons of mass destruction in a desperate attempt to break the deadlock.
Liz Truss, in a speech at Mansion House in London, said that Putin was a “rogue operator” and warned that he could invade other countries, including Georgia and Moldova.
She is understood to believe that the war could realistically last up to five years, or even as long as a decade. She called on western countries to help push Russian troops out of Ukraine altogether and said that if Putin succeeded in making territorial gains he could inflict “untold further misery across Europe”.

Guardian
Vladimir Putin has warned of a “lightning-fast” retaliation if countries intervened in Ukraine as Britain pressed for Moscow to be so weakened militarily by its war that the Russian president can never pose a threat to European security.
The Russian president told lawmakers in St Petersburg on Wednesday the west wanted to cut Russia into pieces and accused it of pushing Ukraine into conflict with Moscow. “If someone intends to intervene in the ongoing events from the outside, and create strategic threats for Russia that are unacceptable to us, they should know that our retaliatory strikes will be lightning-fast,” said Putin.
“We have all the tools for this, things no one else can boast of having now. And we will not boast, we will use them if necessary. And I want everyone to know that.”
His comments came as British foreign secretary Liz Truss called for a “doubling down” on support for Ukraine in a speech on Wednesday night, including further supplies of heavy weapons, and for allies to push for Russian forces to entirely leave Ukraine’s territory, with the country reverting to its pre-2014 borders.
In reference to Russian-occupied areas in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, she said: “We are going to keep going further and faster to push Russia out of the whole of Ukraine.” There has been speculation that Ukraine would settle for a return to the pre-invasion status quo where territory was ceded to de facto Russian-backed separatists.
She called Putin “a desperate rogue operator with no interest in international norms”.

ITV News
Western allies must “double down” on support for the government in Kyiv, providing the heavy weaponry it needs “to push Russia out of the whole of Ukraine”, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has said.
She said the events of the past months must be “a catalyst for wider change” and an overhaul to the West’s approach to international security.
In a keynote foreign policy speech, Ms Truss said: “Now we need a new approach, one that melds hard security and economic security, one that builds stronger global alliances and where free nations are more assertive and self-confident, one that recognises geopolitics is back.”
At home, she said that should mean an increase in defence spending with the Nato minimum of 2% of national income a “floor not a ceiling”.
At the same time, the UK needed to build a series of strong partnerships with like-minded countries around the world in a “network of liberty”.
Ms Truss said the UK needed to strengthen its military while building alliances with free nations around the world, using their economic power to deter aggressors who “do not play by the rules”.

Times
Germany is worried that Russia could cut off its gas supplies unless it complies with a decree from President Putin after Moscow abruptly suspended sales to Poland and Bulgaria.
The move by the Kremlin has increased pressure on countries that lean heavily on Russian gas, including Italy, Germany and Austria, to bow to Putin’s insistence that “unfriendly” states must pay their bills in roubles.
One expert said that most European Union importers were “extraordinarily” likely to give way as their invoices fall due over the coming weeks, despite the prospect of funding the Kremlin with its own currency.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, yesterday denounced the measure as “blackmail” and promised that the bloc would respond immediately.

BBC News
The UK Foreign Secretary’s comments last night that Russia should be pushed out of “all” of Ukraine are consistent with the UK’s longstanding strategy in the region, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace says.
There was speculation after the comments that the UK would now be supporting offensive operations by Ukrainian forces to retake Crimea, which has been under Russian control for eight years.
The international community has “always refused to recognise Russia’s invasion in 2014 of Crimea”, Mr Wallace tells BBC Breakfast, “so I think this is consistent”.
He also defended the UK’s decision to become increasingly involved in the conflict by sending military aid to Ukraine.
“It’s really important to send a message to Putin that he will always get an escalation of certain behaviours when he behaves like he does. It’s always calibrated to make sure that it doesn’t broaden the conflict and to make sure that we are viewed as being defenders”.

Parliament

BBC News
An independent investigation could be launched into claims a Tory MP watched porn on his phone while in the Commons.
The claims were made at a meeting on Tuesday night at which female Conservative MPs shared accounts of alleged sexism and harassment.
One of those who reported the unnamed MP was a female minister who said she saw him viewing the material while sat beside him in the Commons chamber.
Tory Chief Whip Chris Heaton-Harris has escalated a review of the claims.
Mr Heaton-Harris, who is in charge of Tory MPs’ discipline, was initially said to be looking into the matter – before he asked for it to be referred to Parliament’s Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme (ICGS).
A spokesperson for his office said: “Upon the conclusion of any ICGS investigation the chief whip will take appropriate action.”
The female minister said the incident occurred last week and that she had also seen the MP watching pornography during a hearing of a select committee, The Times reported.
A second female Tory MP said she had witnessed the same man watching pornography inside the Commons and that she had tried but been unable to capture video proof.

ITV News
Watching porn in the House of Commons is a “disgusting” and “sackable” offence, Labour leader Keir Starmer has said.
On Wednesday, it emerged a Tory MP is being investigated over reports they watched pornography on their mobile phone while in the Commons chamber.
Asked what should happen to an MP found to have watched pornography in Parliament, Mr Starmer told ITV’s Peston show: “Firstly I’m disturbed by these allegations, they’ve obviously got to be investigated.
“And if it’s true that someone was watching porn sitting in the chamber, and I think the allegation is, I don’t know for sure, that it’s somebody on the front bench for the government that was implicated in this, then of course it’s a sackable offence in my view.”
The office of Conservative chief whip Chris Heaton-Harris said he is referring the matter to the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme to be investigation.
“Following allegations of inappropriate behaviour in the House of Commons the Chief Whip has asked that this matter be referred to the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme,” a spokesperson for Mr Heaton-Harris said.
“Upon the conclusion of any ICGS investigation the Chief Whip will take appropriate action.”

Passports

Telegraph
The head of the beleaguered Passport Office was under pressure on Wednesday night to return to work full-time at its headquarters, as it emerged there are 700,000 outstanding applications to clear.
The crisis at the government agency has already forced the cancellation of family holidays and threatens to wreck the summer plans for tens of thousands of travellers.
Boris Johnson has vowed to “privatise the a—” out of the office if the 10-week wait to receive new passports is not reduced in time for summer.
The Passport Office website states that Abi Tierney lives in Leicestershire. The family home is 100 miles from the Passport Office’s headquarters in central London and the journey takes about three hours, either by car or public transport.
Frustrated travellers have complained of being left on hold for hours and then told by customer services staff working from home that they do not have access to files to give updates on applications.

Times
The private company behind the Passport Office’s contact centre has been ordered to hire more staff to ease “unacceptable” delays.
Teleperformance, the French-owned multinational that is responsible for call handling, has been “urgently tasked to add additional staff” by the Home Office, which is trying to avert a summer of chaos.
On Tuesday Boris Johnson said he would “privatise the arse off” the Passport Office if it failed to improve its performance.
Speaking in the Commons, Kevin Foster, a Home Office minister, said: “We recognise difficulties in contacting the Passport Office will cause concern for those wanting assurances about their applications.

Prince Andrew

Telegraph
Prince Andrew has been stripped of the freedom of the city of York, after councillors voted to remove the honorary title in response to his sexual assault case in the US.
The Duke of York has held the honour since February 1987, when he was presented with it as a wedding gift.
It is the highest honour that can be bestowed by the city and is typically awarded to recognise notable service, or to royalty and distinguished people.
But on Wednesday, City of York councillors used an extraordinary meeting to hold a vote to remove the honorary freedom. They also renewed calls for the Duke, 62, to relinquish his title.
It came after the Duke reached an out of court settlement with Virginia Roberts Giuffre in February, which meant he no longer faced a jury trial on claims that he sexually abused and raped her on three separate occasions when she was 17. He denied the claims.
The financial deal is understood to exceed £12 million, including a £2 million contribution to Ms Giuffre’s sex trafficking charity thought to have been paid by the Queen.
In the council meeting on Wednesday, the motion to remove the honorary title from the Duke was unanimously carried, with two abstentions. It was supported by both the council’s ruling Liberal Democrats group and the Labour group.

Express
THE DUKE of York should be the Duke of nothing in particular, local politicians have said, after the embattled royal was stripped of a further honour.
Councillors in York, Prince Andrew’s namesake city, voted unanimously to remove his status as Freeman of the city in a meeting held tonight (April 27). They also called on the Government and Buckingham Palace to remove his title altogether.
The meeting is the latest development in the fallout from allegations made against the Duke – which he vehemently denied – of sexual abuse.
It comes just months after it was announced the Duke had reached an out-of-court settlement with Virginia Giuffre, ahead of a civil trial in New York, without any admission of liability.
Ms Giuffre had accused the Prince of sexual abuse, which had allegedly taken place while she was being trafficked by disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The Freedom of the City is a status normally given to outstanding members of the community, visiting celebrities or dignitaries.

Times
Prince Andrew suffered his latest indignity last night as he lost his honorary freedom of the city of York, amid calls for him to have his dukedom removed.
Councillors voted unanimously for the motion, which was brought after the settlement of the civil sexual assault case brought against him by Virginia Giuffre.
The duke has already lost his military titles and royal patronages, and will no longer use the style His Royal Highness.
Now he has been stripped of the honorary title, which he was given in 1987 as a wedding gift from the city.

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