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For many, ‘Terrible Tuesday’ began ‘Awful April’ with increased bills for water, energy, council tax (to an average in England of £2,280), road tax, telephone charges, broadband, the television licence and stamp duty. Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, spoke to President Donald Trump of the US as makers of motor vehicles, Britain’s biggest export to the US, contemplated American tariffs of 20 per cent on car imports. Matthew Doyle resigned as Sir Keir’s communications director. Plans were afoot to ban cars from Hammersmith Bridge, which has been closed for repairs for six years, when it is reopened.
Since there was a ‘draft bill due for imminent introduction that would make it unlawful’ the Sentencing Council decided not to bring in rules requiring judges to seek extra information before sentencing offenders from certain minority groups; Shabana Mahmood, the Justice Secretary, had said she did not want ‘a two-tier sentencing approach’. The University of Sussex hoped to overturn a ruling by the Office for Students imposing a £585,000 penalty for infringing freedom of speech. At a conference at Lancaster House on organised migration crime, the Prime Minister said: ‘We’ve returned more than 24,000 people who have no right to be here’; but it appeared that about a third of the figure had returned without telling the government. In the seven days to 31 March, 722 migrants arrived in small boats.
Birmingham council declared a ‘major incident’ over the 17,000 tons of rubbish left on the streets by dustmen belonging to the Unite union. The King spent a short time in hospital and cancelled an engagement in Birmingham because of the side-effects of his treatment for cancer. W.H. Smith shops in high streets will be called T.G. Jones after their sale to the owners of Hobbycraft, Modella Capital. The Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, who moved to London in 1995, told friends that he would probably leave Britain because of the government’s abolition of the ‘non-dom’ tax regime, according to the Financial Times. Trevor Lock, the policeman awarded the George Medal for his courageous action during the Iranian embassy siege in London in 1980, died aged 85. Lord Kalms, who built up the Dixons chain, died aged 93. Paul Marchant resigned as chief executive of Primark after an allegation by a woman about ‘his behaviour towards her in a social environment’. Police shot a man dead at Milton Keynes station after reports he was carrying a firearm. Non-folding e-bikes were banned on most of the Transport for London network, for fear of fire.
Abroad
A French court found Marine Le Pen guilty of using EU parliamentary money to pay party salaries for the National Rally (Rassemblement national); she was barred from standing for public office for five years, preventing her candidacy in the 2027 French presidential election. A magnitude 7.7 earthquake with an epicentre near Mandalay in Myanmar killed thousands; a 30-storey building under construction in Bangkok in Thailand collapsed, with 87 builders dead or missing.
The Israeli military issued an extensive new evacuation order for residents of the city of Rafah and parts of neighbouring Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Israel Katz, the defence minister, said Israel would seize ‘large areas’ of Gaza, incorporating them into ‘security zones’. President Trump, commenting on negotiations for a ceasefire in the war against Ukraine, said ‘I was very angry, pissed off’ when Vladimir Putin ‘started getting into Zelensky’s credibility’. He threatened to impose a 50 per cent tariff on countries buying Russian oil. Russia called up 160,000 men aged between 18 and 30 as part of its drive to increase the number of active servicemen to 1.5 million. Vice-President J.D. Vance of the US accompanied his wife Usha to Greenland in order to tell Denmark: ‘You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland.’ At a rally before the election of a judge for the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, Elon Musk handed out two $1 million cheques to voters who had signed a petition to stop ‘activist’ judges. Utah became the first American state to ban fluoride in its public water. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey gave the longest speech in Senate history, spending 25 hours and five minutes criticising Trump. Richard Chamberlain, the star of Dr Kildare, died aged 90.
Gold rose to $3,148 a troy ounce. Somalia’s breakaway region of Somaliland rejected an attempt by the central government to give the US control of a port and airbase at Berbera on the Gulf of Aden coast. Queensland is to build a 63,000-seater stadium in Brisbane for the 2032 Olympics, after which the Gabba cricket stadium will be demolished. CSH
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