US poised to lower tariffs on British cars within days, UK minister indicates
The United States is poised to start lowering its tariffs on some British products within days, the UK trade secretary has indicated.Jonathan Reynolds told reporters the US was expected to slash its tariffs on British cars “very soon” after “a very significant week” of talks.Reynolds and Keir Starmer met Howard Lutnick, the US commerce secretary, for talks on Tuesday evening, during which they raised the implementation of the US-UK trade deal.Reynolds said: “Secretary Lutnick and I, and the prime minister, talked specifically about the execution of the automotive tariff reduction … which is part of our deal.I’m hoping to be able to update you all on that very soon.
”Asked whether he expected the tariff reductions to begin this week, he said: “I’m very hopeful.It was a specific area of conversation on Tuesday in that bilateral meeting.We are ready to go on our side … as soon as the president and White House are able to on their side.”After the meeting Lutnick posted on X that trade quotas on British cars and American beef and ethanol would be implemented “within days”.Peter Mandelson, the UK ambassador to Washington, raised the implementation of the deal again at a meeting with Donald Trump on Wednesday.
“I assured the president that our markets were ready to receive new quota.s of US goods and that the UK looked forward to the deal’s swift implementation,” Mandelson said in a statement after the meeting.Having negotiated trade agreements with the US, the EU and India, ministers are focused on finalising a £1.6bn deal with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).The Guardian reported last month that the deal, which will boost trade with countries including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, was nearing completion but was likely to draw backlash over human rights and modern slavery concerns.
Reynolds confirmed that the deal with the GCC would not contain legally binding commitments on labour or environmental standards but said the UK needed to strike agreements with countries “different to ourselves”,“There will be chapters in that agreement, they’ve already been negotiated, on environmental standards, on labour standards,They’re not legally binding, you don’t have that in trade deals, but it’s important you have that ethos and that approach reflected,” he said,“What this country needs to be is the best connector market in the world and that will require, after leaving the European Union, trade agreements with some places that are not western democracies,“We’ve got to recognise that not only is there a commercial interest in us being involved in those places, British engagement is positive.
There are countries in the Gulf who are different to ourselves, but have been the areas where there’s been some more significant change in the last decade.”Reynolds also shared an anecdote about his first WhatsApp message to Lutnick, which was sent shortly after he was confirmed as US commerce secretary in February.“Then begins what I can only describe as a cross-Whitehall process to write, collectively with collective agreement, a WhatsApp message to the United States.Now that was as bad as it sounds – literally something no human being would send or be able to understand,” he said.“The whole of the British state at its finest and most efficient way, gets together, starts agreeing on every sentence, every word, and it comes through to me.
By this time, it’s about 10 o’clock at night, and Claire [Reynolds] and I are driving back to Stalybridge together,I get the message, and I think it needs a little bit of work … but I go, the whole of the government’s been engaged in this so fair enough, we send it off,“Howard just rings me straight back … and he says: ‘Johnny, I got your message,I don’t know what it means,”
How to Train Your Dragon to Neil Young: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead
How to Train Your DragonOut now This live-action remake was shot by Bill Pope, the cinematographer behind films as diverse as Clueless, The Matrix and Spider-Man 3, with puppets used on set to give the actors something to work with before painting in the CGI. Starring Mason Thames, Gerard Butler and Nick Frost.Film on Film WeekendBFI Southbank, London, 14 & 15 JuneA whole weekend of films screening exclusively from actual physical prints? Sign us up. Physical film in a digital world is a use-it-or-lose-it kind of treasure, so to see the likes of Star Wars screened from prints, vote with your wallet and get down to the BFI.LollipopOut now Daisy-May Hudson based this portrait of a woman trying to regain custody of her kids on her own experiences of the social care system, with Posy Sterling giving a barnstorming performance as a woman who can’t get a bigger flat because she doesn’t have her children with her, and can’t get her kids back because her flat is too small
British Library to reinstate Oscar Wilde’s reader card 130 years after it was revoked
The British Library is to symbolically reinstate Oscar Wilde’s reader pass, 130 years after its trustees cancelled it following his conviction for gross indecency.A contemporary pass bearing the name of the Irish author and playwright will be officially presented to his grandson, Merlin Holland, at an event in October, it will be announced on Sunday.Rupert Everett, who wrote, directed and starred as Wilde in The Happy Prince – the acclaimed 2018 film about the writer’s tragic final years in exile – will play a part in the ceremony.Holland is an expert on Wilde whose publications include The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde. Asked how his grandfather might have reacted to the pass being reinstated, he said: “He’d probably say ‘about time too’
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It only ended a few years ago, but Westworld already feels a bit of a TV footnote. A pricey mid-2010s remake of a 70s Yul Brynner movie few people remembered, HBO’s robot cowboy drama lumbered on for four lukewarm seasons before getting cancelled – with few people really noticing.Still, when it premiered, Westworld was big news. Here was a show well-placed to do a Game of Thrones, only for sci-fi. Its high production values were married to an eye-catching cast (Evan Rachel Wood, Ed Harris, Thandiwe Newton, Jeffrey Wright) and it was run by the crack team of Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, who promised they had a playbook for how the whole show would shake out
Seth Meyers on Trump’s falling approval rating: ‘Worth remembering that people don’t like this’
Late-night hosts spoke about how Donald Trump’s presidency is proving unpopular with Americans, looking at the cruelty of his deportation strategy and the response to protests in Los Angeles.On Late Night, Seth Meyers spoke about Trump’s approval rating going down this past week and in particular he looked at how people are against his extreme immigration strategy.“People don’t even approve of Trump on immigration and that’s what people wanted him for,” he said.Meyers called his tactics “needlessly cruel” before speaking about his appearance at the Kennedy Center this week where he went to see a performance of Les Misérables.Trump was booed by many and Meyers said it was “like Darth Vader getting booed on the Death Star”
‘Difficult love’: Spanish publisher reprints groundbreaking book of Lorca’s homoerotic sonnets
In the autumn of 1983, dozens of carefully chosen readers received an envelope containing a slim, red booklet of sonnets that had been locked away since they were written almost 50 years earlier by the most famous Spanish poet of the 20th century.While those behind the initiative gave no clue as to their identities, their purpose was made abundantly clear in the dedication on the booklet’s final page: “This first edition of the Sonnets of Dark Love is being published to remember the passion of the man who wrote them.”Here at last, lovingly pirated and printed in blood-red ink, were the deeply homoerotic and anguished verses that Federico García Lorca had completed not long before he was murdered in the early days of the Spanish civil war.To commemorate the anonymous effort, to revisit a peculiar episode in Spain’s literary history, and to bring the poems to a new audience, a Galician publisher has now brought out a perfect facsimile edition of that groundbreaking 42-year-old booklet.Although long known to Lorca scholars – not least because they had been published in French two years earlier – Los Sonetos del Amor Oscuro had been hidden away by the poet’s family, who believed their tortured and sensual lines would taint his legacy and stir up old hatreds
Seth Meyers on Trump’s deployment of troops to LA: ‘About spectacle and power and nothing else’
Late-night hosts blasted Donald Trump’s deployment of troops to Los Angeles, his extremely partisan speech to the army and his upcoming military parade.On Wednesday’s Late Night, Seth Meyers mocked Donald Trump for saying he would arrest the California governor, Gavin Newsom, for the crime of “running for governor, because he’s done such a bad job”.“If you could arrest someone for being bad at their job, the jails would be filled with former head coaches of the New York Jets,” Meyers joked.“I gotta say, Trump’s really lost his step. He can’t even come up with a phony reason to arrest Newsom?” Meyers continued
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