The prime minister and home secretary will visit Cumbria today to talk to senior police officers and meet family and friends of the victims of Wednesday's gun rampage.
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The prime minister and home secretary will visit Cumbria today to talk to senior police officers and meet family and friends of the victims of Wednesday’s gun rampage. Yesterday, Mr Cameron said there should be no “knee-jerk reaction” to changing gun laws, though Theresa May told parliament the government would “consider all the options”. The shooting tragedy leads all the front pages, with attention turning to possible motives for the attack: the Telegraph claims Derrick Bird “harboured grudges against several of his victims following disputes over money”; The Sun reports that his rage was sparked “over £100k tax bill”; the Express says a “family feud fed cabbie’s hate”; the Mail says an undeclared tax bill “drove Derrick Bird to mass murder”; and The Independent looks at “the grievances and grudges that drove Derrick Bird over the edge”.
The Times reveals more details of Derrick Bird’s criminal past, and reports that the police could have refused to give him a firearms licence “because he was a convicted thief”, and the Standard reports on former Met chief Sir Ian Blair’s call to widen the gun consultation – he said the government “should consider asking relatives, neighbours and workmates whether people are fit to hold a gun licence”. Yesterday Left Foot Forward looked at the international evidence on gun ownership, which showed a correlation between the percentage of households with firearms and the rate of intentional firearms deaths per 100,000 of population.
The Times has the latest on the Labour leadership race, claiming many voters “may have trouble telling them [the frontrunners] apart”: “Meet the next leader of the Labour Party: ‘Andy Balliband’ a fortysomething Oxbridge-educated white male, who entered the Cabinet during the last Parliament and learnt his trade as a special adviser. That was the view of one jaundiced party figure yesterday surveying the choice between David Miliband, Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and — if he succeeds in getting the necessary 33 nominations from MPs — Andy Burnham.” The report says it is unlikely either Diane Abbott or John McDonnell will make the ballot paper, since “these left-wing outriders have the backing of barely a dozen MPs between them”. Yesterday, Left Foot Forward reported that it was still possible for all six to make the ballot, though The Times suggests that, of the 90-odd yet to declare, “many are expected to fall in behind the front runners”. The report adds: “Concerns have been voiced about the narrow field. Some MPs wish it included women such as Yvette Cooper or Harriet Harman, a free-thinking backbencher such as Jon Cruddas or an elder statesman in the mould of Jack Straw.”
The Guardian reports the prime minister’s call for the G8 to “intensify efforts to lower the ‘shocking and shameful’ levels of maternal mortality” in the developing world, “which have barely fallen” over the past 20 years. Writing in today’s Guardian, Mr Cameron called on the G8/G20 summit in Toronto this month “to set ‘an ambitious target’ of saving three million more lives by 2015”. He says: “In many of the poorest countries pregnancy is a life-threatening condition. By the end of today about 1,400 women will have died in pregnancy or childbirth, nearly all of them in the developing world. A decade ago, the world set a target of reducing maternal mortality by 75% by 2015. Yet once again, for all the talk of development goals, little has changed. Levels of maternal mortality in many regions have barely fallen in 20 years. That is shocking and shameful. But it doesn’t have to continue like this.” Earlier, Andrew Mitchell, the international development secretary, announced the setting up of a new independent watchdog to “squeeze every last ounce of value” from DfID’s £7.3bn budget. Left Foot Forward will have more on the government’s international development plans later this morning.
The Independent has an interview with the former prime minister and current Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair, in which he urges Israel to the “counterproductive” blockade of Gaza, and that the embargo “risks alienating a generation”. He called for a strategy for Gaza which “isolates the extremists and helps the people and not one that operates the other way round”, and said Gaza would not become like the West Bank “because Hamas is in charge of it”. He told the Indy: “What is important is that we don’t end up with people [in Gaza] losing hope for the future, alienating young people we don’t need to alienate. Don’t forget that 50 per cent of people in Gaza are under the age of 20 – and we don’t want to kill the private sector in Gaza.” On the blockade, Mr Blair said he had warned Israeli leaders that “because Hamas will get whatever they want through the tunnels [carrying smuggled goods from Egypt] actually this is a counter-productive policy. You stop the legitimate goods coming in legitimately”. He added that not enough international attention was paid to the fact that “the events that we see across TV screens are perceived completely differently in Israel, and people have got to understand that the pressure on Netanyahu in respect of Gaza from many quarters is to be tougher”.
And the Telegraph has more on the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, reporting that BP “has managed to lower a containment cap onto its ruptured deep-sea wellhead”, in a “high-stakes bid to siphon off some of oil billowing from the broken riser pipe”. The US Coast Guard said BP had “successfully attached the cylindrical well cap onto the jagged top of the crippled wellhead assembly using underwater robots”. However, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen warned that “Even if successful, this is only a temporary and partial fix and we must continue our aggressive response, operations at the source, on the surface and along the Gulf’s precious coastline”. The report adds that “The latest attempt to collect at least some of the escaping crude oil and siphon it safely to collection ships on the surface offers the most immediate hope of gaining control over the worst oil spill in US history. Earlier,, BP’s robot submarines sheared away the oil-spewing well pipe after two days of attempts, clearing the way for the lowering of the cap. Following the success, BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward said the next 12 to 24 hours would determine whether the capping operation will succeed.”
3 Responses to “Politics Summary: Friday, June 4th”
Robert
Come on if Price Charles can have a gun then anyone can, for crying out loud.
Ell Aitch
RT @leftfootfwd: Politics Summary: Friday, June 4th: http://bit.ly/cRztaj – Cameron to visit Cumbria today as more details of gun horror …
Marcel Duda
<b>Politics</b> Summary: Friday, June 4th | Left Foot Forward http://goo.gl/fb/bJyjd