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The United Kingdom quietly left the European Union at 11 p.m. GMT on 31 January. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, said in a speech about trade negotiations: ‘We have made our choice — we want a free trade agreement, similar to Canada’s but in the very unlikely event that we do not succeed, then our trade will have to be based on our existing withdrawal agreement with the EU.’ Britain would also pursue trade deals with other countries. The government brought forward from 2040 to 2035 a ban on selling new petrol, diesel or hybrid cars. David Cameron, the former prime minister, declined an offer from Boris Johnson to head the UN climate change summit in Glasgow in November. A passenger found a gun belonging to Mr Cameron’s close protection officer in the lavatory of an aeroplane from New York. ‘In a hole the size of HS2, the only thing to do is keep digging,’ Mr Johnson told the audience of the Sky Kids’ show FYI. Half of ten-year-olds owned a smartphone last year, according to an Ofcom survey.
The police shot dead a man outside Boots in Streatham High Road in south London after he stabbed two people with a knife taken from a shop. The knifeman was Sudesh Amman, aged 20, who had pleaded guilty in November 2018 to six charges of possessing documents containing terrorist information and seven of disseminating terrorist publications. He had been jailed for three years and four months and automatically released on 23 January. He had asked his girlfriend to kill her ‘kafir’ parents. He was under active police surveillance at the time of the Streatham attack. The government said it would introduce emergency legislation to stop terrorists, including serving prisoners, being released early unless with a risk assessment by the parole board.
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