'No deal in the desert,' EU says of Brexit breakthrough in Egypt

Political reporter(wp/reuters):::

European Union leaders will not clinch a deal on Brexit during a summit with their Arab peers in Egypt scheduled for Sunday and Monday, an EU official said on Friday.

“There will be no deal in the desert,” the official said when asked about chances of a Brexit breakthrough during the EU summit with the League of Arab States in Sharm el-Sheikh on Feb.24-25.

However, the source said European Council President Donald Tusk would hold a bilateral meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May on the sidelines of the summit on Sunday at 1630 local time in Egypt.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Dutch Prime Minsiter Mark Rutte are among more than 20 EU leaders expected to go to Egypt. London hopes May will have a chance there to lobby again for concessions that will unlock Brexit ratification in Britain’s divided parliament.

EU diplomats say there has been some movement towards a possible deal with London but stressed that much work remained to be done and were not expecting any imminent breakthrough.

However, sterling weakened on Friday after the EU official ruled out a weekend deal.

UK manufacturers see stronger orders, average output growth - CBI

Business correspondent(wp/reuters):::

British factory orders picked up this month after dipping in January, and output is expected to be solid as Britain leaves the European Union, a survey from the Confederation of British Industry showed on Wednesday.

Although the CBI warned that Brexit talks were rapidly approaching “crisis point”, its data painted a more positive picture ahead of Brexit than many recent surveys of the sector.

Official data last week showed the sector contracted by the biggest amount in over five years during the final three months of 2018.

The CBI’s factory order book balance rose to +6 this month from January’s reading of -1, above all forecasts in a Reuters poll of economists and above the survey’s long-run average.

Export order growth also strengthened, though manufacturers expected output growth to slow over the next three months from the above-average rates predicted in December and January.

“UK manufacturing activity has moderated at the same time as headwinds from Brexit uncertainty and a weaker global trading environment have grown,” CBI economist Anna Leach said.

Britain’s main manufacturing body, Make UK, warned on Tuesday that a no-deal Brexit next month would be a “catastrophic prospect” for the sector.

Finance minister Philip Hammond told Make UK’s annual dinner that lawmakers and EU leaders needed to listen to industry.

“The clock is ticking quickly towards crisis point,” Leach added. “It is of critical importance that politicians of all stripes and on both sides of the channel come to agreement on the terms of a Brexit deal as soon as possible.”

Labour and Conservatives could see more MP exits

Political reporter(wp/reuters):::

Labour and the Conservatives could face more resignations, with members of the new Independent Group saying they expect more MPs to join them.

Ex-Tory MP Heidi Allen told ITV's Peston programme "a third" of Tory MPs were fed up with the party's direction.

Labour MP Ian Austin told the Express and Star he would think "long and hard" about his future in the party.

It comes as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said defecting MPs should "resign and put themselves up for election".

Meanwhile, former attorney general Dominic Grieve said he would quit the Conservatives if there was a no-deal Brexit.

The Tory MP told the BBC's Newsnight he admired the courage of the 11 members of the Independent Group - eight ex-Labour MPs and three former Tory MPs - and agreed totally with their support for another EU referendum.

He said he would not be able to stay in the Conservative Party if it "went completely off the rails" and backed leaving the EU without a negotiated agreement.

Conservative defectors insist 'no way back'

Anna Soubry, one of three Tory MPs to quit the party on Wednesday, has insisted there is no "going back" since Tories like her had lost the fight for the heart and soul of the party and been overwhelmed by a "purple Momentum".

She also revealed that former PM David Cameron had made a last-ditch attempt to stop the trio from quitting.

She told The Times Red Box podcast that Mr Cameron sent them a text saying: "Is it too late to persuade you to stay?"

• What does it feel like to quit a party?
• Three Tory MPs join breakaway group
• Who are the MPs resigning?

Ms Allen said she could not imagine returning "because if we do our jobs right there won't be a Tory party to go back to".

She said she was "hopeful" that what she described as "good, sensible centre ground colleagues" would join the new group.

Senior Conservatives have suggested the door is open for the three Tories who quit - Ms Soubry, Ms Allen and Sarah Wollaston - to return one day.

Prime Minister Theresa May has rejected claims the party has abandoned the centre ground in its pursuit of a hard Brexit, pledging to continue to offer the "decent, moderate and patriotic politics that I believe the people of the UK deserve".

Corbyn wants defectors to quit

In a Twitter video released on Wednesday night, Mr Corbyn said defecting Labour MPs should resign because it was the "democratic thing to do" because they wanted to "abandon the policies on which they were elected".

While the Labour leader said he was disappointed, he suggested the eight were replaceable and the Labour movement was "greater than the sum of its parts".

"It is disappointing that some MPs have left our party to sit with disaffected Tory MPs, but we can't return to the failed business of usual politics of the past," he said.

Other Labour MPs have said they will consider their futures unless Mr Corbyn listens to their concerns about the culture of the party and acts on them.

Meanwhile, Momentum, the Labour movement backing Mr Corbyn, is to hold "mass canvassing events" in the constituencies of some of those ex-Labour MPs to build support in the event of a by-election.

It says it will have events in Streatham, Stockport, and Penistone and Stocksbridge - the constituencies of Chuka Umunna, Ann Coffey and Angela Smith respectively - in the next few weeks.

Labour apology over anti-Semitism

The Labour leader said he would not change direction in response to the defections but repeated that tackling anti-Semitism was a priority for him.He has been accused by departing MPs, including Joan Ryan and Luciana Berger, of allowing a culture of "anti-Jewish racism" to flourish and for Jews to be "abused with impunity" by his supporters.

One of Mr Corbyn's senior team, Barry Gardiner, apologised to the Jewish community in the House of Commons on Wednesday, saying it had "let them down" and Labour was "struggling" to "become the party we have always aspired to be".

Mr Corbyn said he recognised the party had work to do to restore trust among the Jewish community and to persuade people the party was its "ally" in the fight against anti-Semitism.

The party said it had suspended the membership application of left-wing firebrand Derek Hatton over Twitter comments he made about Israel in 2012.

Lord Mandelson told ITV's Robert Peston he felt "morally compromised" staying in "a party that can spew out so much hatred towards other members", but he also urged Labour MPs not to leave the party.

Bangladesh building fire kills at least 70, toll could climb

International Correspondent,dhaka(wp/reuters):::
Large building fires are relatively common in impoverished Bangladesh, due in part to lax regulations, and have killed hundreds of people in recent years.

“So far, 70 bodies have been recovered. The number could rise further as the search is continuing,” Julfikar Rahman, a director of the Fire Service and Civil Defence, told Reuters.

The fire started in a four-storey building on Wednesday night and spread to nearby buildings in the Chawkbazar area of Old Dhaka, which dates back to the Mughal period more than 300 years ago.

Rahman said at least 50 people had been taken to hospital, some in critical condition. Hundreds of people rushed to the Dhaka Medical College and Hospital to search for missing relatives, witnesses said.

About 200 firefighters fought for more than five hours to bring the blaze under control. They told reporters the building where the fire began had housed a plastics warehouse and contained flammable material.

Rahman said the cause was still under investigation.

He said firefighters had struggled to find enough water to fight the blaze and had to draw supplies from a nearby mosque.

The fire is likely to focus attention on lax enforcement of building safety regulations in Bangladesh, where accidents kill hundreds every year.

The Rana Plaza factory collapse in 2013 killed more than 1,100 workers and a fire in a garment factory in 2012 killed 112 people.

UK strips citizenship from teenager who joined Islamic State in Syria

Staff reporter(wp/reuters):::
Britain stripped a teenager who travelled to join Islamic State of her citizenship on security grounds, triggering a row over the ramifications of leaving a 19-year-old mother with a jihadist fighter’s child to fend for herself in a war zone.

The fate of Shamima Begum, who was found in a detention camp in Syria last week, has illustrated the ethical, legal and security conundrum that governments face when dealing with the families of militants who swore to destroy the West.

With Islamic State depleted and Kurdish-led militia poised to seize the group’s last holdout in eastern Syria, Western capitals are trying to work out what to do with battle-hardened foreign jihadist fighters, and their wives and children.

Begum, who gave birth to a son at the weekend, prompted a public backlash in Britain by appearing unrepentant about seeing severed heads and even claiming the 2017 Manchester suicide attack - that killed 22 people - was justified.

She had pleaded to be repatriated back to her family in London and said that she was not a threat.

But ITV News published a Feb. 19 letter from the interior ministry to her mother that said Home Secretary Sajid Javid had taken the decision to deprive Begum of her British citizenship.

“In light of the circumstances of your daughter, the notice of the Home Secretary’s decision has been served of file today, and the order removing her British citizenship has subsequently been made,” the letter said.

The letter asked Begum’s mother to inform her daughter of the decision and set out the appeal process.

When asked about the decision, a spokesman said Javid’s priority was “the safety and security of Britain and the people who live here”.

Begum was one of three outwardly studious schoolgirls who slipped away from their lives in London’s Bethnal Green area in February 2015 to fly to Turkey and then over the border into the cauldron of the Syrian civil war.

LONDON TO SYRIA

Islamic State propaganda videos enticed her to swap London for Raqqa, a step she still says she does not regret. She fled the self-styled caliphate because she wanted to give birth away from the fighting.

“When I saw my first severed head in a bin it didn’t faze me at all. It was from a captured fighter seized on the battlefield, an enemy of Islam,” she told The Times which first discovered her in the camp in Syria.

She was equally harsh when describing the videos she had seen of the beheaded Western hostages, The Times said.

Begum has named her newborn, Jerah, in accordance with the wishes of her jihadist husband, Yago Riedijk, a Dutch convert from Arnhem. He was tortured on suspicion of spying by Islamic State but later released.

Another son, also called Jerah, died at eight months old. A daughter, Sarayah, also died aged one year and nine months, The Times said.

Her family’s lawyer said he could seek to challenge the British government’s decision to deprive her of citizenship.

“We are considering all legal avenues to challenge this decision,” said lawyer, Tasnime Akunjee.

British law does allow the interior minister to deprive a person of British citizenship when conducive to the public good, though such decisions should not render the person stateless if they were born as British citizens.

Police in Bangladesh said they were checking whether Begum was a Bangladeshi citizen, and Britain’s opposition Labour Party said the government’s decision was wrong.

“If the government is proposing to make Shamima Begum stateless it is not just a breach of international human rights law but is a failure to meet our security obligations to the international community,” Diane Abbott, Labour spokeswoman on home issues.

Ken Clarke, a former Conservative minister, said he was surprised that Javid’s lawyers had given him such advice.

“What you can’t do is leave them in a camp in Syria being even more radicalised... until they disperse themselves through the world and make their way back here,” he said.

“I think the Germans, the French and ourselves have got to work out how to deal with this difficult and, I accept, dangerous problem,” he said.

Lloyds Bank brushes off Brexit fears with £4 billion investor payout

Banking&Finance reporter(wp/reuters):::

Britain’s biggest mortgage lender posted a 24 percent rise in net profits to 4.4 billion pounds, below expectations of 4.6 billion pounds, according to a company-provided average of analyst forecasts.

It pledged to pay a 3.21 pence per share total dividend, up 5 percent, and unveiled a 1.75 billion pound share buyback. That would still leave the bank’s core capital ratio — a key measure of financial strength — at 13.9 percent.

The bank’s bumper payout and confident tone on the economy struck a contrast with rivals Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC, which in the last week both reported taking provisions against Brexit amid concerns bad loans could rise.

Lloyds shares rose 2.7 percent, outperforming a 1 percent rise in the FTSE 350 banks index.

Britain’s largest domestic bank resisted any suggestion of complacency in its outlook for the economy, saying it recognised uncertainties existed.

Chief Executive António Horta Osório said he was betting on a last minute accord between British Prime Minister Theresa May and the EU on the future trading relationship between Britain and the bloc.

“We are planning for a deal and a smooth Brexit transition that should lead the economy to grow at around the same pace you have now of about 1-1.5 percent,” the Portuguese CEO told reporters.

“Of course other scenarios can play out ... Irrespective of that our business model is the right one and it is true that we face the future with confidence, otherwise we would not be ramping up our investment in this business.”

EXPANSION PLANS

The bank said it had spent 1 billion pounds on digitising its business and bulking up its wealth management operations, as it seeks to expand into the financial planning and retirement market via a joint venture with Schroders.

Lloyds is seen as hugely exposed to any downturn through its billions of pounds of lending to British consumers and businesses.

In recent weeks the Bank of England has warned Britain faces its weakest economic growth in a decade, with a one in four chance of a recession this year.

Despite Lloyds’ bullish tone on the economy, impairments for the year increased by 18 percent to 937 million pounds as the bank integrated the MBNA credit card portfolio it bought from Bank of America in 2017.

Lloyds also set aside a further 200 million pounds to compensate customers missold payment protection insurance, taking its total provision to 750 million pounds in 2018.

Horta-Osorio’s total pay package for the year slipped to 6.3 million pounds from 6.4 million pounds the previous year, but remains significantly higher than his counterparts at RBS and HSBC.

The bank’s shares remain at a similar level to when he took over the reins in January 2011, despite its profits rising steadily each year since, a factor which analysts attributed to investors concerns about Britain’s uncertain outlook.

Graphic: Lloyds shares under CEO Horta-Osorio - tmsnrt.rs/2U0FxvO

“Lloyds is indelibly plugged into the UK economy, and the shadow cast by Brexit means the bank’s shares are left out in the cold. If there’s a positive resolution to the current political uncertainty, we would expect the shares to rally,” said Laith Khalaf, senior analyst at investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown.

Three Conservatives quit party in protest at "disastrous Brexit"

political reporter(wp/reuters):::
Three lawmakers from Britain’s governing Conservatives quit over the government’s “disastrous handling of Brexit” on Wednesday, in a blow to Prime Minister Theresa May’s attempts to unite her party around plans to leave the European Union.

The lawmakers, who support a second EU referendum and have long said May’s Brexit strategy is being led by Conservative eurosceptics, said they would join a new independent group in parliament set up by seven former opposition Labour politicians.

The resignations put May in an even weaker position in parliament, where her Brexit deal was crushed by lawmakers last month when both eurosceptics and EU supporters voted against an agreement they say offers the worst of all worlds.

While the three were almost certain to vote against any deal, the hardening of their positions undermines May’s negotiating position in Brussels, where she heads later to try to secure an opening for further work on revising the agreement.

With only 37 days until Britain leaves the EU, its biggest foreign and trade policy shift in more than 40 years, divisions over Brexit are redrawing the political landscape. The resignations threaten a decades-old two-party system.

“The final straw for us has been this government’s disastrous handling of Brexit,” the three lawmakers, Heidi Allen, Anna Soubry and Sarah Wollaston, said in a letter to May.

Soubry later told a news conference that the Conservative Party had been taken over by right-wing, pro-Brexit lawmakers.

“The truth is, the battle is over and the other side has won. The right-wing, the hard-line anti-EU awkward squad that have destroyed every (Conservative) leader for the last 40 years are now running the ... party from top to toe,” she said.

May said she was saddened by the decision and that Britain’s membership of the EU “has been a source of disagreement both in our party and in our country for a long time”.

“But by ... implementing the decision of the British people we are doing the right thing for our country,” she said, referring to the 2016 referendum in which Britons voted by a margin of 52-48 percent in favour of leaving the EU.

Asked what May would say to others considering resigning, her spokesman said: “She would, as she always has, ask for the support of her colleagues in delivering (Brexit)”.

INDEPENDENT GROUP

The three sat in parliament on Wednesday with a new grouping which broke away from the Labour Party earlier this week over increasing frustration with their leader Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit strategy and a row over anti-Semitism.

Another former Labour lawmaker joined their ranks late on Tuesday, and several politicians from both the main opposition party and Conservatives said they expected more to follow from both sides of parliament.

What unites most of the group of 11 is a desire to see a second referendum on any deal May comes back with, now that the terms of Brexit are known in detail - something the prime minister has ruled out.

For May’s Brexit plan, the resignations are yet another knock to more than two years of talks to leave the EU, which have been punctuated by defeats in parliament, rows over policy and a confidence vote, which she ultimately won.

Britain’s 2016 EU referendum has split not only British towns and villages but also parliament, with both Conservative and Labour leaders struggling to keep their parties united.

May has faced a difficult balancing act. Eurosceptic members of her party want a clean break with the bloc, pro-EU lawmakers argue for the closest possible ties, while many in the middle are increasing frustrated over the lack of movement.

Those who have resigned have long accused May of leaning too far towards Brexit supporters, sticking to red lines which they, and many in Labour, say have made a comprehensive deal all but impossible to negotiate.

But May will head to Brussels hoping that her team will get the green light to start more technical negotiations on how to satisfy the concerns of mostly Brexit supporters over the so-called Northern Irish backstop arrangement.

The “backstop”, an insurance policy to avoid a hard border between the British province of Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland if London and Brussels fail to agree a deal on future ties, is the main point of contention in talks with Brussels.

British officials are hoping they can secure the kind of legal assurances that the backstop cannot trap Britain in the EU’s sphere to persuade lawmakers to back a revised deal.

But May’s argument she can command a majority in parliament if the EU hands her such assurances is getting weaker. A government defeat last week showed the eurosceptics’ muscle.

One pro-Brexit Conservative lawmaker, Andrew Bridgen, said: “I would find it very difficult to accept a legal document from the same (party) lawyer whose definitive advice four weeks ago was that we could be trapped in the backstop in perpetuity.”