Ten Things You Need to Know Today: 23 October 2022

1. Sunak surges ahead

Rishi Sunak is comfortably ahead of his rivals in the contest to be the next Tory leader and prime minister, with at least 128 Tory MPs now backing him. According to the BBC’s tally of public declarations of support, Boris Johnson currently has 53 MPs, with 23 for Penny Mordaunt. Sunak has “won the backing of leading figures on the right of the party”, said The Sunday Times, as support for Johnson “appeared to stall”.

2. Zelensky criticises ‘vile strikes’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia has launched a “new massive strike” targeting Ukraine’s energy grid on a “very wide” scale. Nearly 1.5m households were left without electricity, Kyiv said. “These are vile strikes on critical objects,” Zelensky said. “The world can and must stop this terror.” Ukrainian forces downed 20 missiles and more than 10 Iranian-made Shahed drones on Saturday, he added.

3. Xi Jinping confirms third term

Xi Jinping has announced a third term as China’s leader, in a significant break with recent precedent. He has unveiled his new top team, with seven key Xi loyalists revealed as members of China’s most powerful political body, the politburo standing committee, as they walked on stage in order of rank. The development comes as the nation is beset with problems. “Absolute power can often mean absolute responsibility”, said CNN, and “as problems mount, analysts warn Xi will have less room to avoid blame”.

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4. 90% of schools under threat

Nine out of 10 schools will have run out of money by the next school year as the “enormous burden” of increased energy and salary bills “takes its toll”, said The Observer. After the new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, said that all departments, including education, will be expected to make cuts as part of the government’s debt reduction plan, to be announced on 31 October, headteachers and academy leaders warned that further spending cuts will push many schools “over the cliff”.

5. Fire on Mount Kilimanjaro

Firefighters in Tanzania are battling to extinguish a blaze on Mount Kilimanjaro. The fire started on Friday night along one of the mountain’s most popular climbing routes, and has caused giant flames and plumes of smoke on the slopes. It is not clear how the fire started or how much forest has been burned. It comes exactly two years after another broke out on Africa’s tallest mountain in October 2020, noted The Citizen. In 2020 it took 10 days to put out the fire.

6. Council gives free vapes to pregnant women

A London council will hand pregnant women free vapes as part of a new anti-smoking initiative. Lambeth Council hopes its “stop smoking” drive will save mothers-to-be £2,000 a year. The local authority says vapes can help women quit smoking, which causes thousands fall into poverty. A study published by King’s College last month found that “vaping is substantially less harmful than smoking”. However, noted The Independent, little research has been done into the safety of e-cigarettes during pregnancy.

7. Labour’s new ‘prawn cocktail offensive’

Labour has launched a “Prawn Cocktail Offensive 2.0” to win over the City, holding meetings and dinners with top companies including NatWest, Tesco, and Amazon. Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has been on a “blitz of breakfasts and dinners in the Square Mile” amid a “scramble in recent weeks by chief executives to meet Labour’s top team”, said The Telegraph. The first “Prawn Cocktail Offensive” was undertaken in the 1990s before its landslide election victory under Tony Blair.

8. Thatcher statue vandalised again

A statue of Margaret Thatcher in her home town in Lincolnshire has been vandalised for a third time. The bronze £300,000 sculpture in St Peter’s Hill in Grantham was daubed with the words “Tories out”, in an incident that Lincolnshire Police is treated as criminal damage. The statue was vandalised in May just weeks after a man was fined for egging it. The university arts chief who threw eggs at the statue within hours of its installation was fined £90.

9. Palestinian shot dead in West Bank

Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank yesterday. The Palestinian health ministry said Rabi Arafah Rabi, 32, was hit by “a bullet to the head” at a checkpoint south-east of the city of Qalqilya. An Israeli spokesperson said troops fired on a car containing three suspects as the vehicle accelerated away after hitting a soldier when they tried to stop it for inspection. Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has “surged in recent months”, noted The Observer.

10. The Crown ‘would have destroyed Queen’

The new series of The Crown is “vicious” and “would have destroyed” the Queen, according to one of her closest friends. The fifth season of the hit Netflix drama features Prince Charles lobbying the PM, John Major, to force his mother to abdicate. Major’s spokesman described The Crown as “damaging and malicious fiction”. The friend of the late monarch said: “I’m horrified by what is going on with Netflix and how they are vilifying the royal family. It’s as if they’re trying to destroy the royal family.”