The Daily News Summary - 11 August

Yesterday the government gave itself a new power over which shops may open on your street, and spent the same day explaining that it had no power at all over the thing everybody was asking about.

Start with the shops, because it was the announcement of the day and it isn't a silly idea. The BBC, the Independent and the Mirror all reported that councils are to get more powers to stop vape shops and betting shops opening on their high streets, with the Prime Minister making the case himself that local people should decide what a high street is for. Anyone who has watched a parade of shops turn into the same four trades understands the impulse. The Express carried the obvious objection: a council that refuses a tenant doesn't thereby find a better one, and the likeliest result of a veto is an empty window rather than a bookshop. Both of those can be true at once. What nobody on either side asked is why those four trades are the ones that can still pay the rent.

Then the day''s other half. Downing Street said it wasn't possible to lift individual cases out of the early release scheme, which several outlets reported. The Guardian set out what a government could in fact do if it chose to, and GB News reported that the Prime Minister had asked the Justice Secretary to draw up plans anyway. That's one arm of government saying the machine can't be stopped and another being told to stop it, on the same afternoon.

Reform spent the day proposing to move the problem abroad. The BBC reported its plan to send foreign prisoners out of the country to end early releases, with the Express and GB News reporting talks with El Salvador, and the Independent reporting charities who warned that people sent there would be at risk. Set the merits aside and look at where the decision would sit. Not with a British minister and not with a British judge, but with a government in Central America that can price the favour and change its mind.

The Channel produced the day''s hardest fact. The BBC, the Guardian and the Mirror all reported a record number of people crossing in a single small boat, with smugglers turning to what the papers called mega dinghies. Reform''s leader called it a national security emergency and warned of thousands crossing daily, and the Independent reported him rejecting a broadcaster''s claim that his plan was impossible. The size of the boats is the story, and it isn't a story about seamanship.

Money moved quietly underneath all of it. GB News reported economists warning of a very large tax raid on pensioners and entrepreneurs in the coming Budget, and separately that the tax free pension lump sum is under pressure. The Express reported wealth tax fears and the Leader of the Opposition demanding those taxes be ruled out in advance. The Guardian and the Mirror reported a row over a seven figure payment to Thames Water''s incoming finance chief, which the Prime Minister called unacceptable. A regulated monopoly nobody can leave, paying what it likes, while the Budget goes looking at everybody else.

The right spent the day divided again. GB News reported that Restore Britain has rejected Reform''s offer to unite, and the Express reported a fresh row between the two men leading them. Days before the by-election in Clacton, with a poll reported by the Independent putting Labour ahead nationally, the aligned right is once more arguing with itself in public. Every hour of that is an hour in which the questions it raises go unanswered.

Two things ran in the background and will outlast the rest. Novara reported that spreading drought could put British food supply under strain, and the Express reported large parts of England in drought during another heatwave. And a minister told the Independent that the government wants a deeper post-Brexit relationship with the EU, which is the largest constitutional question in British politics and got a fraction of the attention the vape shops did.

A government that can decide what opens on a high street isn't a government short of power. Yesterday it spent that power on shopfronts, and reached for the word impossible on everything above them.

An opinion of the house.