Tory leadership field narrows to four

It’s all about the top job in politics today, not only in Britain but also in Europe where the EU faces headaches over filling the two key roles of council president and commission president.

Over in Britain, it's a case of 'then there were four' after the Rory Stewart comet - which burned so brightly over the past week - finally burned out yesterday.

A lacklustre performance in the messy Newsnight debate on Thursday night reversed his momentum and saw him crash out. His vote actually fell by ten votes in the wake of his awkward performance on the bar stool – including his over-obvious removal of the tie.

So who benefits? Well, Boris Johnson is still way out in front with 143 votes, with Jeremy Hunt in second at 54 votes, slightly ahead of Michael Gove. Home secretary Sajid Javid is still in there but is unlikely to survive today’s vote, which will see the field reduced to two.

Summit of European leaders to focus on filling EU’s top jobs

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So which of the other two, Hunt or Gove, will survive for the one-to-one contest with Johnson? Stewart and Gove held talks earlier in the week, and there is a chance he might edge out Hunt for the mano a mano with Johnson.

Many of the UK papers including the Telegraph have claimed Johnson supporters may be hatching a plot to knock out Gove with strategic voting for Hunt. It's clear that Johnson's camp fears his former close ally, the abrasive Gove, more than the other remaining candidates.

And meanwhile in Brussels?

The EU is also beginning its process to find the people to fill the top five jobs for the next five years, including successors to Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker.

Pat Leahy, who will be there today for The Irish Times alongside Patrick Smyth, reports there is little expectation they will reach an agreement.

Funnily enough, there will be little on Brexit - despite Boris’s hubristic claims that Britain will leave by October 31st - other than a five-minute informal update scheduled for tomorrow. There is a likelihood the leaders may not even get to discuss it.

That said, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar will meet the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, today. No-deal preparations will be writ large.

So who will succeed Juncker in the first instance? The centre-right group European People’s Party, to which Fine Gael belongs, has dominated the parliament, but it lost support in the June elections. Its candidate is the German Manfred Weber, and under the parliament’s lead-candidate mechanism - or Spitzenkandidat - he should be expected to be the next president.

However, other EU states, particularly Emmanuel Macron’s France, are opposed to his candidacy. As Pat reports, Macron favours either the liberal group candidate and commission member Margrethe Vestager or even his own compatriot Michel Barnier. The other realistic candidate is Frans Timmermans from the socialists.

It’s very unlikely we will see consensus today.

And then there is climate change

Climate change is the other big item on the EU agenda but, like the leadership tussle, it’s not going to yield any agreement today.

The 27 remaining EU leaders are coming under pressure to support the union being carbon neutral by 2050. But the problem is that there are a few Danny Healy-Raes among the EU leaders - especially in the eastern states. The language in the conclusions on this, if agreed, is likely to be a series of compromises that take the union away from this basic goal. The optics will be bad ahead of another crucial UN summit on climate change later this year.

At home, Richard Bruton has defended his climate action plan and said its objective of one million electric vehicles by 2030 was “achievable”. There was some sharp criticism, however - Bríd Smith of People Before Profit described it as “woeful”, a claim rejected by Bruton.

And speaking of Danny Healy-Rae, over in the Dáil he was telling Bruton that he needed to be “realistic”. He said the measures would hurt farmers and the self-employed who need to use cars and tractors (none of which are electric) and need to burn turf.

Best reads

Miriam Lord reports the exchanges between Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin are growing increasingly testy.

In his weekly column, Stephen Collins says Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe faces some unenviable choices in the run-up to the budget.

The Nevin Institute has warned the Irish economy may begin overheating by the end of this year.

Former diplomat Bobby McDonagh parses the issues around the succession races for the EU's top jobs.

Newton Emerson has an interesting column calling for Belfast's murals to be whitewashed.

Which of Richard Bruton's big targets in his climate action plan will be actually achievable? I have a look at the issue in this article.

Playbook

The June EU summit begins in Brussels today and will be attended by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. With the Tory party embroiled in a leadership contest, it is unlikely there will be any significant announcements or progress on Brexit.

Dáil

10.30: Parliamentary Questions for Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe.

12.00: Leaders’ Questions.

13.02: Weekly divisions. In other words the votes on all the motions that came before the Dáíl this week.

14.25: The afternoon business is broken up into four segments: Statements on the Government’s Climate Action Plan; Gaming and Lotteries (Amendment) Bill 2019; Statements on the Supplementary Report of the Scoping Inquiry into the CervicalCheck Screening Programme (Department of Health); and Microbeads (Prohibition) Bill 2019. This is the Bill that proposes to ban microbeads, a significant cause of pollution in our oceans.

18.03: Justice Committee Report on Motion: ‘Report on Community Policing and Rural Crime’.

20.03: Dáil adjourns

Seanad

10.30: Commencement Matters.

11.30: Order of Business.

11.30: Judicial Council Bill 2017 - Report and Final Stages.

Committees

9.00: Committee of Public Accounts is looking at the Appropriation Accounts of the Department of Agriculture; financial statements from fishery harbour centres and the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund.

9.30: Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government is carrying out detailed scrutiny of the Local Government (Water Pollution) (Amendment) Bill 2018 and detailed scrutiny of the Social Housing Bill 2016. Both are Sinn Féin Private Members’ Bills.

10.30: Committee on Employment and Social Protection is continuing its examination of bogus self employment. Representatives of the Irish Air Line Pilots’ Association and the union Unite will attend.