Sunday press review
Race to be PM + Heatwave news + Heathrow chaos + Starbucks
Morning everyone and welcome to Off to Lunch’s Sunday press review. I hope you are enjoying the weekend. This is where I round up what I think is most interesting in the Sunday papers and the stories that will be followed in the days ahead. As ever, there is a business focus but with a couple of other things that have caught my eye thrown in.
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Right, with that out of the way, let’s get cracking…
The Sunday Times splashes on a story that leaked government documents suggest Penny Mordaunt supported loosening rules to make gender self-identification easier (The Mail on Sunday splashes on a similar story here). However, I think the most interesting thing about the leadership race in the papers is the main Sunday Times editorial comment (aka the leader) which is damning about the contenders and the debate between them. “The weak field of runners and riders betrays a government exhausted after 12 years in power…” Ouch. You can read it here. An interesting development on the policies being proposed is Liz Truss telling The Sunday Telegraph she would scrap government housebuilding targets and focus on deregulation and tax cuts. Story here.
Heathrow airport and its boss John Holland-Kaye have taken a hammering in the Sunday papers after telling airlines to stop selling tickets and setting a daily limit on passenger numbers this summer. Former British Airways boss Willie Walsh says the airport “should have been better prepared” in The Mail on Sunday. That story is here. Oliver Shah describes the airport as an “ATM with runways attached” in his Sunday Times column here. Expect more criticism of Heathrow in the days ahead. This story isn’t going away…
Good hit for the Sunday Times on Starbucks looking at a sale of its UK business, which has more than 1,000 coffee shops in the UK. This feels like a moment. Firstly, Starbucks is the original mass-market coffee chain, one that faced a brutal tax avoidance row in 2012, but it seems to have been overtaken by new rivals and independent coffee shops. Secondly, is this a working-from-home story? Starbucks’ latest UK accounts warn that sales are struggling in city centres where office workers have not returned. Story here.
Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss are among the candidates to be the next prime minister who could scrap “levelling up” as a slogan, if not a policy, according to The Sunday Times. Apparently Sunak sees it as confusing and thinks it means different things to different people. I think there is truth in this. For instance, is it aspirational to tell people that you are trying to treat them the same as other parts of the country? The phrase has also made parts of the south-east feel like they are being levelled down. However, renaming the policy without making it look like it is being abandoned will be difficult. Sunday Times story here.
Why are companies have problems with payroll and paying the right wages? Last week there were reports of problems at Asda, with staff not getting the right wages, today it is Next. Next appears to be blaming problems with a new Oracle payroll system.