Mr David Cameron, the leader of the opposition, had to explain why a ‘cast iron guarantee’ by the Conservatives to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty would no longer be possible, now it had been ratified.
Mr David Cameron, the leader of the opposition, had to explain why a ‘cast iron guarantee’ by the Conservatives to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty would no longer be possible, now it had been ratified. The Royal Bank of Scotland will sell 318 branches and the Lloyds banking group more than 600 in a move demanded by the European Commission to avoid a breach of competition rules. Lloyds announced a £13.5 billion rights issue, the biggest ever attempted in Britain, in an attempt to free itself from the government’s asset protection scheme. Mr Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said he would put another £30 billion of taxpayers’ money into the banks. The European Commission gave approval to the splitting of Northern Rock, with the sale of a retail banking segment. Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, met Sir Christopher Kelly, two days before the publication of his much-leaked proposals for reforming MPs’ expenses, to tell him that ‘politics must never be allowed to become the preserve of the independently wealthy’, even though, by the time they met, the proposals were already at the printer’s. One leaked proposal was that MPs should no longer employ close relatives. Mrs Harriet Harman, the Leader of the Commons, said it would be unfair immediately to sack wives working for MPs. Mr Tony McNulty, a former minister, apologised to the House after the Standards and Privileges Committee found that he had claimed for the running costs of a house where his parents lived, which were ‘not wholly and exclusively incurred in connection with his parliamentary duties’; he paid back £13,837. An independent inquiry by Mr Charles Haddon-Cave QC, into the crash of a Nimrod aircraft in Afghanistan in 2006 that cost 14 lives, criticised military officers, civil servants and contractors: ‘There was a shift in culture and priorities in the MoD towards “business” and financial targets, at the expense of functional values such as safety,’ it said. In a statement to the Commons, an unhappy-looking Mr Bob Ainsworth, the Secretary of State for Defence, said: ‘I am sorry for the mistakes that have been made and that lives have been lost as a result of our failure.’ Professor David Nutt was sacked as chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs by Mr Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, after criticising in a lecture last July (published in a pamphlet last week) the government’s reclassification of cannabis from a class C to a class B drug. Two members of the council resigned in protest. A railway enthusiast has discovered that the ordinary first-class return from Newquay to Kyle of Lochalsh has broken the thousand-pound barrier at £1,002.
President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic signed the Lisbon Treaty shortly after the Czech constitutional court ruled that it was not inconsistent with the country’s constitution; he said of the court ruling: ‘I fundamentally disagree with its content and justification.’ In Brussels, before an EU summit, Mr Gordon Brown said: ‘We, the British government, believe that Tony Blair would be an excellent candidate and an excellent person to hold the job of president of the [European] council.’ Enthusiasm for Mr Blair’s candidature immediately slumped, but attention turned to Mr David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary, as a possible candidate for the EU’s new equivalent post. Mr Hamid Karzai was declared President of Afghanistan, after his rival Mr Abdullah Abdullah withdrew from a second round of elections. The first round was mired in fraud. ‘Our government has been seriously discredited by administrative corruption,’ Mr Karzai said. ‘We will try to remove this stigma.’ Mr Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations Secretary General, visited Kabul on the eve of the decision. ‘There has been speculation that the United Nations will evacuate Afghanistan,’ he said, in reference to a bomb that had killed six UN workers and six others in Kabul the week before. ‘We will not be deterred.’ The shooting by an Aghan policeman of five British soldiers brought the number of British serviceman to die in Afghanistan to 229; US fatalities reached 911. President Barack Obama of the United States continued to ponder whether he should send another 40,000 troops to Afghanistan. On the first anniversary of his election, the Democrats lost elections in Virginia to the Republicans, and Mr Michael Bloomberg was re-elected Mayor of New York. Meanwhile, the US debated whether Mr Obama was getting too thin. ‘Just ’cause I’m skinny doesn’t mean I’m not tough,’ he said in a speech in Miami. ‘I don’t rattle.’ Simon Mann, sentenced in July last year to 34 years’ imprisonment for attempting a coup in Equatorial Guinea, was freed on grounds of health. André Agassi recounted in his memoirs how his brother helped him piece together his mullet-shaped hairpiece with 20 clips, the night before the French Open final in 1990, which he won. CSH
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