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Sir Tony Blair, the former Labour prime minister, attacked current net-zero policies, saying that ‘any strategy based on either “phasing out” fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail’. Pay review bodies recommended rises for public-sector workers (4 per cent for teachers; 3 per cent for NHS employees) that are higher than the 2.8 per cent budgeted for by the government. The Equality and Human Rights Commission, in applying last month’s judgment by the Supreme Court, said that in places like hospitals, shops and restaurants ‘trans women (biological men) should not be permitted to use the women’s facilities and trans men (biological women) should not be permitted to use the men’s facilities’, such as lavatories, but trans people should not be left without facilities. Resident doctors (junior doctors) in the British Medical Association passed a conference motion calling the Supreme Court ruling ‘biologically nonsensical’.
Marks & Spencer stopped taking online orders and found distribution disrupted as it tried to recover from a cyber attack thought by outsiders to have been launched by a criminal gang, perhaps one called Scattered Spider. The sugar tax imposed in 2018 on fizzy drinks will be extended to milkshakes. Four million children will be affected by a government restriction on the number of branded school uniform items, optimistically intended to reduce costs. A large fire destroyed an electricity substation in Maida Vale, London.
Voters turned out on a sunny 1 May to elect 1,641 candidates for council seats in 24 local authorities in England. The number of people to cross the Channel in small boats so far this year exceeded 10,000, about 40 per cent more than in the same period last year. Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, announced that anyone from abroad who qualified for the sex offenders register would be excluded from refugee protection. Downing Street did not rule out the possibility of a youth mobility scheme being considered as part of Brexit reset talks with the EU. Peter Taaffe, the driving force in the 1980s of the Trotskyist group Militant Tendency, died aged 83. The average wait for a driving test reached 22 weeks. Hundreds took part in a 90-minute Low Tide Event on an exposed sandbar between Tresco and Bryher in the Isles of Scilly.
Abroad
Pope Francis was buried in St Mary Major after a funeral in St Peter’s Square attended by 250,000, with another 150,000 on the route. A conclave would begin on 7 May. At the Baptistery Chapel in St Peter’s, before the funeral, President Donald Trump, on a little red and gold chair, spoke to President Volodymyr Zelensky on another. Later he posted a remark: ‘There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas. It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through “Banking” or “Secondary Sanctions”?’ He later said he expected Ukraine to cede Crimea to Russia. President Vladimir Putin announced a cessation of hostilities from 8 to 10 May. North Korea confirmed it had sent troops to Russia under a mutual defence treaty. The White House described as ‘a hostile and political act’ plans by Amazon to show the amount that tariffs add to the cost of items; then Mr Trump, celebrating his first 100 days, said he had spoken to Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, and ‘he solved the problem very quickly’. The Liberals, led by Mark Carney, beat the Conservatives in the Canadian election: ‘President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never ever happen,’ he said. On the eve of the elections, a man had driven a car into a crowd in Vancouver, killing 11.
A power cut affected traffic lights, mobile phone networks, trains and supermarket tills in Spain and Portugal. California overtook Japan to become the world’s fourth largest economic entity. The Chinese coastguard seized the Sandy Cay bank (not to be confused with Sand Cay) in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. A Chinese student rescued by helicopter from Mount Fuji had to be rescued again after he went back to look for his phone.
An explosion at the port of Shahid Rajaee, near Bandar Abbas in Iran, killed at least 70 people and wounded more than 1,000. Following the Kashmir shootings, India suspended the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty governing the sharing of river water with Pakistan. The Duchess of Sussex was found to have sent a card to a friend reading, ‘With the Compliments of HRH The Duchess of Sussex’, although she relinquished the title HRH in 2020. CSH
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