Morning Bid: Switch 2 debuts but no fun-and-games in trade
A look at the day ahead in European and global markets from Rocky Swift
It's Switch 2 Day! The much-anticipated sequel to Nintendo's immensely successful portable gaming unit goes on sale around the world on Thursday. But don't bother trying to find one: They're all sold out.
The Switch 2 is manufactured mostly in China and sold out of Japan, so it's anybody's guess when there will be more of them available and what they'll cost, given all the uncertainty over tariffs and supply chains.
A United States deadline for "best offers" on trade came and went on Wednesday without any trade announcements, and President Donald Trump continued to stir up controversy on the global stage with a proclamation banning nationals of 12 countries from the U.S.
But the trade talks go on, with Japan sending its head trade negotiator Ryosei Akazawa to the U.S. again today in search of a deal. Germany's new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is also headed to Washington for some face time with Trump in the Oval Office.
The main event today will be the European Central Bank's interest rate decision, which is almost certain to cut rates by 25 basis points. The post-decision comments by President Christine Lagarde will be all the more important for clues on future policy moves.
Stock futures pointed to flat openings for both European and U.S. markets.
Key developments that could influence markets on Thursday:
- ECB decision, speech by Christine Lagarde
- German Chancellor Friedrich Merz travels to Washington
- German data on industrial orders, consumer goods for April
- U.S. data on jobless claims for end of May, trade data for April
- Fed's Jeffrey Schmid, Patrick Harker, Adriana Kugler to speak
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Sky News
25 minutes ago
- Sky News
Kemi Badenoch: ECHR has become 'sword used to attack democratic decisions'
Kemi Badenoch has warned there is "no silver bullet" to tackle immigration, but said it is "likely" the UK should leave the ECHR. It comes as the Conservative Party leader launched a review into whether the UK should leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). In a landmark speech setting out her party's position on immigration, the Tory leader accused the body, which dates back to the 1950s, of becoming a "sword used to attack democratic decisions and common sense". She said the ECHR has been used to prevent foreign criminals, including convicted groomers, from being deported, as they have a right to family life under Article Eight of the convention. Ms Badenoch said: "Over and over again, we hear of cases like this, where the law is weak, or just a mess. "Right now, we are turning into a country that protects criminals and rewards their victims." She said "this can't go on" and described the use of the law in this way as "lawfare". 1:50 New immigration policy Ms Badenoch said she would like to see "a total end to asylum claims in this country by illegal immigrants". She also said the Conservatives want "all those who arrive illegally and try to claim asylum" to be deported immediately. The current asylum system is "broken", and the government has "lost control" of it - with the system now in the control of people traffickers, she alleged. 19:32 Ms Badenoch said she would like to see "fundamental reform", which is why she said she has launched a commission to review the ECHR. The commission will be chaired by Tory peer and former justice minister Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, who is now the shadow attorney general. She accused Labour of having "no interest" in reforming the ECHR, and said that they "quite like the way things are". Ms Badenoch also said the government "isn't interested" in solving problems such as how many immigrants should be allowed to stay in the UK. Badenoch's five tests The Conservative Party leader set out "five tests" she would like the review to judge the ECHR against: • The deportation test - whether parliament, rather than the courts, "decides who comes here and who stays" • The veterans test - this is about stopping "veterans being endlessly pursued by vexatious legal attacks" • The fairness test - whether British citizens can be prioritised for social housing and public services • The justice test - whether prison sentences can be made to actually reflect parliament's intentions • The prosperity test - whether parliament can "prevent endless legal challenges for our infrastructure projects" Ms Badenoch said that if these tests cannot be met and there is "no realistic prospect of changing them", then the UK must leave the ECHR - "no hesitation, no apology". She admitted "there is no silver bullet" - but added she believes this is the best course of action. The review will report back at the party's conference in the autumn. What are the other parties saying? Ms Badenoch's position goes less far than that of Reform UK, who she also attacked in her speech. 1:06 Nigel Farage has said he would leave the ECHR already. It also puts her out of step with some of her cabinet, including prominent Tory, Robert Jenrick. The shadow justice secretary warned Tories the party would "die" if they did not back exiting the ECHR. Labour has meanwhile said it would like to remain in the ECHR but will bring forward legislation to "ensure it is the government and not parliament that decides who should have the right to remain in the UK". Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, said compliance with international law has helped the government strike deals about cracking down on criminal gangs, such as with France and Germany. A Labour spokesperson accused Ms Badenoch of "booting [the issue] into the long grass". They said: "Kemi Badenoch bemoaned the broken immigration and asylum system, but failed to mention it was her party which broke it. The Tories had had 14 years to fix our immigration system."
Telegraph
25 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Sarah Vine's memoir is fascinating, embarrassing and fundamentally tragic
The 'misery memoir ' was a genre one thought peculiar to the early years of this century. However, with this strange book, Sarah Vine, formerly Mrs Michael Gove, has resurrected it. Its title, How Not to Be a Political Wife, seems flippant, and one expects, when beginning it, to experience some sort of extended stunt. What one gets is in turns interesting, embarrassing and, fundamentally, mildly tragic. Ms Vine's contention is that she married a journalist and ended up with a politician; that politics is horrible; and it ruined her marriage and, to a great extent, her life and her children's. How far this is true must be up to each reader to judge. Because of the detail into which the author chooses to go, it seems to this reader that certain factors had shaped her life and her character long before her husband arrived. But first, the interesting stuff. I must come clean: I have long been a friend of Michael Gove, admire his considerable political and intellectual talents, and feel he has had a deeply unfair press. The service this book does to history is to put the record about him straight. First, he was vilified by David Cameron and his cronies for supporting Brexit in the 2016 referendum. It was, as Ms Vine emphasises correctly, a battle between a man with principles and a group of careerists who hardly knew the meaning of the word. Second, he was reviled by much of the Conservative party for his so-called 'betrayal' of Boris Johnson just after the referendum, when Johnson, running for the leadership, was showing precious little loyalty to him. All Gove had done was realise, before it was too late, that Johnson was the incompetent liar, charlatan and trickster his grotesque premiership proved him to be. I and others who knew what went on have defended Gove for years for this reason; it is good that this book puts it all on the record. I hope Theresa May, whose apparently saintly personal reputation also gets the kicking it deserves for her outrageous treatment of Gove in sacking him for 'disloyalty', reads this part of the book at least: maybe she will find a belated sense of shame, though one doubts it. The book also, though, shows just what a cesspit our politics became in the 14 years of Conservative rule from 2010 to 2024. What fills cesspits filled a succession of administrations. Cameron, the first of a succession of unremittingly dire prime ministers, was the ultimate cronyist. He adopted this method of management because his political life was, as Ms Vine definitively shows, all about him and his survival in office; never about what he could do for the country. As some of us wrote at the time, Cameron's addiction to his yes-men and women prevented him from calling on some of the older, and wiser, members of his party who might have given him advice superior to that of his cronies. This, too, is made plain in this book. Cameron's narcissism also made it impossible for him to see a link between his disloyalty to Gove – whom he demoted from Education Secretary despite his being the most successful holder of that office in recent memory – and Gove's decision that his principles about the EU might override any personal loyalty from him that Cameron merited. The embarrassing aspect of this book is the detail into which Ms Vine goes about her background: her being loathed at school, her mental and physical health and the effect her ex-husband's career had on her and their children. Describing her upbringing she portrays her father as a monster. In her acknowledgements at the end of the work she begins with 'my father, for f------ me up so brilliantly'. If we haven't realised it by this stage, what we have just read turns out to be a book by the thinking man's Meghan Markle. It has taken 'courage' (as she says in another acknowledgement: and I am sure it did) to lay all this personal upset bare, and doubtless she has found it therapeutic. Will her own children thank her, in years to come, for going into such detail about what they unquestionably suffered because of their father's prominence, and all the unhappiness it brought them? Doubtless Ms Vine thought she was being cathartic on her own account, and vicariously on theirs. Only time will tell. And then there's the mildly tragic aspect. Ms Vine exposes a chip on her shoulder the size of Yorkshire. Wounded deeply by her dear friend Samantha Cameron – about whom, to her credit, she says no bad word – turning on her viciously at a dinner party around the time of Brexit, she harps on about the class differences between her and the Camerons and their pretty repulsive cast of chums. She should pull herself together: 'Dave's' father was a stockbroker, not the Duke of Devonshire. It's indicative of the lack of a sense of perspective in this book, and which one fears is typical of the Markle school of thought. Most tragic of all is Ms Vine's reference to a 'friendship group' that abandoned them when her husband stood up for himself and his beliefs. I am not sure I have ever met anyone over the age of 14 who has a 'friendship group': but it's just another way of saying that the Goves were sucked in to the bunch of cronies around Cameron, though never so deeply that they could not be expelled again, in what reads like an act of social projectile vomiting. The whole thing is repellently infantile, and it's depressing that impostors such as the Cameron clique were ever allowed near power. I suspect no man reading this book (and I must plead guilty on that front) will perceive all its nuances, because it is (again from its title) presumably aimed mostly at women. One certainly rarely senses that Ms Vine is writing with the idea that a man – other, perhaps, than her ex-husband, about whom also she says no bad word – is among her readership. Perhaps other wives who have suffered because of their husband's careers will obtain something valuable from it. It is not a particularly literary book (if you want that in this context, read Sasha Swire 's diaries about the same period) but it will prove undeniably useful to those unfortunate historians who have to write about this ghastly period in decades to come. Otherwise, Ms Vine might have been far better advised not to write it at all.
BBC News
29 minutes ago
- BBC News
Trump's trade tariffs 'to hit NI growth and jobs'
A US tariff of 10% on UK goods could cost the Northern Ireland economy £85m and 800 jobs over the next 15 years, a Department for the Economy study has does not mean the economy will shrink in absolute terms, rather it will be smaller than it would have been if the tariffs had not been study only considers the direct effects on Northern Ireland exports rather than any secondary impact would rise to a £110m loss of potential economic output if US President Donald Trump was to impose a 20% tariff on pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceuticals is the part of the Northern Ireland economy which is most exposed to Trump tariffs as almost half of the sector's export sales go to the study suggests a 20% tariff would mean pharmaceutical sector output would be around 5% lower compared to a no tariff are effectively a tax on imported goods and are a major part of Trump's economic policy. Since re-entering office in January, he has raised tariffs on specific items such as steel, aluminium, and cars and imposed a blanket 10% levy on most goods from trading partners around the had briefly targeted some countries' exports with even higher tariff rates, only to suspend those measures for 90 days to allow for talks.A US trade court has ruled that an emergency law invoked by Trump did not give him the unilateral authority to impose the blanket 10% those tariffs are still being collected while the Trump administration appeals the administration is also conducting a national security investigation into pharmaceutical imports, a process which would provide a more solid legal basis to impose tariffs on that sector. 'A significant headwind' The study concludes that tariffs will "adversely affect local businesses and represent a significant headwind for businesses when trying to grow exports over the longer term"."It is also likely that many of the businesses impacted will be in specific geographic areas e.g. Mid Ulster and Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon council areas," it says."This is due to the importance of the manufacturing and pharmaceutical industries to these areas, which will have implications for the regional balance agenda being taken forward by the department."
