EU

Telegraph
Radioactive food grown near the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan will be sold to British shoppers next month under controversial EU plans. Controls over radioactivity levels in produce from Japan following the 2011 disaster are to be lifted by Brussels as part of the world’s biggest ever trade deal. It means that British shops will soon be selling goods from the disaster-hit area including baby food, breakfast cereals, fish, crustaceans, meat and green tea. Tests in recent years have shown faint traces of radioactive substances including caesium 134 and 137.

Express
BRUSSELS should not have been more accommodating Brexit negotiations, according to a staggering 80 percent of German voters. A poll revealed when asked the question, 29 percent of German voters said the EU probably should not have been more accommodating in crunch talks, while 51 percent said the bloc definitely should not have been. The question asked was: “Should the EU have been more accommodating during the Brexit negotiations?” Just seven percent said they definitely should have, and eight percent said probably.

Reuters
The European Union’s Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, has told EU politicians he will make Britain’s new trade deal with the EU a priority after Brexit, the Financial Times reported here citing people briefed on a closed-door meeting in Strasbourg on Tuesday. In the meeting, while addressing members of the European Parliament, Barnier said the 11 months from Britain’s planned EU exit on Jan. 31 until the end of its transition period would normally not be enough to negotiate a trade agreement, the newspaper reported. But he added that Brussels will strive to have a deal in place for the end of 2020, according to the report.

Times
Boris Johnson’s manifesto pledge to complete a trade deal with the European Union by the end of next year has been undermined after Michel Barnier said that time would be “too short”. The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator told a confidential meeting of MEPs yesterday afternoon that if the Conservatives won the general election difficult trade talks would not be over by the deadline. “This is very difficult scenario — not much time,” he said, according to one MEP present at the meeting. “Eleven months is too short.”

Independent
Trade experts have criticised Michael Gove after he wrongly claimed there is no single market for services in the EU and argued companies will “flourish” after Brexit. The Cabinet Office minister was accused of getting his facts wrong after branding the EU “bureaucratic” and as holding back firms in the crucial services sector – which makes up 80 per cent of the UK’s economy. “That’s completely wrong. There is a single market in services, although it is not complete,” Professor Alan Winters of the UK Trade Policy Observatory at the University of Sussex told The Independent.

Conservative Party

Independent
Boris Johnson is deceiving voters by claiming he will “get Brexit  done” quickly and hiding the “biggest crisis” yet to come, a former ambassador to the EU is warning. The prime minister is accused by Ivan Rogers of “diplomatic amateurism” that will condemn the UK to a hugely damaging trade deal – or a crash-out Brexit in little over a year’s time. In a provocative speech, timed for the election campaign, Sir Ivan accused Mr Johnson of repeating Theresa May’s blunders because he has “boxed himself in” to a tight deadline of a trade deal by the end of 2020. The result was likely to be a “quick and dirty” agreement that would almost certainly exclude the UK’s crucial services sector, because negotiating power had been handed to Brussels.

Mirror
Sajid Javid denied Tory leaders have ever been accused of Islamophobia, despite Tory leader Boris Johnson having repeatedly been accused of Islamophobia. In extraordinary scenes during a general election speech in Bolton, he refused six times to say whether he would use the same language as Mr Johnson has about Muslim women. It came after the Muslim Council of Britain accused the party of having a “blind spot” for anti-Muslim racism – and allowing it to “fester” in society. Mr Javid claimed: “Whenever this issue has come about the Conservative Party, no-one has ever credibly suggested that it’s an issue with the leadership of the party, whether that’s the leader of the party of the day or the chancellor or other senior figures.

Labour Party

Sun
MILLIONS of families would be hit by 12 crippling tax rises if Labour seized power, the Chancellor warned last night. Sajid Javid  claimed working people would have to pay £2,400 each to fill a £385billion black hole in Jeremy Corbyn’s spending plans. He said the 12 hidden tax horrors spelt out in a Tory dossier cast serious doubt over Labour’s claim that only the top five per cent of earners would pay more. In a speech in the marginal battlefield town of Bolton, Mr Javid dubbed the £1.2trillion Socialist plan “primary school politics, not grown-up government”.

Express
MILLIONS of households will be hit by 12 new crippling tax rises if Labour seizes power at the general election, the Chancellor warned last night. Sajid Javid published a dossier detailing a series of new levies and tax increases the Tories claim Jeremy Corbyn and his ally John McDonnell are ready to impose on the UK. Tory researchers collated the list of measures – including hikes in taxes on pensions, heating and driving – by analysing the small print of Labour’s manifesto for the December 12 election. In a speech in Bolton, Lancashire, Mr Javid said: “Labour want you to see a big Santa bag of goodies. But the closer you look, it’s just a big bag of coal.

ITV News
Jeremy Corbyn will try to steer his party’s campaign back towards the NHS on Wednesday after a bruising day in which he was accused of not being fit to be prime minister by the UK’s Chief Rabbi. The Conservatives will also want to move the focus onto their agenda again after the party was accused by the Muslim Council of Britain of “denial, dismissal and deceit” with regards to Islamophobia within its ranks. The Labour leader is facing pressure to apologise to the Jewish community after failing to when pressed during a 30-minute grilling on the BBC by veteran journalist Andrew Neil on Tuesday evening.

Times
Voters are deeply sceptical about both main parties’ key manifesto pledges but are particularly doubtful about Jeremy Corbyn’s plans for government. Only 17 per cent of the public think Labour’s proposals to spend an additional £82 billion are affordable and 18 per cent believe them to be realistic, according to a YouGov survey for The Times, the first survey since the manifesto launches. Although the Conservatives’ more modest spending commitments fared better, Boris Johnson’s key NHS pledge was believed by only two in ten voters.

Mail
Labour activists last night slammed Jeremy Corbyn‘s performance on the Andrew Neil show as ‘truly horrific’ as they vowed to ‘push images and stories with positive messages’ to try and deflect from the ‘awful’ appearance.  During the interview which aired last night on the BBC, Corbyn refused four times to apologise to the UK Jewish community after the Chief Rabbi slammed the party for how it deals with anti-Semitism claims. Messages which are alleged to have been sent between so-called Corbynistas attacked the Labour leader’s performance on the show, before discussing how they would try and rectify it.

Telegraph
Jeremy Corbyn refused four times to apologise to Britain’s Jews for his failure to root out anti-Semitism in the Labour Party as the crisis engulfing him worsened today. The Labour leader was questioned about the party’s anti-Semitism scandal by the BBC’s Andrew Neil in a television interview, after ignoring demands from senior party figures to say sorry. Mr Corbyn instead ramped up the tension by accusing the Chief Rabbi of getting his facts wrong in an article  describing Mr Corbyn as “unfit for high office”.

Times
Jeremy Corbyn refused four times last night to apologise to British Jews after the Chief Rabbi put Labour’s antisemitism crisis at the centre of the election campaign. The party’s leader said that Ephraim Mirvis was “not right” to say in The Times yesterday that Labour’s claim to have investigated every case was a “mendacious fiction”. He insisted that he had improved Labour’s disciplinary processes and that he was “looking forward” to talking to Rabbi Mirvis to “hear why he would say such a thing”.

Mirror
Jeremy Corbyn has defended his party’s policy to compensate women who lost out on cash because of changes to the pensions age – despite admitting it would lead to more borrowing. The Labour leader said the treatment of the WASPI women – who lost out on pensions cash because of changes to the pensions age – had created a “moral debt”. But under fire from the BBC’s Andrew Neil he struggled to explain the detail of how it would be funded.

Independent
A Labour peer who was asked by Jeremy Corbyn to carry out an inquiry into the handling of antisemitism has said the party “deserved” a brutal attack unleashed by the Chief Rabbi. Former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer said there has been a “failure of leadership”, with 130 antisemitism inquiries still incomplete and “hundreds, maybe thousands” more cases that should be investigated. Lord Falconer spoke out following Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis’s unprecedented public warning that Mr Corbyn’s failure to tackle antisemitism within his own party made him unfit to be prime minister.

Times
The Chief Rabbi was backed by Christian, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh leaders yesterday after he attacked the “poison” of antisemitism in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. Ephraim Mirvis, the leader of Britain’s orthodox Jews, put Mr Corbyn’s record on antisemitism at the heart of the election campaign yesterday when he wrote in The Times that the Labour leader was “unfit for high office”. He warned that the “very soul of our nation is at stake” in the general election.

Mail
British Hindu leaders have joined the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Muslim Council of Britain in backing Britain’s Chief Rabbi today after he condemned Labour over its anti-Semitism crisis. Making an unprecedented intervention, Ephraim Mirvis said the vast majority of British Jews were ‘gripped by anxiety’ at the idea of Jeremy Corbyn in No 10. He accused Mr Corbyn of allowing the ‘poison’ of anti-Semitism to take root in Labour, saying it could no longer claim to be the party of diversity, equality and anti-racism.

LibDems

Times
The Liberal Democrats have stopped campaigning on their policy of revoking Article 50 amid concern about its unpopularity on the doorstep, and have switched to asking voters to deny Boris Johnson a majority. Activists have complained that the pledge to cancel Brexit without another vote if the party won a majority is going down badly on the doorstep as the party’s poll ratings droop. The policy was designed to offer an equally clear Remain counterpoint to Mr Johnson’s “get Brexit done” slogan but campaigners are finding it harder than expected to get a hearing from voters.

Mail
The Liberal Democrats have been criticised for publishing leaflets and passing them off as ‘fake news’ local newspapers as well as using data from before the election was called to claim the party is ahead of Labour in the polls.  Residents in Hampshire recently received a free campaign paper called the ‘Mid Hampshire Gazette’ through their doors. The front page extolled the Lib Dem candidate, Paula Ferguson, as ‘leading the way’. But the publication was not a genuine newspaper and was produced by the party’s PR team.

Independent
The Liberal Democrats have gone on the attack on Boris Johnson personally, with new general election posters accusing the prime minister of lying to the Queen and parliament and being in league with Donald Trump and Nigel Farage on Brexit. The posters, which focus on the question of trust in the 12 December election, will be displayed in target seats which Jo Swinson’s party believes it can win from the Conservatives to deny Mr Johnson the overall majority he needs to deliver Brexit.

Scotland

Sun
THE Tories vowed to impose 40 years of hurt on the SNP as Boris Johnson accused Nicola Sturgeon of trapping Scotland like a “caged lion” with her obsession for another independence vote. Launching the Scottish Conservatives’ manifesto in Fife, the PM said only his party can save the United Kingdom. He claimed Jeremy Corbyn isn’t “tough enough” to stand up to Ms Sturgeon’s demands for a second independence referendum if he needs her party’s support to form a government after the election.

Sky News
Nicola Sturgeon will demand higher spending on the NHS from any party looking to make a deal with the SNP in the event of a hung parliament. Launching the party’s manifesto in Glasgow, Ms Sturgeon is expected to say spending south of the border should match what they manage in Scotland, where health is a devolved matter, and is £136 per head more. Her demand would mean an increase in NHS spending in England of more than £35bn in resource funding.

BBC News
Nicola Sturgeon is to accuse Prime Minister Boris Johnson of being “dangerous and unfit for office” as she launches the SNP’s election manifesto. The SNP leader will say that a vote for her party on 12 December will be a vote to “escape Brexit and put Scotland’s future in Scotland’s hands”. And she will call for a big increase in funding for the NHS across the UK. She will also claim that the prime minister’s proposed Brexit deal would be a “nightmare” for Scotland.

DUP

Express
DUP MPs could help prop up a Labour-led government in a hung parliament if Jeremy Corbyn was dumped as party leader, one of the party’s leading figures said yesterday. Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP chief whip in the last parliament, said the Northern Ireland party would “look carefully” at Labour’s programme before taking a decision. Since the Tories lost their overall Commons majority at the 2017 general election, the 10 DUP MPs at Westminster kept the party in power through a “confidence and supply” voting arrangement.

The Brexit Party

Express
BREXIT PARTY leader Nigel Farage has revealed his plan to spoil his vote at the general election because he does not trust any other party to deliver on the results of the EU referendum. The architect of Brexit will cast his vote in the Orpington constituency on December 12 but says he is seriously considering withholding his support from all of the candidates. The seat has been a Tory stronghold since 1970 and was won by the prime minister’s brother Jo Johnson in 2010. Mr Johnson announced earlier this year he was stepping down and so Tory candidate Gareth Bacon has stepped up to contest the constituency.

Breitbart
Brexit leader Nigel Farage has told Breitbart London he now believes that Boris Johnson will win the snap election next month, but pressure needs to be brought upon the Prime Minister to make sure Britain gets the clean break Brexit it needs, free from European Union rules in perpetuity. Mr Farage made the remarks during a trip to the commercial fishing wharves in Plymouth harbour, just one of many British towns and cities whose fishing fleets have been near-destroyed by intrusive European Union rules.  Enjoying a warm welcome from the crews who foresee a renaissance of the fishing industry in Britain after it leaves the European Union, Mr Farage said that while the Brexit cause had gone through some bad years under Theresa May, things were improving.

Health

Times
A women’s rights charity has threatened to sue NHS England for blocking the publication of research into deaths in childbirth, saying the delay is putting the lives of mothers and babies at risk. The annual study into maternal mortality was due to be published this month but its authors at the University of Oxford were told they could not owing to “purdah” rules during an election. Birthrights, a charity that seeks to improve women’s care during pregnancy and childbirth, says the rules were never intended to apply to independent research that seeks to improve maternal safety.

Education

Times
Education is always an election battleground, and this time voters are being offered radically different choices: a back-to-the-1970s national education service from Labour or more of the same from the Conservatives. Labour’s manifesto sets out plans to strip away levers that have driven up standards for 30 years. Ofsted, league tables and primary school Sats — national exams in reading, writing and maths — will be scrapped. Academies and free schools — which have autonomy over admissions, curriculum and staff — will be brought back under local council control.

Armed forces

Telegraph
Britain might have to consider bringing back controversial ‘cluster bombs’ in case of a war with Russia, a RUSI report has found. The government might have to decide whether the UK’s commitment to the Oslo Convention, an international treaty that bans the use of cluster bombs, should be reviewed, if it is to compete with Russia over firepower. The research paper warns that in any future conflict with Russia, Britain’s armed forces would be “comprehensively outgunned and outranged, leaving enemy artillery free to prosecute fire missions with impunity”.

Mail
British troops would be ‘comprehensively outgunned’ in a war with Russia because of a ‘critical shortage’ of artillery, according to a report. In a scathing assessment of the military’s firepower, experts warn that in the event of a battle, UK forces would be defeated by superior Russian guns, which have longer range. The report also says the Army lacks the ability to transport and sustain enough artillery for a ‘credible’ warfighting division – typically around 20,000 soldiers. The damning report by the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) think-tank compares Russia’s firepower on the ground to Britain’s.

Emissions

Times
Massive and immediate cuts in carbon output are required if world temperature rises are to be limited to 2C, according to a “bleak” UN assessment of the so-called global emissions gap. The annual report, which looks at the disparity between action and intention on climate change, concludes that on current trends, temperatures will rise 3.4C to 3.9C by the end of the century. Warming on that scale will lead to a sea level rise of up to 9m (30ft), inundating coastal areas and countries such as Bangladesh, plus more violent storms in the tropics, with some equatorial regions becoming uninhabitable.

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