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 week of the last Parliamentary session saw several of the government’s key pieces of legislation become law, and MPs and peers return to Westminster this week to find out what’s on the cards for the coming year in the Queen’s Speech, which HRH plans to deliver, on Tuesday (May 10). With controversial new laws on policing and immigration on the statute books, despite the best efforts of opposition parties in the Lords, what will the Johnson administration set out in the wake of a largely disappointing set of local election results?
Tackling the cost of living, particularly after the Bank of England’s recession warning this week, is sure to be one of the priorities for the government over the coming months, and a legislative follow-up to the energy security strategy with a view to bringing down household bills is likely to be a key tenet of this year’s programme. Key battlegrounds for the government, including Northern Ireland, free speech and Channel 4, are also likely to feature, while demands from consumer groups for action on access to cash and the Labour Party on a new Victims’ Bill may also influence what’s promised today.
Deloitte hosts its Media and Telecoms Beyond Conference on Wednesday (May 11), where BBC Director General Tim Davie and Channel 4 CEO Alex Mahon are among the keynote speakers. Mahon’s speech will likely be the showstopper after the broadcaster published an alternative plan to privatisation earlier this week. Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries has vowed to press ahead with the sale despite growing opposition, also taking aim at the BBC licence fee in a recent Spectator interview for good measure.
Looking Abroad
All eyes will be on Moscow on Monday (May 9) when Vladimir Putin delivers a speech as part of the country’s annual Victory Day military parade marking the 1945 surrender of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II in Europe. With fighting continuing in Ukraine over two months in to the so-called ‘special military operation’, there has been plenty of speculation over how Putin will be able to present the invasion as a victory, particularly given the series of embarrassing setbacks Russia has suffered.
He is almost certain to continue his bizarre justification of the war as part of an effort to ‘denazify’ Ukraine, despite the recent high-profile row with Israel prompted by foreign minister Sergey Lavrov’s antisemitic remarks, for which Putin offered a rare apology.
More substantively, it has been suggested that Putin could use his speech to officially declare war on Ukraine and announce a general mobilization, though the Kremlin has dismissed such speculation as ‘nonsense’. Either way, Putin’s speech is likely to be a critical moment in the conflict.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, meanwhile, will be heading to Germany for a meeting of G7 counterparts on Thursday (May 12) and then an informal meeting of NATO foreign ministers over the weekend (May 14-15), where the conflict will once again dominate discussions as preparations continue for June’s G7 summit in Germany and the NATO summit in Madrid.
Elsewhere, this week also sees national elections in the Philippines (May 9) and Lebanon (May 15), a new president take office in South Korea (May 10), and ASEAN leaders descend on Washington for a special summit hosted by Joe Biden (May 12-13).