Wednesday briefing: Sunak pitches ‘age of optimism’ budget

Top story: Others question sunny outlook

Hello, Warren Murray asking only a few minutes of your temporal budget.

Rishi Sunak will use his budget today to insist the UK is entering an economic “age of optimism” and herald a “new economy post-Covid”. Sunak is expected to unveil a flagship measure to help families hit by the GBP1,000 cut to universal credit, having already made GBP30bn of spending announcements, or reannouncements, across the health service, housebuilding, crime-fighting, transport and skills.

But with the threat of rising inflation and holes in the public finances, Torsten Bell, the chief executive of the Resolution Foundation thinktank, warned the country was facing an “age of uncertainty … The place we are at is coming out of a recession but going into a cost of living crunch. The country is looking for a resolution of the uncertainty of the pandemic but the budget is not going to be able to provide that.” Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, questioned the chancellor’s emphasis on optimism at a time when many people are struggling. The shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said a Labour government would cut VAT on domestic energy bills for six months.

Discussions have been held in Whitehall over proposals to cut university tuition fees from GBP9,250 to GBP8,500, the Guardian understands. Officials from No 10, the Treasury and the Department for Education (DfE) are said to have been engaged in talks but have struggled to thrash out an agreement in time for today. Whether there will be much or any mention of it in the budget is not clear.

US ban on China Telecom – The FCC has voted to revoke China Telecom’s licence in America after finding it “is subject to exploitation, influence, and control by the Chinese government and is highly likely to be forced to comply with Chinese government requests” without legal procedures or court oversight. The US communications regulator said Chinese government ownership could lead it “to access, store, disrupt, and/or misroute US communications”. The US had already applied strict export controls to Huawei and banned China Mobile. American allies such as the UK and Australia followed suit in banning Huawei from their 5G networks.

Midweek catch-up

> Sudan’s PM and his wife have reportedly been allowed to return home amid international calls for the release of all the government officials detained when Gen Abdel-Fattah Burhan seized power in a military coup on Monday.

> A man is feared to have drowned off the coast of Essex after trying to cross the Channel in a small boat, the Home Office said on Tuesday. Two other people, believed to be from Somalia, were rescued after a search near the port of Harwich.

> The ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been testifying in court today for the first time since an army coup stopped her and her party from beginning a second five-year term in power. Her lawyers are not being allowed to speak about the case.

> In the US, criminal charges have not been ruled out in the fatal accidental shooting by Alec Baldwin on the set of the film Rust, the local district attorney handling the case has said. Baldwin was unknowingly handed a gun loaded with a live bullet in the chamber.

> The Queen will skip the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow where the 95-year-old had been due to host a major reception for world leaders next Monday. The palace said she would send a video message. The Queen has been working remotely from Windsor Castle after having her first overnight stay in hospital in eight years.

Meat of the climate matter – A failure to take action on methane emissions by the world’s biggest meat and dairy companies is fuelling the climate crisis, say campaigners. Livestock generate about 32% of methane emissions that are caused by the activities of humans – mainly from the planet’s billion-plus cattle. That is about 14% of human-induced climate emissions overall – although methane breaks down relatively quickly in the atmosphere, it is a greenhouse gas just like carbon dioxide, and actually more potent. As a UN report warns that the world faces disastrous temperature rises of at least 2.7C on current pledges for climate action, it emerges this morning that lower income countries are spending five times more on debt than dealing with global warning, according to the Jubilee Debt Campaign, which says debt relief must be part of the discussion at Cop26 in Glasgow.

Abedin ‘buried’ assault memory – Huma Abedin, a longtime close aide to Hillary Clinton, has written that she was sexually assaulted by a US senator but “buried” the memory until allegations against the supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh triggered it. In a memoir to be published next week, Abedin does not name or identify the senator or his party. After a forced embrace and kiss, the senator seemed surprised but apologised and said he had “misread” her “all this time”, Abedin writes.

She later stayed on friendly terms with the senator and succeeded in erasing the incident from her mind “entirely”. Then, in late 2018, Kavanaugh was nominated to the supreme court by Donald Trump. Her memory was triggered when she read about Christine Blasey Ford “being accused of ‘conveniently’ remembering” the alleged assault, which the now-judge Kavanaugh has always denied.

Tripped up – In the latest “not everything you read on the internet is true” shocker: almost 1m reviews submitted to Tripadvisor – equivalent to 3.6% of the total – were determined to be fraudulent in 2020. Tripadvisor says algorithms caught 67.1% of the fakes before they were posted – more on its transparency and accuracy efforts here.

Today in Focus podcast: Rishi Sunak’s big day

He has risen smoothly from private schooling to Oxford, the City, and then parliament – and now he is a youthful and popular chancellor who many believe will be the next prime minister. How has Rishi Sunak managed it – and does the budget that will set the terms of the UK’s exit from the pandemic pose the biggest threat yet to his Teflon reputation?

Lunchtime read: ‘Bullying, pure and simple’

“They accuse me of sleeping with powerful men to get ahead or make abusive comments in calls to our office,” says Mar Yasuda, who is contesting a seat in Hyogo prefecture for the opposition Constitutional Democratic party of Japan. “I receive emails from men remarking on my appearance or asking me for a date.”

Sexual harassment is becoming a fact of life for women who run for office in Japan, where female participation in politics is already among the lowest in the world. Female MPs comprise just 9.9% of the lower house of the Diet parliament. Despite the recent emergence of diversity and gender as topics of public debate – and signs that voters are more progressive than many of their representatives – the country’s politics have been immune to change, according to Yasuda.

Sport

When Arsenal’s Mikel Arteta scanned a well-stocked substitutes’ bench for potential matchwinners, Calum Chambers’s face would not have leapt out. So it was a turnup for the books that his defender, who had not kicked a competitive ball in anger for two months and has barely appeared in a matchday squad since, breached Leeds within seconds of coming on and sparked an ultimately straightforward win. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer will take charge of Manchester United’s game at Tottenham on Saturday after the club followed Sir Alex Ferguson’s advice and gave the manager a chance to turn fortunes around. Hours after South African cricket was rocked when Quinton de Kock withdrew from their Twenty20 World Cup match against West Indies after refusing to take a knee, Temba Bavuma was a picture of grace, calm and maturity.

With a display of resilience every bit as breathtaking as her snowboarding, Katie Ormerod is reliving her 2018 Winter Olympics nightmare. The British athlete had terrible luck before those Games but with 100 days to go until Beijing 2022 she is aiming high. Emma Raducanu is the US Open champion, she has reached the second week of Wimbledon and her name is already known across the world. And yet, in front of only a smattering of tournament staff in Cluj-Napoca’s BTarena, the 18-year-old Briton realised two of the many elementary achievements that she had not yet attained: she played three sets in a tour-level match for the first time, and she picked up her first victory at a WTA tournament. With a home Euros next summer and the 2023 World Cup to follow, Sarina Wiegman would probably prefer her England players to enjoy far more elite examinations than double-figure strolls against minnows. Just like North Macedonia, Luxembourg and Northern Ireland before them, Latvia lacked the professionalism and energy to live with the talent of her England squad in the 10-0 rout.

Business

Google’s parent company Alphabet continued big tech’s eye-catching run during the current Wall Street earnings season with profits of $21bn in the last three months. Revenue rose 41% to $65.12bn and has now seen its share price increase 57% for the year. The US ban on China Telecom pushed shares in big Chinese tech firms down sharply in Hong Kong, and Asian markets in general looked weak overnight. The FTSE100 looks like slipping around 0.1% at the opening, while the pound will fetch you $1.377 and EUR1.187.

The papers

Our Guardian print edition leads today with “‘A thundering wake-up call’: world faces 2.7C temperature rise, says UN“. Also on the front: “Vaccinate pregnant women as a priority”. Some are being turned away from Covid vaccine clinics despite clinical advice, experts have warned, urging ministers to ramp up efforts to reach unvaccinated groups.

The Times’ front page has across its top the case of Owen Paterson, the Tory MP found to have committed an “egregious” breach of lobbying rules; while its lead story is “Fast growth gives Sunak chance to splash cash”. The Metro previews “Rishi’s new age budget” and connects that phraseology to him owning a pair of sandals. In the Express it’s “Rishi: our new age of optimism”.

The Daily Mail announces “Queen’s regret as now she quits climate summit”. The i splashes on “Queen pulls out of Cop26 on doctors’ advice” (she does have an allergy to world leaders who talk but don’t do, after all …). The Mirror says “Tired Queen pulls out of summit” in wording that could have been more delicate. The Telegraph says “Test & Trace criticised as ‘eyewatering’ waste of cash'” – here is the Guardian’s report on the Commons spending watchdog’s verdict. And in the Financial Times: “China locked out of nuclear plants in new funding model” – read our take on that with no paywall.

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