A look ahead at the key events leading the news agenda next week, from the team at Foresight News. Delivered to your inbox on Fridays.
Leading the week
The final hearing in the long-running extradition case of Julian Assange is due to be heard at the High Court on Tuesday and Wednesday (February 20 and 21). The founder of WikiLeaks has spent nearly five years in Belmarsh prison following his arrest outside the Ecuadorian Embassy, where he lived for seven years to avoid extradition to the US on charges of hacking Government computers and espionage; material released by WikiLeaks contained thousands of documents containing classified information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Supporters of Assange, who are expected to assemble outside the High Court on both days, argue the charges are politically motivated, and that Assange was doing his job as a journalist. Should his appeal fail, he faces up to 175 years in jail in the US for charges under the espionage act, with his wife fearing he will die behind bars. The matter has been further complicated by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese calling for Assange’s return to the country of his birth.
The NHS faces major disruption once again next week as junior doctors in both England and Wales prepare to begin extended strike action. Doctors in Wales begin a 72-hour walkout at 7am on Wednesday (February 22) in protest at the Welsh Government’s most recent pay offer of 5%, which the British Medical Association (BMA) derides as a real-terms pay cut. Then, at 7am on Thursday (February 23), over 46,000 junior doctors in England walk out for the 10th round of action in the BMA’s dispute with the UK Government.
The long-running dispute has dragged on as the union seeks ‘full pay-restoration’ for real-terms declines in pay since 2008/9, which it says amounts to 26.1% after taking inflation into account. The strike, potentially the last under the current mandate, lasts until 7am on February 28 and comes after the BMA claimed that the Government failed to meet a deadline of February 8 to present a ‘credible’ pay offer which would add to the 8.8% rise already awarded to junior doctors last year. Union leaders have since offered to suspend the strikes in return for further negotiating time.
With households still feeling the pinch as the Budget approaches, yesterday’s confirmation that the UK has entered recession added to the pressure on Jeremy Hunt to deliver some good news on March 6. An unexpected hold in inflation on Wednesday does, however, augurs well for the prospect of interest rate cuts in the coming months, and there’s expected to be another boost on Friday (February 23) when Ofgem announces the next adjustment to its energy price cap. Analysts are predicting that bills could fall by as much as £300 in the next quarter, and while the change may not be directly the Chancellor’s doing any positive news will be welcomed as Hunt and Sunak battle to meet those economic targets.
And as MPs return to Westminster following an event-filled recess, over in the House of Lords the current stage of scrutiny of the government’s Rwanda bill concludes on Monday (February 19). The bill received criticism from all sides of the House over the first two days of debate this week, though an attempt by former Labour frontbencher Shami Chakrabarti backed by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby to allow the UN oversight of deportations was dropped on Wednesday. But with nearly 100 amendments to consider before the bill can proceed to the next stage – when peers vote on what form the bill will take when it’s passed back to the House of Commons – ministers should probably brace for more headaches over the flagship immigration policy.
Looking abroad
The Republican primary on Saturday (February 24) in Nikki Haley’s home state of South Carolina looks increasingly like it may end up being decisive if she is to stand a chance of maintaining a viable challenge to Donald Trump’s nomination as the party’s candidate this November. After a disappointing result in New Hampshire and her brutal loss in the Nevada primary, Haley is staring down the barrel of another embarrassment in the Palmetto State next week that may test her resolve for staying in what is becoming an increasingly bitter and likely unwinnable contest against Trump.
After Haley was heckled last year when she appeared at CPAC, she is skipping this year’s MAGA-centric gathering, which runs Thursday through Saturday (February 22-24). In addition to Trump, whose remarks are scheduled for the final day, speakers this year include former UK prime minister Liz Truss as well as Nayib Bukele, the recently re-elected strongman leader of El Salvador, and Argentina’s new anarcho-capitalist president Javier Milei.
The conflict in Ukraine, meanwhile, is likely to remain in focus in the runup to the two-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion on Saturday (February 24) as President Zelenskyy seeks to counter signs of ‘solidarity fatigue’, notably among House Republicans in the United States. Next week also marks the ten-year anniversary of the Maidan revolution that saw then-President Viktor Yanukovych flee Kyiv on February 21 a day after Russian forces began their operation to annex Crimea on February 20. Dozens of pro-European protesters in Maidan were killed by pro-regime snipers in the bloodiest day of the months-long standoff over Yanukovych’s last-minute decision not to sign an association agreement with the European Union.
Kyiv’s ongoing military and diplomatic struggles will loom large as G20 foreign ministers – including Russia’s Sergey Lavrov – gather in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday and Thursday (February 21 and 22). There have been suggestions ahead of the gathering that UK foreign secretary David Cameron, who’s said to be also planning to attend a UN Security Council meeting scheduled for Friday (February 23), could be preparing for a muscular encounter with his Russian counterpart. The death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, announced by the country’s federal prison service earlier today, is now also likely to be a topic of discussion at the meeting.
Finally, space history will made next week if the IM-1 mission‘s Odysseus lander successfully touches down on the Moon as planned on Thursday (February 22) and becomes the first commercial mission to achieve a soft landing on the lunar surface. The mission, which launched yesterday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, is the second attempt this year by a private company after Astrobotic’s Peregrine mission suffered a propulsion system failure that prevented it from attempting its lunar landing. Assuming all goes to plan, Odysseus will touch down near the Moon’s south pole, an area of particular interest for deposits of water ice that will be important for NASA’s future manned Artemis missions.