Ten Things You Need to Know Today: Tuesday 15 Oct 2019

1. US places sanctions on Turkey over Syria invasion

Donald Trump has placed sanctions on Turkish government officials and is sending Vice President Mike Pence to the region in response to the country’s military incursion against US-aligned Kurdish forces in northern Syria. The US president also phoned his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to demand an immediate truce to the conflict, which began when the US decided to withdraw troops from the Turkish border.

2. Uefa under pressure to punish racist abuse at Euro 2020 qualifier

Football’s anti-racism group Kick it Out is urging Uefa to take action after Bulgarian fans racially abused England players during a Euro 2020 qualifier in Sofia last night. The match was halted twice before England won 6-0. Manager Gareth Southgate said: “Sadly, my players, because of their experiences in our own country, are hardened to racism.”

3. Johnson persuades more MPs to back Brexit deal

Hard-line Eurosceptics and pro-deal Labour MPs have indicated they could back a new agreement made with the EU, giving Boris Johnson fresh hope of securing “the parliamentary numbers needed”, The Guardian reports. If the prime minister secures an agreement with Brussels, he will need to persuade all 28 of the Tory “Spartans”, the MPs who refused to back Theresa May’s deal.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

4. EU ministers to be updated on Brexit negotiations

The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, will today update EU foreign ministers on the progress of talks over the UK’s exit from the bloc. The BBC says that the negotiations have “intensified” in recent days but Europe editor Katya Adler warns is is still “extremely hard to see how a new Brexit deal can still be agreed by this Thursday”.

5. Police ban all climate change protests in London

Police have banned Extinction Rebellion protests from continuing anywhere in London, with activists told to leave Trafalgar Square, where many have congregated lawfully since Monday last week. More than 1,400 people have been arrested during eight days of action by the climate change protesters. Among those detained yesterday was 77-year-old Rabbi Jeffrey Newman, who was arrested after kneeling and praying in the middle of a busy junction at Bank.

6. Trump-Ukraine: Bolton warned of ‘hand grenade’

Former US national security adviser John Bolton was reportedly so alarmed at a backchannel effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate Donald Trump’s political rivals that he told a senior aide to report the plot to White House lawyers. Bolton referred to the president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani as a “hand grenade” who was “going to blow everybody up” with his efforts to dig up dirt, House impeachment investigators heard yesterday.

7. Car crash diplomat’s wife ‘spoke to victim’

The US diplomat’s wife who fled the UK after being involved in a fatal car crash spoke to 19-year-old victim Harry Dunn as he lay dying, according to Sky News. The broadcaster reports that a source close to Anne Sacoolas also says she accepts she was driving on the wrong side of the road. Dunn’s parents may seek a judicial review.

8. Gascoigne: I kissed woman on train to help her

Former England footballer Paul Gascoigne told police he kissed a stranger on a train because she was “a fat lass” to whom he was “trying to give… some confidence”, a court heard yesterday. The victim said the 52-year-old tried to sit on her lap and forced his tongue into her mouth, leaving her “taken aback”. Gascoigne has pleaded not guilty to a charge of sexual assault.

9. Risks of garden bridge ‘played down for Johnson’

An inquiry by the watchdog that monitors the London mayor has found that the risks of the doomed Garden Bridge project were downplayed to keep Boris Johnson happy when he was in the role. The failed project, which cost a total of £53m, was abandoned when Sadiq Khan took over as mayor. The charity created to push the project acted “recklessly”, the inquiry found.

10. Briefing: what happened to fiscal conservatism?

The Taxpayers’ Alliance has warned Boris Johnson against “splashing the cash” in a bid to win a snap election.

As the pro-Conservative campaign group’s boss John O’Connell notes in an article in The Times today, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) last week “laid out in stark terms how far the Tories had moved from their platform of fiscal prudence”. So what is going on?

What happened to fiscal conservatism?